THE TRUE MEANING OF A SECULAR CHRISTMAS
By: Mark Oshinskie
Tags: Christmas, 1960s, Christmas Gifts, Childhood, New Jersey

While typically centered around gift giving, family gatherings and excessive eating and drinking, Christmas is, for me, a time to reflect on the birth of a Savior to Humankind and on Christ’s life and message.

Nonetheless, like many other people, I’ve spent decades with one foot in a spiritual Christmas and the other participating in its secular traditions.

When I was six, I wanted Big Caesar for Christmas. Big Caesar was a classically ridiculous early-1960s toy: a plastic replica of one of those ancient ships powered by human rowers. At that age, I didn’t know that such rowers had been slaves working long, hard hours far away from home under threat of brutality and death. I was just impressed that a team of men could propel a big boat across a sea. Big Caesar would be banned now for glorifying human exploitation and imperialism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWDcr3TYovc

That autumn, the TV ad for Big Caesar played often between Saturday morning cartoons. Over some drum-heavy, martial music, a set of oars moved synchronously through holes on the galley’s sides as a deep-voiced adult male narrator, swept up in the moment, exclaimed, “Row, Big Caesar, row!”

The TV ad boy seemed to really like playing with Big Caesar. And hearing a grown-up narrator vouch for Big Caesar’s awesome power was persuasive.

A few weeks before Christmas, my mother took me to a mid-sized, narrow-aisled, non-chain toy store where kids told Santa their Christmas wishes. As I stood, without Mom, in a twenty kid line, I was eager to tell Santa that Big Caesar was all I wanted.

Directly behind me in line were two wiseass ten year old boys with thick North Jersey accents. Given their ages and the tone and content of their speech, I knew they were more worldly than I was. They mocked a series of things, including Santa. Would they be audacious enough to diss Santa to his face? If so, I thought, the joke would be on them when they got no presents.

One said t’da otha (to the other), “Whataya gonna tell Sanna you wan’?”

Without hesitating, the otha sarcastically said, “I’m gonna tell him I wan’ Big SEE-zah!”

They both laughed hard. It was spooky, as if they were reading my mind. This was long before search history-targeted Internet ads. It showed me those kids were watching the same cartoons as I was.

A six year old knows derision when he hears it. But I was unmoved. I thought to myself, “I don’t care WHAT they say, I STILL want Big Caesar.”

When I got to meet Santa a few minutes later, I told him so. But I said it quietly so those ten year olds wouldn’t hear me.

Santa boomed, loudly enough for all those nearby, including the wiseacres, to hear, “WELL, THIS boy wants BIG DIESEL!”

I urgently corrected him. “Not Big DIESEL! Big CAESAR!”

Santa corrected himself. “Oh, Big CAESAR! (Pause). What’s Big Caesar?”

How could Santa not know what Big Caesar was? What kind of Santa was this, anyway? I briefly described Big Caesar to Santa while the wiseasses snickered. Disgraced and done with my task, I stepped off Santa’s platform and went looking for my Mom(my).

In the remaining weeks preceding Christmas, I thought often of Big Caesar. On Christmas Eve, I went to bed excitedly imagining that toy ship under our tree. I eventually, blissfully fell asleep.

My brothers, sister and my standing Christmas Eve pact required that whoever woke up first would rouse everyone else. As on that night, this usually happened around 3 AM. We scurried down the short, unlit hallway of our small, ranch style house. There, the Christmas tree’s large blue lights glowed upon the cozy, otherwise dark living room and the snow outside its front window. Packages wrapped in color-coded tissue paper: green, red, blue and white, were stacked around the tree. It was a picture of shared, magical abundance. It was the best minute of the year.

We began tearing off wrapping paper. I don’t remember what I got: probably warm socks, a school shirt, a board game, an army gun, a ball and some books. When I reached the bottom of my stack, I earnestly hoped Big Caesar was inside the largest package. I didn’t think Santa would let me down. Still, how could he not have known about the coolest toy of the year? Or maybe ever. And what if the elves didn’t make enough Big Caesars for everyone?

Sure enough, underneath the white tissue paper was a cardboard box containing Big Caesar!

I slid Big Caesar out of the box and beheld its multi-colored plastic beauty. I did some light assembly, like fastening the mast onto the deck. Big Caesar needed batteries. Providentially, my mother had some and put them in the galley’s underside. When I pushed the switch and its hidden motor hummed, I put Big Caesar on the floor. The ship moved forward, in faux row pulses, on small wheels along the ship’s bottom, across our faded, low-pile turquoise rug, as if crossing the sea. I thought it was neat! I LIKED Big Caesar!

For about ten minutes.

Then I wondered, “Other than move forward, what does Big Caesar do?”

Not much. Because Big Caesar was battery-powered, you couldn’t even put it in a bathtub. While it had mini catapults from which you could launch little plastic spheres toward tiny plastic soldiers, the catapults lacked the accuracy needed to hit any targets.

I learned some lifelong lessons from Big Caesar.

Initially, I saw that hype is powerful, and so is TV. Combining the two can make things or people seem much better, or worse, than they really are.

As years passed, I saw that Big Caesar resembled other objects of desire. Depending on who/how old you are, you may want a certain achievement, garment, girlfriend/boyfriend, college, tattoo, car, job, house or travel destination, etc. Some of these longings later seem unimportant, even regrettable. But wishfulness is tightly bound up in the human experience. It must continually be reckoned with and placed in perspective. What would you surrender or endure to have what you want?

If your wish is fulfilled, sometimes it’s as good — or better — than you had imagined. But even if the desired thing disappoints you, or the thrill of having it passes quickly, knowing how having that thing felt can itself be satisfying. Like that guy lying on the sidewalk in that Clint Eastwood movie, sometimes you “just gots to know.”

Big Caesar was like that. Even sensing its limitations didn’t make me wish I had gotten something else instead. I got to be excited about Big Caesar in the months leading up to Christmas. I saw that sometimes, per Robert Louis Stevenson, it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive. I had enjoyed the journey of anticipation.

Most of all, getting Big Caesar made me feel cared about. My parents didn’t buy us much stuff during the rest of the year. But at Christmas I had asked for something I wanted and someone cared enough to get it for me. I thought it was Santa. But while I waited in Santa’s line, Mom was probably buying Big Caesar and hiding it in the back of our old brown station wagon. Either way, cared about.

Being cared about feels good. And making others feel cared about is worth doing, especially at this time of year. Gifts are optional.