Lost Trains of Thought

 

 

Every Christmas, I find myself thinking about walking through freshly fallen snow to my grandmother's house. Before I reached her door, I would see the red light glowing softly from the wreath in her second-floor window. I'd shovel her sidewalk, and afterward she'd insist I come inside for a cup of hot chocolate and a visit.

She never considered the hot chocolate optional.

 

That simple ritual has remained one of my favorite Christmas memories, reminding me that the season often carries equal measures of happiness and melancholy. We celebrate those we love, while quietly missing those who are no longer there to celebrate with us.

 

My friend Sue understands that feeling.

 

One Christmas, I showed Sue a photograph of a 1960s aluminum Christmas tree. The tree itself was more than half a century old, but the photograph wasn't. I had taken it only recently in the office of a friend who still proudly displayed one every Christmas.

 

"Joe's parents had a silver tree just like that," Sue said, referring to her late husband. "It had blue ornaments and one of those rotating color wheels."

 

Then she smiled.

 

"But my family always had a real Christmas tree. My father loved bargaining for one almost as much as an Arab trader—and he was twice as shrewd."

 

She laughed as more memories returned.

 

"...and we used the thick tinsel—the kind you could smooth out with your hand and save from year to year. Not that flimsy stuff that came later."

 

Then came the memory that mattered most.

 

"We always had a Lionel train under the tree."

 

That seemed to complete the picture of an American Christmas. Open almost any coloring book from the 1950s or 1960s and you'd find Santa standing beside a brightly decorated tree with a toy train circling beneath it. For many families, Christmas simply didn't seem complete without one.

 

Sue continued.

 

"Dad kept the train in a special wooden box he built himself. My sister Judy and I loved that train. It even puffed smoke when you dropped pellets into the smokestack."

 

Years later, after Sue's son Tim was born, she decided he was finally old enough to experience the same Christmas magic.

 

"So, where's the train?" she asked her brother, who had become the family's unofficial keeper of the Lionel.

 

"You gave it away?"

 

For a moment, time stood still.

 

There are many Christmas words that begin with the letter H—holy, holly, holiday, happiness, herald.

 

"Homicide" isn't one of them.

 

But Judy and Sue came remarkably close to adding it to the list.

 

Eventually Sue found another Lionel train. It wasn't exactly the same. It didn't puff smoke like the original. But it became Tim's Christmas train, and today it waits for another generation. His daughter now watches it circle beneath the tree with the same fascination her father once did.

 

The original train was gone.

 

The memories weren't.

 

I've always had a soft spot for those old aluminum Christmas trees. They remind me of a time when childhood imagination made almost anything seem possible—even a Christmas tree made entirely of shining metal.

 

Then, in 1965, Charles Schulz quietly changed America's mind.

 

In A Charlie Brown Christmas, the aluminum tree became a symbol of everything commercial and artificial about the season, while Charlie Brown's little, scraggly real tree reminded us that Christmas wasn't about perfection—it was about love, hope, and authenticity.

 

Almost overnight, aluminum trees lost their sparkle. Sales declined dramatically, and by 1970 production had ended.

 

Yet memories have a curious way of changing our perspective.

 

By the 1990s, those same aluminum trees were being rescued from attics, lovingly restored, and displayed once again—not because they were fashionable, but because they had become part of someone's Christmas story.

 

Perhaps that's what Christmas really does.

 

It reminds us that what we treasure most isn't the decoration or even the gift beneath the wrapping paper.

 

It's the memories attached to them.

 

In our family, Christmas still brings out the large steel trucks and cars that date back to the early 1930s. They were once played with by children nearly a century ago. Today, our grandchildren race them across the floor with the very same excitement.

 

And yes...

 

The Lionel train still runs.

 

"May I drive the train next, Papa?"

 

The children line up.

 

Some Christmas traditions are simply too precious to lose.