Wrapped in Rags and Fond Christmas Memories
(The following column was first printed in The Times several Christmases ago.)
No matter how much I try to resist it, at least until Christmas Eve, the Yuletide spirit usually gets to me when I’m not expecting it, at some unguarded moment, from some improbable quarter.
I was ambushed by it the other day in Downtown Los Angeles. I was not unaware of the seasonal seductions of that neighborhood. Carols played in the elevators. The store windows were festive. The Santa Belles were out on their corners, dancing to keep their legs warm and ringing their little bells. But I had steeled myself against these familiar sirens and thought I was safe when I took the shortcut through Pershing Square.
There was not much chance of catching the Christmas spirit from the shabby fringe of derelicts around the ornamental pool. They dozed in the sun, nipped from bottles in brown paper sacks, scanned remnants of discarded newspapers, quarreled with the pigeons and peered back into the hazy past, looking for some long-lost fork in the road.
Two men stood side by side in front of the War Memorial, singing “Silent Night.” One was about 5 feet tall and wore a shapeless coat that would have looked big on Boris Karloff. The other wore a limp fedora that hid his face except for the mouth, and a threadbare overcoat so large he didn’t seem to be wearing it so much as living in it.
Their appearance alone might have attracted no attention in the park, being a kind of protective coloration, but their singing was hard to ignore, and now and then one of their captive audience would turn his head in their direction and stare in silent wonder.
The smaller man was the leader. He sang in a tenor voice that evidently had known much abuse and given vent to much anguish and passion. He worked it to the very edge of its capacity, rubbing its raw edge painfully against the underside of the high notes, falling heroically short of “the Savior” in “Christ the Savior is born,” and sinking mercifully into “heavenly peace.” He sang with his eyes shut, his face swollen and purple from the effort.
His partner wrestled the harmony with a mixture of foolhardiness and caution, like an over-the-hill matador fighting a mean young bull. His voice might have been deep and resonant once. It would come on strong for a phrase and then fade out. As he sang he rocked perilously back and forth, his open mouth vanishing under the brim of his hat when he bent forward and appearing in full flower for a moment on the backswing before rolling out of sight.
It wasn’t simply the quality of their performance or the incongruity of their appearance that kept me there, but the growing realization that they didn’t stop when they finished the song. They were no sooner through the final “heavenly peace” than the smaller man would throw his shoulders back, fill his lungs, turn himself purple and start all over again.
“Si . . . uh . . . lent night!
“Ho . . . uh . . . ly night!”
His partner would turn to face him at each of these reprises as if stupefied by this new demand on his overextended powers. He would stand dumb until he made sure the song was launched again, beyond recall, then once more he would lean backward, his gray mouth opening valiantly, and attack the harmony, not far off the pitch and almost on the beat.
“All is calm,
“All is bright!”
They had sung it through three times and started again when I walked on to Fifth and Hill, wondering at the indestructibility of the Christmas spirit. Evidently it was the only carol they knew, but it was a miracle, I thought, that even “Silent Night” had survived the disenchantments they must have suffered.
I won’t say I was infused with the Christmas spirit by that threadbare “Silent Night,” but I couldn’t very well say humbug either. Nobody was going to take those old men riding through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh or stuff them full of plum pudding or fill their stockings with the things they wanted; yet they seemed to be bursting with good will and were moved to spread it among their fellows.
What resistance I still had to Christmas caved in the next night when we drove up to Descanso Gardens for the preview opening of the annual Nine Days of Christmas at Hospitality House.
It was cold but exhilarating--something like riding in an open sleigh, I thought--as the tram took us from the gate to the house through tunnels of overhanging oaks. White camellias swam toward us through the dark, and here and there our headlights shone on clusters of red berries tacked to the trees.
We emerged from the oaks to see the lighted house, like a house in a fairy tale, and suddenly the night was filled with angelic singing. It came from a chorus of schoolchildren who stood outdoors, huddled together in their coats and mittens. An utterly disarming sound--sweet, vibrant, innocent and supple. No orchestra could simulate its poignancy, and only the most vigilant ear could catch its undercurrent of throttled mischief.
The house was warm and bright and crammed with handmade gifts and decorations and the sounds and scents of Christmases past. A child who wakened to Christmas Day in a house like this, I thought, would never forget it, and 50 years later, long after he had taken some wrong fork in the road, he might stand in Pershing Square, wrapped in rags, and pour out the memory of it to the pigeons and the sky.
“Silent night,
“Holy night.”
I was hooked.