authorjeffbaker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Early on I took a break for a few weeks around the holiday season, but these days I write a lot of Christmas stories. I couldn’t decide which one to post, so I’m going to post two of them. I posted “Tales Of the Glories” earlier. Here’s one from December, 2021: “Las Posadas” —-jeff

Las Posadas

by Jeff Baker

It was a couple of weeks before Christmas around 1993, a week before finals and I was going to St. Nigel’s College in Kansas. To my mind about as far away from where Scott Garcia (that was me) grew up as you could get and still afford to go to school.

Sometimes Albuquerque seemed so far away.

I was studying biology, playing intramural sports and dating around that semester, my Junior year and somehow I got dragged into what was called the Hispanic Students Alliance. It was a way to meet girls and check out guys so I went through it.

One of the ideas we had floated around with the Campus Ministry Department was to do Las Posadas. I’d been in it a few times when I was a kid, but I wasn’t a kid anymore. Still, that evening we all got dressed up and made the procession, followed by a bunch of onlookers.

For the uninitiated; “Las Posadas” recreates the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. Usually the competition to portray the Holy Couple can be pretty fierce and un-Christ-like but we had Zack and Marta, who were actually married leading the procession.

It was a warmish December evening but we still confined the walk to the inside, through the Administration Building and across the quad to the old dorm building that was used as overflow faculty offices. The way Las Posadas works is Joseph and Mary knock on the doors of houses (or offices) looking for a room and (by tradition) they are turned away. This goes on until we reach the planned destination and since the chapel was closed for renovation for most of that semester we were using the lobby of the old dorm where the offices were.

The big concession to student schedules and finals was we only did this one night instead of for nine. I needed to cram for a couple of finals anyway and I was sure even the Holy Family felt the same way.

It went on the way it was supposed to; we sang Christmas songs (the really old ones, not the one about the Grandmother getting flattened by a reindeer) knocking on doors and being turned away until we reached Professor Meyerbeer’s office on the third floor. He was old, at least I thought sixty was old when I was twenty, and he taught courses in Judaism which was not as incongruous as you might think at a Catholic school; he and Father Gareth had known each other for ages.

Zack and Marta knocked on Professor Meyerbeer’s office door, asked for a room and he sharply told them “No” and shut the door in their faces. We were heading down the hall singing “Silent Night” when we heard a door open and the Professor’s voice calling for us to stop.

“You folks may have a long way to travel,” the Professor said as he handed us all small, warm bags. Roasted peanuts. To this day I don’t know how he kept them so warm in the office.

“My Mother would never forgive me if I let travelers go on their way without a meal,” the Professor said. He smiled and waved. “Now, be on your way and let me know if you find the Messiah.”

We wandered downstairs, knocking on offices, singing and munching peanuts until we made our way to the lobby where Campus Ministry had set up a little Nativity scene by the fireplace that didn’t work anymore, along with some food and cans of soda. We sang more carols, had an impromptu Christmas service and ate.

I went back to the dorm, studied some and crashed.

I dreamed of vast, midnight skies of two-thousand years ago and of voices in an ancient language singing, their songs rising to the heavens.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This Christmas story was inspired by an article in my old college’s paper from a few years ago about students doing Las Posadas. I remember reading about it when I was a kid and yes, I have family in Albuquerque.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Early on I took a break for a few weeks around the holiday season, but these days I write a lot of Christmas stories. I couldn’t decide which one to post, so I’m going to post two of them. Here’s one from December, 2018—-jeff

Tales of the Glories

By Jeff Baker

It snowed the week before Christmas in 1977, my junior year in college. It was a few days before the start of winter, and somebody at school cracked that it had been winter for about a month and a half already. After finals week, I was one of a few people staying in the dorm over the break; a full week before Christmas on the weekend. I had my job to go to, plus my Mom and Dad lived halfway across the country. I was in the old dorm; the jocks were in Rawson Hall, the new dorm. The basketball team had a game right before Christmas, and some of them had no place else to go, so I guess Coach had a Christmas dinner for them, which was fine.

My only interaction with them was checking them out when they did their afternoon run around campus, sometimes in their shorts (and sweatshirts.) The only other guy I knew on my floor who was there that week was Scooter Monroe. He said he didn’t celebrate Christmas and didn’t even bother much with Hanukkah, which had been a couple of weeks earlier anyway.

I was on my way home from work when it started to snow. This was about nine at night and I was trying to get the basketball game on the radio. No luck. When I pulled into the dorm parking lot everything was covered with about an inch of fluffy snow. I grabbed the little bag of groceries from the back seat and headed into the dorm and found Scooter inside looking out the window.

“Wow,” he breathed. “I’ve seen snow in movies, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in it! I mean, been where it was snowing like this!”

“There’s more on the way,” I said. “I heard on the radio that they were expecting at least a foot overnight.”

“Phew!” Scooter said with a big grin.

I shifted the grocery bag in my arms.

“Listen, the cafeteria is going to be closed tomorrow and so will a lot of other places, so I’ve got some stuff here and a fridge so come over to my room and we’ll make a party of it.”

“Sure!” Scooter said. “You know, I would have gone to school down in Florida if I hadn’t broken up with my boyfriend.”

“I’ve never been in a relationship with a guy long enough to have a boyfriend,” I said. And we let that hang in the air. This was 1977, remember. I hadn’t known Scooter was gay or bi or what. I didn’t know whether he was making a pass at me or I was making a pass at him. So we said “See ya,” and went to our separate rooms.

Later that night the snow and wind kicked in, I heard it as I was dozing. The next morning there were drifts of snow blown against the buildings, more than a foot of snow on the ground and the city was shut down. The parking lot was a thick covering of white with a few lumps here and there from the few cars still parked there. It was cloudy with a few flakes drifting down but it was still like looking at a big sheet of blank typing paper. Pine trees were covered with globs of white fluff. I’d put on my boots and jacket and went outside. It was like walking around in a Christmas card. I took it all in.

Something swished past my head. A snowball. I looked up; Scooter was there laughing. He had a scarf and a jacket and was making another snowball. I grabbed a lump of snow and tossed it at him. It fell short. The next one I threw got him right in the chest. For the next few minutes the two of us exchanged volleys and I’ll always remember the sound of our laughter echoing in the snowy quiet.

That afternoon Scooter and I sat in my room and listened to Christmas carols on the radio. I warmed up a few sandwiches on the stove in the kitchen down the hall. That evening I called in and they didn’t want anybody trying to get to work for the next few days. (We were closed on Christmas anyway.) So Scooter an I spent two days largely holed-up in the dorm listening to the radio, ambling down a block from the college to the convenience store for a six-pack or singing along with the Christmas music on the radio as best we could.

There’ll be hairy goats Torries

And tales of the glories

Of dorm messes long, long ago…

That was after the beer. And yeah, Scooter and I kissed a few times. But it didn’t go any farther than that. Scooter transferred back to Florida to finish college that next semester. I was so busy I barely noticed. But forty-one years later, a December doesn’t go by that I don’t think of being in that snowbound campus with Scooter, looking out the window at the dark night and the Christmas stars.

—end—

NOTE: Hanukkah in 1977 began Sunday Dec. 4, ended Monday Dec. 12.