Chicago Christmas Carol

Note:  When I opened my News letter from Christ in the Desert I was immediately drawn to the essay "Chicago Christmas Carol".  I'm from Chicago and my name is Carol.  Shared with permission.

​By Brother Chrysostom

The theme of this newsletter referenced community. While at the writers’ residency this summer I learned about flash fiction (a short story consisting of less than 1500 words). I wish to share with you a Christmas themed piece that showcases a community that I love and that shaped me, Chicago. I have learned as a monastic that it is what we bring from the communities that formed us to the monastery that creates the vibrancy of intimacy between monks. I hope the story achieves a threefold purpose: 1) sharing the fruits of a Creative Writing MFA with supporters of our Educational Appeal, 2) sharing Chicago with a wider audience, and 3) building a monastic community where art and letters complement evangelization. I hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas.

Aunt Jane is my mother’s older sister and my favorite aunt. Every early December after the first of the holiday specials--Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Clause is Coming to Town--airs on ABC and CBS, Aunt Jane arranges for me and her to have our Chicago Christmas.

It is late Sunday morning. Mom and Dad have gone to 8:00 am Mass at Our Lady of Peace. They let me sleep in. I miss Frisky. He had to be put to sleep three days ago because the vet told us that his problems wouldn’t get any better. I am a big boy. I can understand. I am almost ten years old and I can stay at home alone while my parents go to Mass three short blocks away. When they come home, I want to stay in bed. They will get me out of bed and rush me to get ready because Aunt Jane is coming over soon.

I wash up quickly, put on my brown thick cord corduroy pants, my cordovan Buster Brown shoes, t-shirt, clean white collar shirt, and a crew neck sweater with bands of light brown and black. I make sure that my afro is neat and fluffy with my pick in front of the bathroom mirror. I hear the horn of Aunt Jane’s 1970 Blue Dodge Dart outside. Quick kisses and hugs from my mother and father and a rush to grab my loden coat, knit skull cap, scarf, and mittens heralds the metallic clang of the storm door closing behind me. I bound down the steps while humming the finale of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The soles of my Buster Brown shoes make scuffed tracks in the thin layer of snow to the back door of Aunt Jane’s car.

No sooner do I close the door and kiss the back of her neck, which has the chemical smell of the relaxer that her hairdresser uses, than the car is gliding down our neighborhood toward Lake Shore Drive. We are going downtown. Downtown! Snowmen, nutcrackers, and Santas populate the front yards of the neat bungalows we pass along the way. Strings of lights outline doorways and wrap around exterior ferns and trees. The lights excite me, but I know that the lights on State Street are better.

Aunt Jane finds parking easily on Madison Avenue and we get out of the car and walk a block or so to St Peter’s Catholic Church. Aunt Jane works for Catholic Charities downtown and attends Mass here most mornings before starting her work day. She loves this church with its high ceilings. The Franciscans in their brown robes and knotted rope belts and sandals are happy to see us. She likes the Franciscans, too. We make it in time for Mass. There are no Christmas decorations. The outside world with lights and decorations doesn’t know that Christmas is still a week and days away. They don’t care. They are going to have Christmas before the baby Jesus even comes at Midnight Mass! I kneel down before Mass and say a prayer for Frisky. One of the Franciscan priests comes over and hugs Aunt Jane as I pray. I want to ask him if dogs go to heaven, but I don’t.

After Mass we file out of church into the cold with some other people and make our way to Marshall Fields & Company. I can read street signs. We take a left down Clark Street and then up Washington Street. Aunt Jane wants to show me the Picasso in Daley Plaza. It reminds me of a dragon, but the large Christmas tree close by makes it less scary. The large jutting clocks on the corner of the Marshall Fields & Company department store look so heavy. I don’t want them to crush me. The illuminated faces on the clock have hands that mean something to me. I can tell time. It was 12:20 pm.

We pass through a heavy revolving door into a Christmas palace. A large Christmas tree higher than my house stands in the middle of the store. Gold, silver, red, and blue bulbs hang off branches. There are also rocking horses, tin soldiers, teddy bears, clowns, elves, and other presents decorating the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen. Aunt Jane holds my hand tightly and we wind through the cosmetic section, the chocolate section, and the handbag section to one of the many wooden escalators that will take us up to the Walnut Room. We pass my favorite floor, the 4th floor, that has toys. But, I don’t care.

There is a long wait in line to eat lunch. My legs are getting tired, but we are finally seated at a table next to the top of the huge Christmas tree that we saw when we first came in. A model train is making its way around a track above our heads. We order hamburgers which came with special French fries that were almost like fat potato chips. I don’t like my hamburger because the bun has butter on the inside. “Herbert, eat your hamburger, the butter is supposed to make it moist,” Aunt Jane said. I eat my hamburger, but I want a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with cheese.

After lunch, Aunt Jane goes shopping in the ladies’ section which goes up several floors. I ask if I could go to the 4th floor and look at the toys. Aunt Jane agrees, but tells me to wait for her down there. I have fun looking at the space ships and castles. The large die cast toy cars are my favorite. Buried within the mound of Gund animals of different sizes is a dog that looked like Frisky. I like it. But I want a real dog. I so hope Santa would bring me the Batmobile with the launching rockets that I want.

When we leave Marshall Fields & Company the large three faced clock on the corner of Randolph and State reads 3:30 pm. As the sky grows darker and the Christmas lights along State Street grow brighter, Aunt Jane and I join the procession of Christmas window gazers who joyfully file by animated windows of Christmas scenes for the next five blocks. Large department stores like Carson Pirie Scot, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Wiebolt’s, and Goldblatt’s each Christmas season deck their windows with Santas, reindeer, snowmen, and elves.

Aunt Jane who is much taller than I sees it before I do. She puts her hands on the shoulders of my loden coat and leads me through the crowd closer to the corner of the store. At the last Marshall Fields & Company window before crossing Washington Street to Carson’s, there was a winter wonderland scene with children ice skating, throwing snowballs, and sledding down hills. In the corner of the snow scene is a lone boy and a dog playing catch. The boy doesn’t look like me at all, he has yellow blonde hair, but the dog looks just like Frisky! I smile at Aunt Jane and she hugs me. Hark the Herald Angels Sing is playing on a speaker at Carson Pirie Scot across the street. Snow is coming down. Aunt Jane takes my hand and leads me away from the Frisky in the window. She knows that Santa would have Max, a small wirehaired terrier puppy, under my Christmas tree soon.