copyright Celine Sparks, 2023
It wouldn’t be Christmas if the fire department didn’t show up. I’m not talking about the kind of showing up where Santa Claus is riding on top with a bag of candy and there’s a high school marching band in front of him and a tractor behind him, hitched to a trailer full of disorganized angels way past their bedtime.
I’m talking about trying to get through Christmas without starting a fire while all the other normal families are just starting an argument over who broke the ceramic tree in 1982.
We’re careful people. We unplug the tree at night or when we leave. We blow out the candles on a schedule. We have smoke alarms that loudly announce, “Celine’s cooking again, everyone!” But still, at Christmas, it seems like every year we fail to roast chestnuts, but by George, we’ve got the open fire going on.
It started when I was a child on Christmas Eve. I was having visions, not exactly of sugarplums dancing in my head, but some Butterfingers and Hershey’s Kisses were rocking out in there. When suddenly, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but my teenage brother running down the narrow hall in a brown flannel coat, flailing his arms, and yelling “Fire, fire, fire!”
And this time, no one was singing in rounds about “Scotland’s burning” and “Pour on water.” He was solo. I did all the normal things. I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash. Or at least the threw up part.
I grabbed Cuddles which is obviously the answer to that icebreaker question about what one item you would escape with if your house was on fire. Cuddles wasn’t a living, breathing, chew-up-your-iPhone pet, but a polyester floppy remnant of a toy. But I loved him, and so that made him real. (Brush up on your Velveteen Rabbit Cliff Notes.)
Cuddles and I were formulating an escape route when Daddy came through and told everyone to go back to bed. It was a utility room fire, and that old utility room had its own carport entrance. The fire never crossed the threshold to the living quarters, but the two walls behind the appliances are charred to this day.
While it could have been a total loss, my mom apparently thought it was a pretty major one. On the movies, after these experiences, the family holds each other tight with sentimental music in the background. My mom, on the other hand, screamed “light bulbs!” and pointed her finger in my face.
Well, I had promised her if she would buy the entire box of very expensive light bulbs so I could get the flimsy-but-shiny transistor radio in the school fundraiser, I would sell the rest later. Now they were lying in a pile of ashes. They were a mess. You couldn’t even paint them like a reindeer with a top hat and hang them on the Christmas tree.
My mother finished the light bulb lecture with, “You are never allowed to sell another thing.” Get this. “As long as you live.” Merry Christmas.
What do you do forty years later when your best friend asks you if you can help with the pecan sales for the children’s home Christmas fundraiser? My mother's words still resound in my conscience, and I’m caught between the better good and the bitter past.
The utility room Christmas Eve started a tradition we can’t seem to break. Other people’s traditions smell like ginger and spice cake; ours smells like blown electrical circuits. We always have something.
There was the Christmas my brother-in-law calmly cracked the door, and said, “Blake, Scotty, Caleb, Abel, I’m going to need you outside for a second.” They were like, “Can’t right now. UNO!” Followed by, “Please? Because the entire back yard is in blazes.”
There was the Christmas when the fire truck showed up at Granny Mable’s house as we were returning from the ER with a bandaged child. Apparently, someone had set the Dollar General bag with the dancing Santa in it too close to the gas heater.
There was that December 26 when we returned from Waffle House just in time to start hauling garbage cans of water from the swimming pool by the truck loads to reach the burn pile before it got completely to the barn.
There was the time we hopped off the pallets surrounding the Christmas tree at 3 a.m. because someone was beating on our door to tell us there was a lone tree on fire in the front yard.
Moses, I can relate to you, buddy!
We ought to have our own reality show. We’re the Fire Whisperers. We’re in our thirty-sixth season. Bring on the camera crew.
But make sure the camera charger cord is grounded.
I hope this year was without incidence. Remind me to tell you about the time daddy burned down the neighborhood before we even built our house on the empty lot. Thankfully just their yards, not their houses…