My father was an atheist. So the spiritual development of us three girls, Chloe, the eldest, Clorisa, the middle daughter, and me, Clementine, was the responsibility of our mother.

Mother was as devout a Christian as Father was a devout atheist; if that is the correct terminology one uses to describe the fervor of someone who "doesn't believe in anything." Mother never proselytized, never tried to save Father's soul, or bring him back into the fold. However, she was adamant and uncompromising about certain Christian fundamentals. Before they were married, Mother insisted, and Father grudgingly agreed, that any children would be baptized. Father could pick our names, which he did. Mother continued to contribute to the support of her congregation. She did this as a volunteer, and with money she was able to save from the paycheck Father gave her each week, as well as with what she earned selling her arts and crafts at church bazaars and flea markets. But Father drew the line at tithing, preventing her from donating a tenth of the family's income for what he called "the worthless effort of clergy, who never produced anything worthwhile in the history of mankind." Mother attended church every Sunday, or at least whenever it was possible.

Neither parent, however, was above trying, now and again, to sway the three of us in our developing world-view, by their stories and example.

Mother came from a family of "fire and brimstone, snake handling Southern fringe-Baptists," as Father referred to them. As she moved further North, closer to "enlightenment and civilization," she slipped in and out of several Protestant denominations, until she settled on becoming a middle-of-the- road Methodist.

Father started out as a Roman Catholic, but during his years of parochial school education, according to his often told stories of those "terrible times," the holy sisters managed successfully to beat God out of him.

Despite their differences, Mother and Father rarely fought, even over the issues that most husbands and wives fight about. Money was no problem. Father was generous with whatever he earned, dutifully turning his paycheck over to Mother every week, and receiving an allowance for his expenses. Housework wasn't an issue either. Mother was a good caretaker, housekeeper and cook, who could whip up a gourmet feast from leftovers and a package of onion soup mix. She never complained about her role in the house either, or felt unfulfilled for being a mother and a housewife. She washed and ironed, and she kept the three of us blindingly spotless and starched. Father helped with the household duties. After a long day at work, he washed the dishes and vacuumed the rugs, as well as read us bedtime stories, before tucking us in for the night.

The one thing they did fight about was religion, and a major source of that conflict centered around the two most important holidays on the Christian calendar, Easter and Christmas.

For Father, Easter was the lesser of the two evils. That was because, he said, there was no Easter hype, no media push to consume. Father found no fault with the Easter Bunny, a mythological creature who had a place among other childhood myths, such as the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. But Father often took subtle swipes at the religious overtones of Easter, making it the subject of his nightly bedtime stories, mixing his tales with other familiar stories we knew.

-and so, the Easter Bunny was locked in a cave for three days and nights. A heavy stone was laid across the door so he couldn't get out. And on the third day, after a lot of huffing and puffing and trying to blow the stone down, the Easter Bunny managed to roll it aside. Then he came hopping out of the cave with a basket full of decorated eggs that he had made while he was locked away. But, if he saw his shadow when he hopped out, he ran back inside for another three days, and there would be several more weeks of winter. That's why Easter is always in the beginning of spring, but the exact day changes from year to year.”

Mother, of course, countered Father's "blasphemous fabrications" as best she could. Every year, before Easter, she would buy us new outfits becoming the season, and every Easter Sunday morning she would march us off to Reverend Whitson's Second Methodist Church for sunrise services and a long homily on rebirth and the salvation. The four of us females would scurry off to church in a procession of splendid floral dresses, new white lace gloves and straw bonnets, a mother duck and her clutch of duckling.

Father was fond of saying, loud enough for Mother to hear, "You're wasting precious morning sunshine in a church full of old ladies' perfume instead of smelling the fresh spring flowers. My life is so much simpler. Thank God I'm an atheist!"

We always returned to a special Easter breakfast of hot cross buns, which Mother had prepared, and Father popped into the oven while we were at church. Then after breakfast, we would delight in tearing into the large Easter baskets Mother and Father had filled the night before with chocolates, jelly beans and yellow marshmallow chicks.

"Well, girls," Father would tease, winking at us over his Sunday newspaper, while the three of us compared our brightly decorated Easter eggs, "I guess the Easter Bunny didn't see his shadow this year."

But our Easter traditions paled by comparison to the way we celebrated Christmas in our house. Preparations for the holiday usually started for Mother even before the summer leaves began to turn, before the department stores rotated their stocks.

 

 

First came the mail order catalogs crammed full of novel gift ideas, exotic food baskets, hand painted ornaments and greeting cards, depicting snowy American Currier-and-Ives landscapes painted in Sri Lanka. Mother's enthusiasm was contagious, spreading quickly, and we invariably got caught up in her Christmas rush, dreaming of presents and tinsel covered trees, in sweaty August.

Father, of course, frowned on the whole affair. "I see nothing wrong with cutting down an evergreen and dragging it indoors, or even stringing lights on it. That's a custom dating back to the ancient Druids. But, goddamit, I will not have you turn a one day pagan celebration into a six month Christmas extravaganza. It's bad enough the stores have their winter lines out before the Fourth of July. Life is too short to have it rushed along by merchants who want to sell us things we can't afford, for people we don't particularly like, in the name of some mythical birth that never did take place!"

Father established the ground-rules for the holiday. He told Mother, "Under the severest penalties," although he never spelled out what they would be, "you are forbidden to utter the word 'Christmas,' in or around this house, until I have finished eating the last of the Thanksgiving turkey leftovers!"

Mother, always the Southern gentlewoman, complied of course, with Father's edict, as she did with most of his edicts. She didn't raise even the mildest protest, although she made it very clear to us that she would not allow Father's "narrow-minded atheistic thinking to dampen our enthusiasm for this most solemn, sacred and joyful Christian occasion."

True to her promise, mother obediently removed the word "Christmas" from her vocabulary, at least during the specified time, substituting for that forbidden word one which she invented, Beep-mas!, which she used as often as was necessary. The word was always followed by an exclamation point, which revealed her genuine emotion, whether she wrote the word or spoke it.

On August 25th she scribbled on our school calendar, "Only four months until Beep-mas!!"

She took us Beep-mas! shopping in uncrowded malls, still wearing our bathing suits, to avoid the Beep-mas! rush. She packed Beep-mas! notes in our lunch boxes, and stacked the Beep-mas! catalogs, as they arrived, on the coffee table in the living room, where we could get at them handily. We all made our Beep-mas! lists. On crisp autumn days, when the colored leaves were just beginning to fall, we could hear her in the kitchen melodiously singing snatches of, "It's beginning to look a lot like Beep-mas!" while she prepared Father's supper.

Almost daily, as the holiday season rushed at us headlong, the UPS man delivered mail order Beep-mas! packages and decorations. He was at our home so often, we got to know him personally. Mother called him by his first name, and more than once we had our after school snack of cookies and milk, while he sat down with Mother for a cup of tea. We even exchanged Beepmas! presents with his family. Mother whisked away the newly delivered packages to her secret hiding places. The decorations were added to the growing store of Beep-mas! things that we kept bundled in large boxes in the basement for that fateful holiday.

Then, on November 29th, as the five of us sat around the dinner table, and while Father polished off the final forkful of his last turkey croquette," Mother leaned across the table toward him. She cleared her throat, and said in her soft, clear Southern voice, "I know it's going to be an extra special Christmas this year. The girls and I have finished all of our Christmas shopping."

Father knitted his brows. He snorted. He opened his mouth to say something. But then he swallowed, and the words seemed to stick in his throat with the last taste of his turkey croquettes. Finally, he just nodded his head.

Of course, Christmas was extra special that year. It was extra special every year. On Christmas morning we awoke to the smell of Canadian bacon sizzling on the kitchen stove, and the sound of beautiful Christmas music coming from the radio. The house and the tree, a blue spruce that Father had cut down himself, were decorated to perfection. He had even strung little white pin lights in all of the bushes and the trees outside. Our homemade Christmas stockings, hung on the mantle, crammed full of goodies. There was a confusion of colorfully wrapped presents under the tree, more dolls and toys and clothes than we could ever want.

Christmas in our house was a wonderful, peaceful and loving time when we were all together. And even today, when we exchange greetings from the far places life has taken us, I still sign all my cards, "Merry Beep-mas! to all, and to all a good life."