The Simple Truth About Christmas

It’s a little after 9 in the morning on Christmas Eve. Samuel Bostwick is up and about, which is more than can be said for some of his fellow homeless comrades, racked out on the sidewalk at the county’s Rescue Mission in Santa Ana. If they know Christmas is around the corner, they don’t seem to care.

So much of Christmas is wrapped around home and family, you wonder how Christmas looks to someone who has neither. So, I ask Bostwick, who is 58, whether he wants to talk about the best Christmas he ever had.

If I tell you my story, he says, will you print the truth about Christmas? Yes, the truth as you see it, I tell him as we start to walk.

I begin taking notes, and my pen immediately runs dry. Bostwick reaches into his tote bag and lends me one of his.

“The greatest Christmas I ever had was 1946,” he says. “In those days, there was no such thing as gifts like they’re giving now and all the modern toys. The gift of Christmas, we had to learn.”

His father, he says, was African and Seminole Indian; his mother black and Creek Indian. Neither got past the third grade, and money was tight growing up in a poor town south of Miami. The family got by on his mother’s maid work and his father’s day labor.

“The greatest gift I ever got was when my Pop took me down to the ocean and let me catch my own fish and eat my own fish. The whole fish would be for me, totally, not to give away or to sell or to make money for the family.”

All other times during the year, Bostwick says, whatever work or chores the six children did went into the family till.

But not on Christmas. With his hand-held line, he headed out to Goulds Canal and “caught one of the greatest fish in the world,” he says, talking as if the event had occurred last week. “Pop said, ‘This is yours to have.’ ”

Do you remember what kind it was, I ask. “I know exactly what kind of fish it was. A Spanish mackerel. The proudest thing was that Pop let me carry it all the way home, so people could see it.”

Living at a rescue mission suggests that sadder days followed that happy one. Life has been unkind, Bostwick says, frustrated because he knows that I have no way to verify the details he provides.

So, after a while, he asks, are you ready now for the truth about Christmas?

OK, I say.

“When Christmas comes this year, you know where I’ll be?” he says. “I’ll go away and hide, because I don’t want to be around people. They’re happy because of what they’re going to get, and they don’t know what it’s all about. If it really is a true Christmas, why not let everybody be happy? Christmas is the saddest thing in life, because you have people with no clothes and with holes in their socks.”

He sounds more sad than angry.

“Here’s the thing I could never understand about Christmas,” he says. “Even if I don’t have anything, it’s about helping another person. Why do people put the Christmas tree up and tell a lie? I’m going to give you the truth, whether you want it for your story or not. You know what Christmas is? It’s just another day.”

I tell him I wish everyone adhered to the essence of Christmas, but we’re humans and we sometimes fall short.

So, there’s no happy ending for your Christmas? I ask.

“If God lets me live to see tomorrow, that’ll be the most beautiful Christmas I could have,” he says.

I offer my hand as we part, at first fearing he’ll think it an empty gesture. I mean it in the spirit of Christmas, I say. He readily accepts it and says, “Yes, I know that.”

I give him ten bucks and suggest he have lunch on me. A Christmas present, if you will. He insists I keep his pen, the one he gave me to replace mine that didn’t write.

Two gifts, honestly given. I call it an even exchange.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers can reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.