Just for the elf of it this year
Ghosts of Christmases past came a-haunting a few weeks ago when I saw on a friend’s Facebook page a picture of himself portraying an elf in our third-grade Christmas pageant, “The Night before Christmas,” in 1957. Problem was, I should have been standing to his right, dressed as Santa. However, he had cropped the picture and eliminated me, which may explain dwarf Gimli’s mistrust of elf Legolas in the “Lord of the Rings” saga.
I haven’t seen ex-elf Jay Speyerer since we were paroled after serving 12 years’ hard labor together in the New Brighton (Pa.) public school system. So, in the spirit of reunion, I threatened to have Attorney Edgar Snyder contact him if he didn’t restore my likeness. Jay – a talented writer, photographer, artist, speaker and coward – soon emailed me the full image. Sorry, Edgar – I guess you won’t be getting big money for me.
Though the picture is black and white, my memory colorized it. Jay is a svelte, dazzling elf whose forest-green costume (think Errol Flynn as Robin Hood) appears to have been tailored for him. I, however, make a right dumpy old elf, the cuffs of my Sunday-go-to-meetin’ white shirt hanging to my knuckles, about five inches past the sleeves of my red coat. Not much has changed since 1957: I still have a white beard; I still have a hard time finding shirts whose cuffs are not too long. Maybe my arms stopped growing in 1956.
Other memories came back, too, chief among them that I was chosen to play Santa because I was, in the parlance of the day, “husky.” Yes, people were politically correct even in 1957, mostly, I suspect, because market research by Sears Roebuck & Co. concluded that parents would not buy children’s clothes marked “fatty.” They call such clothes “plus-size” in 2014. Parents, keep this in mind when you tell the husky 45-year-old son living in your basement, “Get your plus-sized butt out of the lounger and go look for a job!”
It’s also funny to discover what things you can recall most easily as you grow older. For example, I still remember my lone line from that play: “And how are you today, my fine little elf?” I also remember my line from our sixth-grade play, “A Christmas Carol”: “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Ignore the shirt cuffs protruding from my shroud.” I cannot, however, recall where I put my cellphone three minutes ago.
In our 1960 production, Jay, as Marley’s Ghost, wore a pre-Johnny Cash outfit of all black. To amplify his horrific appearance, he wrapped himself in chains. As Jay recalls in an essay from one of his collections, “I don’t believe the spookiness was lessened one iota by the fact that my eternal burden comprised one long shiny aluminum chain from my dog’s run in our backyard, with the spring clips clearly visible on both ends.” Maybe that’s what they mean when they say someone is dogged by his past.
The picture also made me remember that “The Night Before Christmas” was the last play performed in the third-floor auditorium of our elementary/junior-high school, which had been built as a high school in 1893. The next year, school officials condemned its third floor, their thinking being that perhaps even the fairy-light tread of one more reindeer hoof on its stage would send the auditorium crashing down onto the approximately 400 students below. For the next two years, until a new junior high school opened, parents willingly risked their children being crushed to death while performing Christmas plays in their classrooms on the first floor. This is what’s called being elf-sacrificing.
Fifty-seven years hence, as you peruse Facebook using your Internet ocular implants, perhaps someone will jog your memory by posting a picture of your non-denominational, all-inclusive Christmakwanzakah school play.
If so, may all your Christmas memories be plus-sized.