Spirit of Christmas

I never met Rina however I met and knew a little of the woman Rina later became. Mrs. Cross lived two doors up from my family’s home in a tiny English Tudor style house. I don’t remember speaking to her unless the holiday was Halloween and I was in costume standing on the brick patio that over looked her sleepy October Garden. The garden is really how I think of her and may represent what she really was, a flower unknown to me. In place of her front lawn, Mrs. Cross had created little brick and stone pathways around which different flowers bloomed throughout spring and summer. In a wide brimmed straw hat she was either tending the garden or sitting on her porch with her husband reading the paper. Years later, after she, her husband and son were gone and the house was being sold, my mother acquired an antique writing desk from the family. There, in a secret drawer, very neatly folded was this letter she wrote to her parents on Christmas Day in 1905 when she herself was a little flower……It is framed now and I hang it every Winter in my family room. It has become one of my favorite holiday things maybe because it prompts me to slow down during the holidays. Each time I read it I wonder about this woman as I glimpse into her own long ago childhood…..To think that each Halloween dressed as my usual witch or ghost I would trick or treat at her house as a child and now each year her childhood haunts me with the sweetness of a childhood garden and the spirit of Christmas past…..The postscript here is that even though I scanned the letter and the original is easily readable, this was too pixilated, and so it reads..........

December 25, 1905

My Dear Father and Mother,

As Christmas is here I thought I would write you a short Christmas letter. I hope you are glad that Christmas is here, and hope that Santa Claus brought you many presents. I am not very old and cannot write a very long letter. I am glad you both told Santa to bring me so many presents. I wish you both a very, merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Your loving daughter, Rina

JOYEUX NOEL MES AMIS ~Helene