Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Christmas is a time to believe in miracles
I first met Angus Blake in 1961, and I’d bet he was pushing 70 then. He’s now long gone, but not really, because each year at Christmas he comes alive in my memory. Memories give back life to those who no longer exist.
Angus was an ex-patriot, a Brit who served with the Queen’s Royal 1st Monmouthshire Regiment at the battle of Ypres Salient in 1915. He rarely spoke of his experiences. Instead, he wrote his memoirs in prose, in small journals that were hardly decipherable.
It was because of Angus that I began the discipline of journaling. “Story consists of the persistence of memory,” he said.
I recorded his thought on the first page of my first journal, titled “1961.” Subsequently, much of what I’ve written in the Valley Sun are memories recorded in journals, as I’d learned from Angus Blake.
Angus drove a horse-drawn wagon through the streets of the Bronx. Perhaps that might seem inconceivable, but in the 1950s and early ’60s, it was not that uncommon to see a peddler meandering through the city on a such a rig. Each month he’d park his wagon in front of our building and proceed to yell, “Knives! Scissors!” With his feet, he’d pedal gears on a sharpening stone to whet cutting tools for customers.
The boys of the street anticipated his visit. He was very generous doling out saltwater taffy to the children. But beyond the creamy vanilla taffy, Angus Blake was a man of remarkable wisdom.
I recall one December when Angus was exceedingly busy sharpening knives that would soon carve the Christmas bounty. He had passed down his knowledge to me, and I was eager to help. My buddies and I were about 14 at the time, a very cynical age, which increased exponentially by the mere fact of being a street kid from the Bronx. We were skeptical about the Christmas spirit and believed that the fantasy of Santa Claus only led to disappointment. Yet, the history of one’s evolution is steeped with myths about the heroes’ journeys through the deserts until a light is found. At 14, the search had only begun.
I asked Angus about why the senseless myth of Santa Claus persists. I recorded his thoughts in my journal, and each time I read them, Angus Blake is resurrected.
“I believe in Santa Claus, he’s very real to me,” he said. He then explained that Christmas is a time to believe in miracles and that believing is the most important gift of childhood: It shapes who you are and who you’ll become. He said believing is responsible for the rise and fall of civilizations, the creation of music and art, the formation of religions, and whether we are led to fall in love or driven to hate. He maintained that we are biologically driven to create meaning and beliefs throughout our lives. Perhaps the most important question one can be asked is, he said, is what one believes in.
Look at what Santa Claus represents, he said. “That’s why you believe.”
We are surrounded by miracles, in jaw-dropping encounters that leave you wondering for the rest of your life what the hell just happened. Believing — it’s sort of akin to self-preservation.
I remember that at the end of one of his visits to the neighborhood, Angus told us that he’d see us in a month. But a month passed and then another. We never saw him again. Regardless, through these thoughts and now through you, Angus Blake continues to live. Let me share a quote that he told us boys. I recorded his exact words. They’re from J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan”: “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”
JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
