For Your Reading Pleasure
Christmas makes memories, and memories make stories. Maybe your most memorable stories aren’t good ones — though I hope they are — but if you’ve ever celebrated Christmas, you have them.
Perhaps, like birds and trees, you read the atmospheric signals: the darkening of the days, the illumination of the nights with Christmas lights, then, when the lights go out, the cold blackness of the sky dotted by semaphores of light we long to interpret. Then your photoperiodic response is to bring forth the Christmas stories from their 11-month hiding place in your mental attic.
This is the week those Christmas stories are dusted off and shared.
Bay Weekly joins in the ritual. Each year for ever so long, we’ve devoted the issue of Christmas week to a story. The tradition began in 1998 with Helen Chappell’s The Last Word in Christmas Lights. Most years since that imagined dramedy set us laughing at the peculiar things other people do, our stories have been truth, not fiction. Every year, I clairvoiantly discern which writer has a story to tell, and each year she or he unpacks one. Some were a life’s most treasured memory; others didn’t reveal their story potential until need arose.
This year we found your Christmas story in a new way, just as you may some day find your tree where you never before looked.
“Let’s ask our readers,” general manager Alex Knoll suggested.
Thus for 10 weeks we’ve run a quarter-page notice seeking Christmas stories.
Week by week, new stories have surprised me in my email. One even came by fax, that flash-in-the-pan technology we barely remember. A few sent pictures or drawings that added to the fun. Almost all were real, true stories people told because they were the best story they had in the world: their own life’s stories. Certainly so are the three we chose to appear in these pages.
All being real stories that happened to real people — with no tragedies allowed because Christmas is the day we’re all optimists — they bring us the value of nostalgia.
The world they bring us is time remembered. We are much updated versions of the people we were when these stories happened. For proof of that, look at Leslie Dickey’s once-upon-a-time photo illustrating his story, The Colonel Gets His Drumstick. “That would be me, 50 years ago and half my current size,” he says by way of caption.
Each story’s version of nostalgia had its own emotional flavor. Les’ story is funny; we liked it for its matter-of-fact pragmatism. Many were wistful, with a touch of awe and more than a scoop of wonder.
Alex and I enjoyed reading every one of them. To our surprise, as mother and son as well as business partners, we each chose the same winners. And we both conceded we needed three winners — in short, medium and long — instead of the one we imagined.
What set the winning stories apart?
First, they were carefully presented, updating the rules we learned in elementary school: that every paper you turned in should look like a neat box, with what it has to say nestled neatly in the middle. They were also correct in spelling and grammar.
Second, they added artistry to emotion. Our favorite stories, our winners, were thoughtfully paced, so you had time to get the backstory and to savor each step leading to their revelation — for each conclusion was a resolution. The longest one was divided into sections to reinforce the sense of structure.
All three were ambitious in their narrative, too. They all introduced us to more than one character, and each person had action and dialogue. Thus the stories had to balance interaction as well as their bigger population. That makes the job tougher.
So, yes, a good story not only evokes experience and emotion; it follows rules as well. It’s a piece of craftsmanship, like a well-made cabinet.
You’ll find our winners in this issue; online, you’ll find every story.
May they give you a pleasant moment’s distraction this Christmas. And may they remind you to tell your own stories.
Thanks to all our entrants, Janet Beard, Barbara Cantin, Bobbie Carew, Troy Coates, Peggy Daw, Allen Delaney, Leslie Dickey, Mary Lauterback, Constance Ramirez, Caitlin Smith, Bud Stupi, Sarah Songbird and Catherine Walters.