Take a minute and listen to John McCutcheons’s song “Christmas in the Trenches”. Probably you’ve heard it before, but maybe not. It happened just over 100 years ago, when World War I was devastating France. The story of the Christmas truce held particular meaning for my husband, a connection of sorts for him to the father he never knew.

Wallace Case, Wally’s father and my sons’ grandfather, was a 17- year-old Marine fighting there. So was John O’Brien, the man who, 25 years later, would put his name on my husband’s birth certificate. John came home with lifelong damage to his lungs, a result of the mustard gas the Germans used as a weapon. Wallace came home as well, to a lifelong struggle with ill health and perhaps the trauma of war; he died at 43, a short three years after fathering a baby boy named for him.

Don’t try to figure it out. Our family tree confuses even us.

All this was happening 100 years ago. First the “War to end all wars” and then, the Spanish Flu. The origin of that epidemic, in the States at least, was in places like Camp (later Fort) Devons in Massachusetts where soldiers were crammed in together in barracks, where the winter weather forced everyone to stay inside.

Sound familiar?

For reasons that I can’t comprehend, people – many people – are hungry this winter, are facing eviction this winter in the richest country in the world. How does that make sense?

And if not facing economic disaster, most of us – the ones heeding the public health guidelines, that is – are spending this Christmas missing significant members of our family. Many are alone, and they have been for months, without much person-to-person contact with anyone.

We see our parents or our siblings or grandchildren on a screen, if we’re lucky enough to have one (or know how to Zoom/Facetime/Skype). If we’re really lucky, as I am, we see them outside, masked and bundled up, maybe taking walks together, or waving from the doorstep.

Still, I suspect most of us are finding a way to mark Christmas, truncated though it may be. 

These days for me, Christmas starts with the tree. When I was the Mom, director of the whole performance, it had been building up for weeks: making presents, finding stocking stuffers, wreaths, baking, shopping, planning get togethers. Ah, but these days, now that I’ve happily slipped off the stage, given over the production to the next generation, the tree is all there is.

And each year I think I’m on the verge of giving up on that, too.

But there it is again, standing in the usual corner, glowing with the old-fashioned strings of big lights, bedecked with all the favorite ornaments and one or two more recent ones.  I turn on its lights before dawn, when the house is at its darkest, the sunrise still hours away. That tree brings tears and smiles, along with the comfort of the familiar. Most of the ornaments look a bit shabby, worn and frayed from long years spent tucked away in boxes in the barn’s loft, freezing in the winter and baking in the summer., their only relief a brief appearance for a week or two in December.

Ornaments that hung on my dad’s childhood tree, ones that hung on mine and my brother’s tree, the ones my sons made out of yarn (a wonky God’s eye), bread dough (actually I finally tossed those a couple of years ago), a jointed paper Santa with a cotton beard, the treasured glass bell, gift of a friend.

The season comes jampacked with memories. Susan Stonestreet, pastor of United Christian Church for many years, held a special Blue Christmas service ahead of the actual day for anybody who found the season too much to bear.

Such a complicated time, Christmas.

Missing this year:

The early December Beach Tree Lighting, Bonfire and Community Party. Somehow, the lights didn’t get strung on the tree, though the street light posts are wound with lights and the Robie Ames boat is lit up, thanks to the Lincolnville Business Group.

The Christmas program Rosey Gerry puts on at the Library every year. The place fills up early to hear the stories (Rosey takes us back to his 50s childhood), poems (Paul McFarland always has a new one) and songs (Will Brown’s “Christmas in the Trenches” is moving).

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at Bayshore and UCC. The old churches in the Center and at the Beach draw several hundred people on Christmas Eve for the songs and stories of the Christmas message, but at UCC this year the service will be Zoomed. To join in find the link at the UCC site.  

Bayshore Baptist Church will hold its Candlelight service in person and on Facebook at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve.

Finally, tonight, Dec. 21 we reach the nadir of winter: the shortest day/longest night. The Winter Solstice is finally upon us. Way back in the day (the 80s and early 90s) we had the Shebang Street Theatre to celebrate the coming and going of the sun. Who remembers them? Elaborate papier mache masks, costumes, music, general rowdiness and fun.

Ben and Cheryl Smith, inspired by Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theatre, founded the group; Liz Hand remembers, in addition to Ben and Cheryl, there was Doug Hufnagel, Jim Reitz, Cil Kinast, Dave Putnam, Marydale Abernathy, Lori Cressler, Richard Grant, herself and others. They celebrated the Winter Solstice on the Library lawn in Camden overlooking the harbor, on the Village Green, and the Summer Solstice somewhere in Hope. My most vivid memory of Shebang was on April 15, Tax Day, and they were picketing the post office (our one Federal building) protesting military spending. The featured figure was a tall grim reaper (Doug Hufnagel, Liz recalls) with an enormous scythe and beating a drum.

It was a different time.

Tonight the “Great Conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter where these two giant planets appear side by side, will be visible for the first time in 800 years and will occur about an hour after sunset. See them low in the western sky. Perhaps, some say, this event was interpreted as the Star that appeared over Bethlehem so long ago.

Finally, here’s Lincolnville’s Kathy Williams’ take on this Christmas:

The Night Before Christmas, 2020

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the scene, 
Nothing was stirring, except Covid 19.
The masks were all hung ‘round our necks out of fear 
That a super spreader may abruptly appear.

The children were nestled in front of their screens,
Dreaming of needles filled with vaccines.
Mama in her yoga pants, munching on sweets,
Was reading her email and answering tweets.

When over the radio there rose such a clatter,
I pulled out my earbuds to size up the matter.
Away to the TV I flew like a rocket
To find the remote was still in my pocket.

I flipped through the channels and skipped all the ads;
I could never keep up with all the new fads.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But all of the newscasters I’ve come to hold dear.

Time to get on with it, cut the baloney,
It’s Anthony Fauci!  Go get ‘em Tony!
I bring you good news straight from the lab,
Line up all you people, it’s time for your stab!

Now Gary! Now Mary!
Now, Larry and Daren!
On, Dick!  On, Jane!
On, Terry and Karen!

Roll up your sleeves!
No time to stall!
Now line up!  Line up!
Line up all!

So wash your hands and don your mask,
Ready yourself for a most simple task.
Escape from the tunnel, go towards the light!
The vaccine is upon us, time to take flight!

And then, in a twinkling, I heard in the street,
My friends and neighbors rise to their feet.
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
Through the door my family came in with a bound.

The doc was protected from his head to his toe,
With a nod of his head to say, “ Give it a go.”
A syringe in his hand, a rack full of vials
Full of vaccines that withstood many trials.

I thought of Corona, how simple, how scary,
Pretty as an ornament, round like a berry,
With spikes all around to attach to a cell,
And infect many people, who then feel unwell.

For many long months Corona did reign, 
Isolating people, it felt so insane.
Washing our hands, not touching our faces,
Wearing our masks at all times in all places.

Back in the present, I looked to the doc,
Strong and determined, steady as a rock.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled the syringe, then turned with a jerk,
With an alcohol wipe he prepared my arm,
Ready to vaccinate and keep me from harm.

He wasted no time, as he turned toward the door,
Bound and determined, tied to his chore.
But I heard him exclaim as he ran down the hall,
May the new year bring good health to us all!

Shop Local!!!

Yes, really local, right here in town. Find nice Christmas gifts at Dot’s and at Lincolnville Fine Art Gallery, both at the Beach and at Janis Kay’s Red Cottage in the Center, as well as at the Center General Store. Oh, and here at Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs on Beach Road!My favorite Lincolnville Christmas story, page 123 in Staying Put in Lincolnville Maine, is Doris and Jane Miller’s shopping trip to Scott Knight’s store (today’s Center General). I think I’ll read it to my upstairs grandkids one night this week; it’s called Christmas Shopping.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and best of all, Welcome Back to the Sun!