Aretta Gordish

A Christmas Memory Aretta Gordish

It's Christmastime and all the good folks of Snowflake Falls are getting excited about all that the season brings to the small town. There's the annual parade and tree lighting ceremony, and the St. Timothy Lutheran Church choir is once again gearing up for the Christmas Eve Cantata. The Main Street is lit up and decorated for the holiday, and tourist are already starting to arrive to visit the quaint little town that looks just like a Christmas village...except for the one dark spot on the north end of Main Street where the bar owner, Helmut Schweinsteiger, refused to even hang a wreath on his door. No matter how hard the community tried to get Helmut to participate in the community festivities this time of year, he stubbornly wouldn't comply. Instead, he gladly accepted the title of town Scrooge. Helmut wanted no part of making Christmas memories. All he wanted was to forget he had ever had a wife and son who had been cruelly taken from him on Christmas Eve. He wanted to forget that he once had a sweet, little girl who would climb up on his lap and kiss his scruffy cheek. As far as he was concerned, there had never been a blue-eyed, golden-haired toddler who called him Papa. But his daughter, Nora, remembered. She remembered how her father used to lift her high in the air and swing her around as if she were an airplane. She remembered how he would let her crawl in bed with him when a storm woke her up. She remembered the smell of pine from the soap he used, and she remembered the red cowboy boots he had given her that Christmas Eve so long ago. That was one Christmas memory she could never seem to forget. Because she remembered, she was returning to Snowflake Falls to help her Papa remember, too.