Some Christmases live in my memory. Some dont. My earliest truly memorable Christmas took place during WWII. Arctic air and a dwindling supply of coal had caused Dad to fire up the sheepherders stove that crouched in front of the fireplace. It was fed with scrounged wood, mainly cast-off railroad ties. The trouble with ties is that they give off creosote fumes that collect on chimneys insides to form a thick, flammable layer of varnish.
Christmas Day was especially cold so a fire crackled in the stove on a diet of Christmas wrappings and creosote. Shortly before my bed-time, the house began resonating with a rumble that had Mom and Dad looking at each other with a Whats that all about? expression. It was a classic chimney fire.
Once a chimney fire takes off, it operates like a ram-jet, sucking in all the air it can get through the bottom to blast it out the top in a spark-laden fountain of fire. The Fourth of July in December! Of course we suited up to stand outside, shivering and watching the firefighters do their thing.
Chimney fires wont be denied oxygen. Ours sucked new air in through every aperture in our leaky house, dropping the inside temperature to the -10 degree outside temperature. Though our coal furnace did its best through the rest of the night, the penetrating cold had gained enough advantage to freeze pipes along the basement walls.
Fast forward to Korea in December of 1952, where home was a tent in a compound nearly identical to the M.A.S.H compound. I picked up an odd-shaped package at mail-call that contained a mailing tube containing a little Douglas fir, a one-pound hard salami and a couple dozen home-made cookies. My tent-mates and I shared the closest thing to a back-home Christmas in the entire camp. There was peace on that patch of earth that day.
Late December of 57 turned chilly, so cold and icy that I gave up plans to drive home to Spokane for the holidays. Instead, my house-mates and I all Korean vets and U-Dub students hosted a Christmas party on our rented Portage Bay houseboat. It was an older houseboat buoyed up on a raft of cedar logs, its one source of heat an oil circulator set beside windows that looked out onto the bay. Being the only warm spot in the damp and drafty house, the dozen or so guests ringed the stove until someone noticed water overtopping the soles of their shoes.
We shifted into damage-control mode, which meant scampering to the opposite corner to encourage the submerged end to re-surface. The tactic worked and as the floor leveled, one hundred or so gallons of bay water found its way throughout the house. By morning, the stove had run out of oil and the house was an ice-rink.
Christmas, 1974 in Jos, Nigeria. In sub-Saharan Africa, theres a lack of conifers and holly so we scrounged up a tree-shaped skeleton of a plant. The kids hung scissored paper snowflakes on it and that was our Christmas decor. Yet it was a wonderful family celebration in that every tiny bit of decoration, every inventive gift, every card from home was extra special. We had chicken for dinner tough as harness leather but still a treat.
Stevens Pass highway, Christmas of 1976. Presents were wrapped and packed and suitcases were loaded. The kids were anxious to mix it up with cousins in Spokane so we set the wipers on FAST and sloshed eastward on Highway 2. The storm system was stripping the mountains of early snow causing flood alerts to be posted. Near the Index bridge, Lorna said, Look Daddy, theres a house going down the river. It was a small vacation cabin bobbing along toward destruction in the rapids below.
At one point, we had to dash between muddy clots of forest litter gushing across ahead of us. We halted at Baring, where our way was blocked by a foot of swirling water stretching some hundreds of yards ahead. A Greyhound bus facing us from the far end elected to plow through, its bluff front throwing up an impressive bow wave. When it emerged, curtains of water gushed from its luggage compartments. Soggy Christmas presents for sure.
With the highway closed behind, we forged ahead, idling through to keep from drowning the engine. On our way again, mini-tides of water that had streamed in past door-seals invaded the front going downhill or set the kids in back to screeching on uphill stretches. We stopped to bail as soon as we found cover from the rain.
Merida, Yucatan, 2003. It was the day before Christmas. Traveling with our two daughters families, we were exploring a remote Mayan ruin many miles from the city. All went well until I locked the only car key inside the trunk. So while the kids played soccer with an empty gallon plastic jug, two of us set out on foot toward distant lights as the day before Christmas turned into Christmas Eve and clouds of mosquitoes rose from the bush.
We found a phone at the home of a wonderfully understanding couple. They made calls that resulted in a locksmith abandoning his family to help us out. He arrived a half hour later with a Slim-Jim to pop a door open which let us reach the trunk release. When he quoted a modest charge, we gratefully doubled it. Merry Christmas.
Back in Merida, we found all restaurants closed. Four hungry grandchildren were running out of good humor and something had to be done so we fanned out in search of food. Any food. One daughter spotted a person cleaning up in a locked bakery and rapped on its window. Mercifully, he let her in to buy a sack of hard rolls and loaf ends. Christmas Eve dinner.
Other odd Christmases come to mind but you get the point. Theyre memorable because a little adversity taken in stride adds spice to life. Or maybe its that blessings from above seem to come visiting after control slips from ones grasp. Happy New Year.

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