Second of two parts
Re “Christmas in the Clarke Manner Comes with a Smile”
[img]2947|exact|||no_popup[/img]
Jim Clarke with goddaughter Nora Groves
With the Big Day at hand, a routine question was put to City Councilman Jim Clarke, and it drew a surprising response.
Was Christmas a highlight, a memorable occasion when he was a boy in Northern California?
The anticipated answer was a punching yes. “Yeah,” he said with an unexcited shrug. “But it was like you going to a Chinese restaurant.”
Formful. Routine.
“We would go to midnight Mass at St. Mary’s College in Moraga,” driving over from the family home in Pleasant Hill.
Mr. Clarke recalls the atmosphere.
“Foggy, generally, and they would start playing Christmas carols on the carillon half an hour before Mass. You could hear the carols as we were driving toward St. Mary’s College, which is in a valley.”
Born in 1949, Mr. Clarke said the setting “was kind of rural in those days. We came home and had breakfast, open one gift, go to bed, and then get up in the morning and open the rest of them.”
Enter what Mr. Clarke called “a real bummer.
“Our house was the first on the block to have an aluminum Christmas tree. My dad had one of those color wheels that would shine on the tree, turning it from orange to blue to red to green.”
When Mr. Clarke was asked if he looked forward to Christmas, a lengthy pause occurred.
“Yeah, kind of mixed feelings,” he said.
“All the kids in the neighborhood would get together and show off what they got. Somebody always had a shinier bike than the rest of us.”
How has Christmas changed since the 1950s for Mr. Clarke, who always has a witty rejoinder on call?
“It varies,” he said. “It goes from when you are a kid, ‘What am I going to get for Christmas?’ to, as you get older, ‘What can I get other people for Christmas?’ It deepens the meaning of what Christmas is all about, not giving gifts but the birth of Christ.”
