10 Things That Make Me Joyful: Number 9

9. A simple, traditional, historically rooted Christmas. A Christmas based on Christ and family, not on presents, not on vacations, not on parties or snowmen or scarlet-olfactoried caribou… A Christmas rich in time spent with family and friends, but a Christmas that never forgets the “reason for the season,” as they say. A clichéd expression perhaps, but true nonetheless. One walks into a shopping center or a doctor’s office and hears the most sterile, nonreligious, unmeaningful Christmas songs one can think of. No mention of Christ or the Magi, no passionate acceptance of light in the midst of a dark and dying world, no allusion to Mary or Joseph…even the Santa Claus references are fewer and farther between. The religious freedom we have in America allows us to celebrate the holidays any way we darn well please: profoundly religious, materialistically secular, somewhere in between (my favorite place to be, I suppose), or not at all. Not being the most active Christian myself, I find it very important to do whatever I can at Christmastime to honor the real spirit of the holiday. Without honoring the Advent of Christ, it seems shallow at best, downright blasphemous at worst, to even think of celebrating Christmas.

One reads this and probably thinks, “Wow, how boring and antiquated.” Yes, that’s the point. As much as I love outrageous Christmas comedies like Home Alone and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation; as much as I like tackily-decorated houses with giant inflatable Santas and snowmen and multicolored strands of lights; as much as I enjoy getting piles of presents I don't deserve (which will not be happening anytime soon for me, thank you very much); as much as I would like to escape the frigid madness of December in Michigan for a few days in Florida or elsewhere, I have to say that Christ and compassion are beginning to outweigh those other considerations. This life is too short, this holiday is too sacred, the people in my life mean too much to simply ignore them. I won’t belabor the point with impassioned soapbox pleas about the evil war on Christmas (though I believe there is such a thing), but just figure I’ll share my love for this holiday and my need to indulge in its simple, majestic beauty as much as possible. I'll be doing my usual Yuletide traditions this year: rereading A Christmas Carol, listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, laughing at holiday-themed jokes...but I sincerely hope for my own sake, and that of those around me, that I can keep the Nativity Scene first and foremost on my mind on December 25.

A Quiet Sunday in Paradise

Last week we celebrated the sixty-seventh anniversary of the unforgettable Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, that claimed over 2,400 American lives and wounded an additional 1,200 or so. The following is a poem I wrote seven years ago for the sixtieth anniversary of the attack. As you can see, I'm not the next candidate for poet laureate but, having had a grandfather who served in the United States Navy on a destroyer escort from 1942 until 1946, I feel a special bond with the men who fought and/or died that solemn day in our nation's history. In fact, during the spring of 1991 (about seven months before the 50th anniversary of December 7th), my grandfather was given a flag that was flown at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial as a token of appreciation for his service in World War II. I can't imagine any honor more satisfying to a veteran of Leyte Gulf (October 1944), the largest battle in naval history to this day. The least I can do is put this little composition out there as a symbol of my own love and admiration for the men of December 7th and those, like my own grandpa Schrock, who felt the need to enlist afterwards in a courageous, indeed successful attempt at justice and liberation. Here goes.

ON THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF PEARL HARBOR
Wednesday, December 12, 2001

The air was mute, the water still,
The ships at rest across the bay;
From high upon the lofty hill
The sun emerged to birth the day.

The sailors slept below the decks,
Dreaming in the Oahu heat;
Unseasonable sweat wetting necks
In the Hawaii winter, warm and sweet.

Bluish skies and clouds that fled—
Met the gaze of those who waked;
Yet, most were still asleep in bed,
All of them with lives at stake.

The first bomb fell at five to eight,
A torpedo next, and burst of fire;
Even early it was far too late
To spare these men their pain so dire.

There it was, cold and clean,
That blood-red sun of death and war;
Against a field of living green,
An omen of hatred, nothing more.

Many a sailor that Hell-grazed morn
Stared, unb’lieving, at the dark’ning sky;
He pondered the horror of this storm
And wondered, “Am I thus to die?”

Torpedoes, now, sliced through the waves,
Messengers of steel-tongued doom;
A weaving, winding, watery maze
Of exploding fish, a sailor’s tomb.

Oklahoma capsized, West Virginia sunk,
Ford Island strafed, and Hickam Field;
Any man at Pearl, though drunk,
Saw the power Japan could wield.

And then, of course, at eight and ten,
The mighty Arizona reared;
Smoke and fire and steel and men
Belched into the atmosphere.

The time was burned onto their clocks
Forevermore, and longer;
The pain and shame and guilt—and shock…
And guts. It made Sam stronger.

--DAS

Remember Pearl Harbor. A stronger, safer America means a stronger, safer world. Finis.