Christmas Miracles (3 page)

The men had several options as to how they might spend Christmas Eve. They could attend a movie that was being shown on board ship. They could read, write letters, or play the card game “acey-deucy”—the standard leisure-time activity aboard a U.S. Navy ship during that era.

“About a dozen of us from the medical, dental, and chaplain's department opted to have a little Christmas party,” Bob said. “We all put our names on slips of paper, dumped them in a trash can, then drew names for the gift exchange at the party after evening chow.”

The gift rules were simple, Bob explained: “The gift had to be something that you personally owned, and it had to have a monetary value not to exceed $3. Since we were all aboard ship with no stores or places to buy gifts—and since our personal belongings were so limited— it required a lot of ingenuity to come up with a present that might be of value to someone else, cost next to nothing, and yet be something that the giver would then have to be without for the rest of the duration. A real gift is one that actually diminishes what you have. A true gift is one whose loss will be felt by the giver.”

That evening after chow, the men gathered in the dental department where there was also a small portable pump organ that Bob Kolb played at Sunday religious services when the USS
Piedmont
was at sea. Bob recalled that the chaplain opened their party with a short talk about home and what he considered to be the significance of Christmas. Later, while Bob played the organ, the men had some coffee and soft drinks and sang a few carols.

Then it was time to hand out the gifts.

“In order to prolong the event and the significance of the occasion, the gifts were given and opened one at a time,” Bob said. “In addition, each recipient was ‘roasted' a little bit to add to the fun. The gifts included such items as a can of shoe polish, a uniform belt buckle, a flashlight, a package of Navy stationery, a piece of fruit cake, a paperback book.”

Bob received a toy roulette wheel: It was on a black marble base about four inches square that was painted red with black and white number slots on the wheel. In the center of the wheel, rising about three inches, was a T-shaped handle used for spinning the wheel.

The men said their thank-yous and went to bed. Work began the next morning at 4:00 a.m. Even though it was Christmas Day, the work aboard a ship must go on. And this was perhaps especially true for Bob Kolb and the men who worked in the medical/dental sickbay where there were always emergencies and people needing treatment.

As Christmas Day dawned, Bob remembered that he awoke with a new feeling of well-being. “It was as if all the depression, the heat, the frustration, and the loneliness were lifted,” he said. “The feelings of desperation and despair were now replaced with a sense of accomplishment and camaraderie.”

The loneliness for his wife and daughter were still there, but now Bob felt as though he were facing the sorrow of separation as part of a group of young men who served one another as members of a support team. The night before at the Christmas party, he had discovered that there were quite a few of the men who had children that they had never seen. They eventually loosely organized a group of the faraway fathers and called it the “Stork Club.”

Bob's roulette wheel became a source of great fun. “I played with it for hours, using it to make charts on number probabilities,” he said. “I also employed it as my personal ‘guru' to answer questions and to create winner probabilities for our acey-deucy tournaments.”

Bob recalled that the young dental technician who had given him the roulette wheel was Arthur Kitzman. “We were not close friends,” Bob said, “but rather casual acquaintances. But his gift to me of that small roulette wheel was one of the finest gifts that I have ever received. In the nearly fifty years that have gone by since that Christmas time away from my family, I have been given many, many gifts. Many have been expensive and significant. Yet I do not really remember very many of those gifts. The roulette wheel, however, I remember in an intimate way—the moment of giving, the giver, the feeling of appreciation I experienced, even its physical feeling in my hands.”

Bob Kolb began that Christmas Eve in 1955 thinking, “Why me, Lord?” Why had he been sent to a place far away from his wife and child? Why was this bad thing happening to him?

Yet, somehow, in a few short hours, his attitude had transformed him into an entirely different person. Now the meaning of “Why me, Lord?” was completely reversed: “Why have I been so blessed by you that I have been given all of this?”

Bob Kolb concluded his account of that Christmas Eve aboard the USS
Piedmont
in 1955 by affirming: “This, then, is the power of Christmas. A power that can in a miraculous way transform a young man from a state of abject depression and self-pity to a state of full acceptance and understanding. A power that can move a young man from the point where he says in anguish, ‘Why me, Lord?' to a place where he looks at all the wonderful gifts and blessings that have been given to him and realizes that the wonder and beauty of Christmas is not in what you receive. Perhaps it is not even in what you give, but in God's love given in the form of an infant child, whose impact can perform a miracle.

“Night became day, apathy became excitement, and despair became a word that described my former emotional condition before the event that I now consider to have been my Christmas miracle.”

E
rskine Payton recalls Christmas 1992 as being extremely cold and snowy in Louisville, Kentucky— the coldest Christmas season that anyone could remember. Although he is now nationally known as the popular host of the syndicated radio program
Erskine Overnight,
during that particular holiday season Erskine and his wife, Charlotte, had jobs playing Santa and Mrs. Claus at the Louisville Zoo.

“By Christmas Eve, I was really tired of wearing the suit, the itchy beard, and hearing all the petty stuff that kids and adults wanted for Christmas,” Ers-kine said. “I wanted nothing more than to go home, sit by a warm fire, and not even think of being Santa for at least nine months.”

But Erskine and Charlotte had one more stop to make that night before they could relax. His beloved grandmother's birthday was on Christmas Day. She would turn 102.

“She had asked Charlotte and me to visit her on Christmas Eve at the retirement home—and she had requested that we arrive as Santa and Mrs. Claus to surprise her friends,” Erskine said. “As weary as I was of being Santa Claus, there was no way that I could not do this simple thing to please my dear grandmother.”

The roads were becoming slick but were still passable when Erskine and Charlotte left for the retirement home, loaded down with candy canes for the senior citizens.

“My grandmother's face really lit up when she saw us all dressed up as Santa and Mrs. Claus,” Erskine recalled. “She wanted to show us off to everyone, and she asked that we visit with as many residents as possible. I did my usual grumbling protest, but with my two favorite women insisting that I be a jolly Santa, I had no choice but to utter my very best ‘Ho, Ho, Ho's' and walk from room to room, itching beard, sweaty suit, and all.”

After dispensing candy canes to dozens of the elderly residents and maintaining the persona of Jolly St. Nick for another couple of hours, Erskine was thankful that Christmas would soon be over. He was not yet at the “bah, humbug” stage, but he was getting there.

“I noticed a very elderly gentleman sitting at a table, head down, drooling, looking as though his mind was really some other place far away,” Erskine said. “There was a young woman who I assumed to be his daughter sitting with him. In a kind of perfunctory manner, I put a candy cane in one of his trembling hands, not really paying much attention to see if he was even really aware of it.”

But then Charlotte stepped forward and whispered conspiratorially to the old man: “You don't want an old candy cane from Santa. How about a little kiss from Mrs. Claus?”

She bent down and kissed the man's cheek, and he looked up at Charlotte and gave her a broad smile.

As the Paytons were about to move on to the next resident, they were somewhat startled to see the younger woman standing beside the elderly man suddenly break down in tears.

“She was sobbing uncontrollably,” Erskine said. “I asked what was wrong and we tried to comfort her.”

When the woman was able to regain her composure, she put her arms around Charlotte and Erskine and hugged them warmly.

“My father
smiled!
” she said. “He smiled when Mrs. Santa kissed his cheek. Dad has been here eight years and up to now he has never once changed his expression or given any sign that he is aware of anything going on around him. And now he's sitting there smiling, holding a candy cane! In all my life, I never received such a wonderful gift from Santa and Mrs. Claus as you gave me tonight.”

Erskine saw that the woman was releasing blessed tears of joy. His beard stopped itching. The Santa suit no longer felt so hot and uncomfortable.

“I was now able to see the true magic of Christmas,” he said. “I now understood that there is a Christmas spirit that transcends the rush to buy gifts, the rush to put up decorations, and the rush, rush, rush to spend extravagantly during the holiday. Christmas is a special time that transcends even the religious significance of this special day. That elderly man's smile was the best present imaginable for his daughter, my wife, and, yes, for Santa himself.”

J
anice Gray Kolb, author of such inspirational books as
Compassion for All Creatures,
said that residing in the woods of New Hampshire on the shore of a lake enables her each day to learn more about the wildlife that shares the beautiful environment with her and her husband Bob.

“Just a few days before Christmas 2000, I drew open the curtains on a sunny crisp morning to unwrap a stupendous surprise,” she said. “There outside our sliding glass doors stood the gift of a huge moose!”

After exclamations of delight from her husband Bob and herself—and several moments spent in awe of the magnificent creature—Janice grabbed a camera and slipped quietly outdoors to begin a relationship with the moose that they would name Matilda.

The moose turned and ran into the woods when she saw Janice walk onto the front porch, but with Janice calling gently—and Bob doing the same from the side living room window—the gentle creature gradually returned, stopping to munch on branches and shrubbery along the way. All the while, Janice was snapping wonderful close-ups of her as she walked up to linger along the side of their cottage.

“We watched her every move,” Janice recalled, “and spoke to her in gentle tones, calling her Matilda. Rochester, our beloved marmalade-and-white cat, opted to observe the scene through the window from the sofa indoors. Bob and I gave up all we had planned to do that morning and spent two hours outdoors with Matilda. After all, how often does a moose come to call? Eventually, she roamed away from us, and we reluctantly went indoors. But the excitement of her visit lingered, and I wrote a poem to honor her.”

Although Matilda did not return the next day, Janice had a vivid dream about her that night. “In the dream, she stared deeply into my eyes. I believed the dream was symbolic and required prayer and thought, but the initial interpretation that came forth was that she was a kind of spiritual visitation.”

When the moose returned the second day, Janice could not help thinking of her as somehow “theirs.”

“Matilda was so beautiful,” Janice recalled, “and I was filled with awe at her size and gentle demeanor. I was so thankful that she was roaming our property.”

The forest giant wandered into a deeper wooded area, and Janice followed. “She could barely be seen among the trees,” Janice said. “If I had not known she was there, she would have been hidden. I moved in a bit closer, speaking gently to her. Still as statues, we both stood for an hour. Eventually, she became more comfortable with my presence, for she began to eat dead maple leaves and eventually whole branches. Another poem about her began to form, and I wrote it on some paper I had in my pocket.”