Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Today is Christmas Eve. Now that I am middle-aged, I have a tendency to reflect on Christmas days that have happened instead of Christmas days that will happen. I am blessed to be able to live with minimal assistance and to have my family around me when I need help. What follows are some Christmas memories.
The chapel at St. Anthony’s, where my sister, little brother and I spent our early years, was decorated the same way every year. There were two large trees, one on each side of the altar, with each one lit by blue bulbs. I don’t remember how many kids were at St. Anthony’s, but we had a small choir that provided music at midnight Mass. Both my sister and I sang in the choir.
I took the love of music to Father Flannigan’s Boys Town with me and sang in that choir also. It was at Boys Town that we celebrated Christmas until Epiphany, on Jan. 6 when the Magi arrive. That’s how we get the 12 days of Christmas.
Some years ago, my wife began putting up a small tree with all blue lights in my den for Christmas and that gradually grew into having a blue lit tree up all year long for me. My daughter has continued the custom.
I spent Christmas 1960 at boot camp in the U.S. Marine Corps, specifically at the old Camp Matthews rifle range in California. We slept in hardback tents there, and it gets chilly in California in December. I can’t remember how many of us were in each tent, but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t add that I heard more than one sniffle on Christmas eve.
Two photos of me in Vietnam standing outside my hootch still trouble me. One says, “Christmas Day 1967” and the other is labeled, “Christmas Day 1968” same place, same outfit, same hootch. Sometimes I look at those pics and wonder, “Why?” Still wondering.
On Christmas eve, 1914, in the Great War, singing broke out between British and German forces. They left their trenches and met on the Western Front. It became called the Christmas Truce. Legend has it that some units had to be pulled off the line because they refused to fight each other after that.
There won’t be a Christmas Truce this year.
“God Bless us every one.”
Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:
