THE CHRISTMAS WITCH
THE CHRISTMAS WITCH
BY JOHN TUFT
If you spend any amount of time around the human race, one thing becomes abundantly clear: people’s actions drown out their words. Every time. Since the year 1986 I have started and ended every single day in pain. Every day. Without fail. Without respite. I submit this as information, not as a plea for sympathy. You can do the math if you are so inclined. At this point in life, it is absolutely foolish of me to have any pride left to speak of. I have lost count of the number of times that I have started over, whether it be in physical therapy to rebuild what’s left or financially after bankruptcy. After all of these years, I’m still a man who if I have some chocolate, some ice cold Coke, and a $20 bill considers himself to be well off. Seriously. Chocolate chip cookies are a plethora of riches. My ken here is stringing words together while you do the hard work of using your imaginations to let them speak. Regardless, one of the biggest things that I have learned in dealing with pain that cannot be mitigated is the value of distraction. Moving my attention and focus away from my misery to something else altogether.
I have written at least thirty Christmas stories in this space over the last five years. One is a perennial crowd favorite, and another one got me banned from the Happy to be Presbyterian Facebook page. Some seemed to arrive fully formed in my imagination. Others show the marks of using dull chisels on hard rock. My motivation to write any of them at all comes from within me so, although your various criticisms and praise are both appreciated, they do not decide what and how I decide to write. In between these stories I work on novels. Again, no one asked for them. I write because that’s what I need to do in order to be the best version of me that I can imagine myself to be. Again, the world did not ask for a John Tuft so it’s up to me to be the best one that you got.
Some might say that I’m particularly hard on clergy in my stories. I make no apologies for that perception. We are a very strange breed. After all, we profess to believe that God, the Almighty Creator and Lord asked us to take on this role; reached down and tapped us on the shoulder like some divine draft board. This Christmas I am looking forward to my annual visit from the Christmas Witch. The Christmas Witch appears each and every Christmas Eve to inquire about how I’m getting along with the words/actions thing. I strongly suspect Charles Dickens thought about including her in his timeless Carol but decided against it. “Let Tuft do it” was omitted from the final manuscript after the line about “maybe it was the undigested bit of beef, that blot of mustard, etc. etc. there’s more of gravy than of grave…” It flowed right in there, “let Tuft tell them about the Christmas Witch.” But editors. You know. The only other thing I was ever chosen for was the sixth grade basketball team and my football mentality did not bode well for such finesse and skill needed for the sport.
The Christmas Witch arrives sometime in the darkness in between the three spirits and Good Old Saint Nick. Usually between 2:30 and 4:30am. She likes chamomile tea and cookies with fruit in them, to which I cry, what’s the point?! And before you get upset that I am insulting Baby Jesus, let me ask: Have you ever been around a bunch of livestock? In a barn. On a cold winter night. With hard drinking shepherds who share crude stories? I have. I’m on safe ground.
She wears inappropriate liturgical colors because that’s her mentality. She chews with her mouth open because, well, how else do you eat cookies? And her question is always the same: how would a five year old child describe you, John, if she followed you around all day? Taking stock of a life is really no more difficult than that. She always offers to bring one spirit with her each Christmas Eve of someone who passed that year. Last year she brought Gordon Lightfoot with her. Dude can still sing a song. I asked him if he ever saw the song lyrics I sent to him in naïve faith back when I was 23. He laughed. “Stick to stories, Tuft.” The Christmas Witch is never going to let me live that down, rum raisin cookies be damned. Some days, naïve faith is all I have…
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
