When I decided to see “A Christmas Carol” at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, I knew I would ask my father to join me. I didn’t know if he would say yes. Dad and I saw the production a few years back, and I’ll always remember his gift shop purchase that night: a glittery, all-caps ornament in the shape of “Bah humbug.” Every year since, my Jewish father has placed the garish decoration on our tree, leaving us in smiles.
My mother, who was raised Catholic, introduced my father to his first Christmas tree, and in turn, he introduced Mom to her first menorah. Growing up, my brothers and I had the double thrill of opening presents on Christmas Day and all throughout Hanukkah — and this was good news for my mother, who was huge on holidays. She made a scavenger hunt of her shopping list, determined to find not just “a gift” but “the gift” for our family and beyond, including several Angel Tree recipients each year.
She baked, it seemed, at all hours, making a confectionary of our kitchen that yielded fudge, cookies and her beloved cinnamon bread for friends and neighbors. And Mom loved Christmas traditions, such as riding Metra downtown for our chance to enjoy Frango Mints, Garrett popcorn and awe-filled moments before the Marshall Field’s windows.
More Top Picks Lenovo Legion Loq Review
When she passed away from lymphoma, I had just turned 12 years old. I don’t remember how my father, brothers and I celebrated that first Christmas without her eight months later — only that we somehow did, and that somehow, there was still a tree.
This year marks 25 years since my mother’s passing — a number that makes her life and loss feel faraway and palpably close all at once. Maybe my father would decline my invitation to prepare for Christmas at the theater. Maybe he wouldn’t be interested; maybe it would feel too sad. But on a Monday evening, nights notoriously challenging for my doctor dad and his schedule at the hospital, he eagerly rushed downtown and met me outside the Goodman, smiling widely beneath his scarf.
As the lights dimmed and the curtain lifted, we saw our narrator and became quickly reacquainted with Charles Dickens’ tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a wealthy, miserly moneylender who has concern for little else than his finances. We witnessed Scrooge’s contempt for Christmas and his refusal of invitations and gifts. But there is one gift he can’t reject — that of his late business partner Jacob Marley. Marley’s spirit warns Scrooge that he will be visited on Christmas Eve by three ghosts: the spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. One ghost, in a radiant display of ivy and pine, arrives with the sole purpose of showing Scrooge how deeply his life affects others.
After the last spirit leaves him, Scrooge awakes startled in his bed, overjoyed to discover that his curtains and blanket are still there in spite of everything he has just encountered — or dreamed? Maybe nothing, in fact, is different, and he can continue to live as he has.
Then I noticed it during the production the very moment our protagonist does: a small pine branch resting on a chair at the foot of his bed, left behind by the Spirit of Christmas Present. It is a reminder of everything he was shown; of all the ways he could live.
In the chair next to me, my father sat, his eyes glistening into riverbed wrinkles like mine that reveal our shared passage of time. In that instant, I considered how he had been keeping my mother’s spirit vibrantly alive the past 25 years. In Christmas trees and ornaments, in outdoor lights and wreaths, in cookies and milk and reindeer carrots. And beyond December, too, in warmed soup and mammoth hugs, in emoji check-ins and sunset walks and concerned nods and accepted theater dates, all the ways we could be living, all the ways we already were.
Nicole Schnitzler is a Chicago-based freelance writer working on a memoir about family. She is also the founder of Doors Open Dishes, a nonprofit that partners with chefs to help support group homes and workshops for people with developmental disabilities.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].