The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater, epilogue

And finally...
 

    I asked my Grandpa Arnie, “Whatever happened to your amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater?”

    “Oh, I outgrew it the next year. So, I gave it to my friend Lucinda, because it would still fit her. She didn’t have a very warm coat – and such a, ahem, “festive” sweater suited her perfectly! Besides, with some of my sweater yarn in her shoe, it just made sense that both the parts of the sweater would want to live close to each other. And THAT’S when the sweater became the best gift ever – because it was something I GAVE. Not something I GOT!

    “Grandpa,” I asked, “did Lucinda pass the sweater on to someone else?”

    “Well, heh-heh,” he chuckled. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Say, isn’t it time to add Baby Jesus to our manger scene? Why don’t you go get the box he’s in?”

    I brought in the wooden chest. Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the manger were already on the hearth. Only the baby was left – and we always waited until Christmas Day to put him in the manger. I opened up the box, and found the final ceramic piece of our Nativity set. Baby Jesus was wrapped securely in a bright, multi-colored sweater with a giant poinsettia on it! It was Grandpa Arnie’s Christmas sweater! But how did it get here?

    “You remember your Grandma Lucy? Well, ‘Lucy’ is short for ‘Lucinda.’ And when we got married, your Grandma still had that ugly Christmas sweater. She couldn’t wear it any more, but she found a certain little baby in a manger who needed it – and it has kept him safe and warm all these years!

    “ ‘It just makes, sense,’ she said. “The best gifts aren’t the ones you get. They’re the ones you give! And the child in the manger is proof that God thinks so, too.”
   

The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater, pt 4

The New Kid In School

    “Well, the poinsettia covered up the stain from the spaghetti sauce incident, but NOW I had to wear it! Can you imagine being a boy eight or nine years old, and being forced to wear a sweater with a great big flower on the front of it? It was humiliating! I was so embarrassed that I wanted to hide – but where can you hide when you’re wearing the amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater? I’ll tell you: Nowhere!

    “I suddenly had a great idea! Since Beulie had crocheted the poinsettia onto the OUTSIDE of my sweater, I could just turn it inside-out and wear it! So I did that, and you know what? It was even more horrible on THAT side! It was like all the different colors on the sweater were trying to run away from each other, but they couldn’t because someone had sewed them together! So what could I do? I turned it right-side-out and put it on again. I experimented briefly with wearing it backwards, but I looked like a flower pot walking away from you, and everyone snickered when they saw it. Finally, I decided I would just face the shame head-on. Folks at school would get used to it, eventually.  I put my sweater on the right way.   

    “There was a new girl in our class that day. She didn’t look up from the floor very much, and when she did, she didn’t seem very happy. And then she saw me -- and she smiled. Her eyes lit up, and her smile got bigger. I think she even laughed a little bit.

    “I introduced myself to her, because that was the polite thing to do. She told me her name was Lucinda. Her family had just moved to our town.

    “ ‘I really should thank you, Arnie,’ she said. ‘You just made my day! When I walked into school this morning, I was very nervous. I didn’t know anybody here. And I was worried what others would think when they saw that my clothes were a little shabby. And then I saw your sweater, and I thought, Maybe I don’t have it so bad after all! You really cheered me up!’

    “Just then – well, before I can tell you what happened next, I have to tell you about my dog. He was a – well – he was a German shepherd/ poodle/ dachshund mix crossed with a genuine, all-American mutt!  He was a mix of so many different kinds of dog, we called him Casserole! Casserole was my favorite dog ever! He could fetch, roll-over, play dead.

    “But the thing he liked to do most of all was chew on things. We never had to worry about branches and sticks in our yard, so long as Casserole was around. He’d chew them up ’til there was nothing left. If we’d been thinking about it, we could have rented him out to other families to take care of the sticks in their yards, but we didn’t think about that. The problem with Casserole was, if he ran out of sticks and bones, he was just as likely to gnaw on the fence, or your toys, or even you, if he was bored enough.

    “That morning when I met Lucinda, Casserole got out of our yard. It’s just barely possible that a certain young man, who shall remain nameless, had left the gate undone. And so, during recess, Casserole showed up at my school! He raced around the schoolyard, barking happily. Some of us threw snowballs at him, and he tried to bring them back, but they melted too soon. It was about that time that I was meeting Lucinda.

    “Just then, Casserole saw something that looked delicious to him. He came racing up and grabbed Lucinda’s shoelace in his teeth. Before I could tell him to stop, Casserole had bitten the bow right off of her left shoe, and run away again! Have you ever tried to walk around with one shoe tied and the other one untied? Step-flap. Step-flap. Step-flap.

    “Her left shoelace was now too short to tie a bow in, so all around the school she went: Step-flap. Step-flap. Step-flap. All over the schoolhouse. Step-flap. Step-flap. In the hallways. Step-flap. Step-flap. Walking up to the blackboard to do a math problem.  Step-flap. Step-flap. Step-flap.

    “She couldn’t walk home that way. She needed a new shoelace, or something she could use as laces. What could we use? What could we use?

    “And then I figured out the solution to Lucinda’s problem. Do you know what it was? Do you remember how I told you that one of the sleeves of my sweater was about an inch longer than the other? Now do you know what I did? That’s right! I unraveled a bit of that sleeve – it was a red stripe – and tied a good knot in the blue yarn next to it. I dipped the ends of the red yarn in paste and twisted them into points. Once it was dry, Lucinda had a nice red shoelace, and I had sweater sleeves that were the same length!”
*****

Click the Ugly Christmas Sweater link below for the previous parts.

The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater, pt 3

Joseph’s Sweater of Many Colors

    “I remember one chilly Sunday morning, I wore my new sweater to church. I think it must have been the Sunday right after Christmas, and everyone was showing off the new clothes they got. People were wearing new coats, new hats, new scarves, new boots. And underneath, they were wearing new shirts, new pants, new skirts. There were new ties and suits and dresses. And lots and lots of new sweaters. And there I was, wearing the amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater!

    “My sweater and I walked into Sunday School, and Miss Kelly-Kelly (She was our teacher. Her name was Kelly O’Hannon, and she married Robert Kelly, so her name became Kelly Kelly. Naturally, us kids all called her “Miss Kelly-Kelly”) Miss Kelly-Kelly took one look at my sweater and said, ‘Oh my! Your sweater reminds me of Joseph’s coat of many colors!’

    “She was always saying things like that. When my sister Beulah knitted her a bright red scarf, Miss Kelly-Kelly said, ‘Oh my! This reminds me of Rahab’s scarlet thread!’ When Billy Higgins tried to sneak his slingshot into church, she said, ‘Oh my! Are we looking for Goliath?’ One time, the Grogan’s donkey got out and made such a ruckus they had to interrupt the church service to take him back home, and she said, ‘Oh my! That reminds me of Balaam’s donkey!’ And if you tipped your chair back on two legs, she’d say, ‘Oh my! Be careful, Eutychus!’ Everything reminded her of a Bible story.

    “So, of course, she thought of Joseph’s coat when she saw me. And it got her so stirred up that she decided to tell us THAT story instead of whatever the lesson was for that day! We all loved the story so much that we decided to do it as our Bible drama for Children’s Sunday. (On that Sunday, every class got up on stage and did something for the service. They might sing a song or recite Bible verses, or act out a Bible Story or something like that.) And what else did we use for Joseph’s coat of many colors? My amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater!

    “Now, Children’s Sunday only came around once or twice a year, and we wanted to really put on a good show for everybody else. So we practiced and practiced on it. We’d come home after school and hurry up with our chores and homework, and then we’d rush to the church to work on our play. It was gonna be great!

    “Then, one night, Miss Kelly-Kelly invited the whole class to come practice at her house, and she would serve us dinner. She made spaghetti and meatballs. (Of course, SHE called it ‘spaghetti and Esauce’ after Jacob’s brother, Esau.) Wow! Was that spaghetti sauce ever bright red! I remember, because I spilled it on my sweater! I went to take a bite, and one yummy meatball went rolling off my fork. It bounced off my sweater and landed back on the plate!

    “I tried to wipe off the tomato sauce, but it was no use. It had stained my sweater. And it was a wool sweater, so you couldn’t wash it, or it would shrink. Nope, I was stuck with a big red splotch, right in the middle of my new sweater! What was I going to tell my mother? Worse, what was I gonna tell Beulie? She’d probably think I did it on purpose!

    “My friend, Freddy Apple (that was really his name) said, ‘Maybe no one will notice. They’ll probably think it’s just part of the sweater!’

    “ ‘Maybe, but Beulie will notice.’

    “Freddy’s brother, Franky (and they had a sister named Candy, if you can believe it) had a plan. ‘Just put your hand over it whenever she comes by!’

    “So that’s what I did. When Beulah walked by, I put my hand over the stain.

    “She stopped, and said, ‘Are you okay? Do have a tummy ache?’

    “So I started rubbing my hand in little circles over my stomach, and I said, ‘No, it’s just really delicious spaghetti! Mm-mm!’

    “Another time, when she walked past, I covered the spot up with my arm.

    “ ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’ she asked.

    “ ‘Sure, Beulie! Just, uh... practicing the Pledge of Allegiance! Um... Oh yeah! With liberty and justice for all!’

    “She looked at me like I’d fallen out of a tree. Then she just shook her head and walked away. I was practicing the Pledge of Allegiance quite a lot that evening! But you can’t keep hiding something like that. Eventually, I had to tell my sister the truth.

    “ ‘Beulie,’ I said, ‘something’s happened to my sweater.’ And I took my hand away. My sister looked at that big red splotch on my sweater, and she got a very serious look on her face. I’d never seen her look like that before. I was scared. ‘It’s tomato sauce,’ I said. ‘It was an accident,’ I said. ‘Freddy Apple spilled his spaghetti on it.’

    “She just kept staring at the spot. She didn’t move. ‘Okay, that’s not true,’ I said. ‘It was me. I spilled the spaghetti – but it WAS an accident. I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry.”

    “Beulie blinked a couple times, looked at me and said, ‘I’ll fix you, Arnie.’ I started to back away, and she said, ‘No, I mean your sweater! I think I can fix it.’

    “She borrowed my sweater for a few days. When she brought it back, she had crocheted the biggest, reddest poinsettia you’ve ever seen, right smack-dab in the middle of the amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater! If anything, it made it made it even MORE stupendously ugly – BUT it completely covered up the spaghetti stain. And Beulah never told Mom and Dad about the accident.

    “Our Bible play went just fine, by the way.  But after that, every time Miss Kelly-Kelly saw a poinsettia, she’d say, ‘Oh my! That reminds me of Joseph’s coat of many colors – but I have no idea why!’ ”
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Pt 1 and Pt 2

The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater, pt 2

Part 1 is here.
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    “So what was I to say? I looked at Beulah. I swallowed hard and tried to smile, (ever try to do both of those at once?) and I said, ‘Thank you, Beulie (That’s what I called her back then, “Beulie”.) I can tell you put a lot of yourself into this!’

    “Well, we had opened all of our presents, so we all went outside to play. Pretty soon, every kid in the neighborhood was in our back yard. We had a hill that ran down into the edge of the forest, which was perfect for sledding! So, whenever we got a good snow, everybody came to our house and brought sleds, toboggans, old tires – whatever they could find – and went whooshing down our hill.

    “After a while, you get tired of lugging your sled back up the hill. So we started playing hide-and-seek in the woods. I had just snowed, so everything was white and black and shades of gray. I was wearing my brand new amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater. How well do you think I did at hide-and-seek? Imagine a parrot playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of penguins! I was ‘it’ a lot! I was NOT having much fun. So when everyone else went inside for hot cocoa, I stayed out and went for a walk in the forest.

    “It had started snowing again – great big flakes like silver dollars falling down through the tops of the trees. It was beautiful. And delicious! Better than ice cream. I walked all around the trees, looking up into the sky, trying to catch snowflakes in my mouth – they were too big to just catch on your tongue. I was doing that for a long time, until I cheered up and decided to go inside and have a cup of cocoa, myself. But when I looked around, I didn’t recognize anything. Just trees and trees and trees.

    “I listened carefully to see if I could hear some of the kids playing outside again, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was quiet. Quiet in that way that only snow brings: like everything is wrapped up in cotton. I thought about calling for help, but I figured that if I couldn’t hear anybody, they were too far away to hear me.

    “Just then, I got a brilliant idea! I would just follow my tracks in the snow until I found my way back home! That worked for a while, but it was snowing so hard, my footprints were filling up with snow. Pretty soon, I wasn’t sure if I was following my tracks or just low places in the ground -- and it was starting to get dark!

    “I was tired and cold, so I sat down with my back up against a fir tree. And I fell asleep. But don’t worry. I didn’t freeze to death! My sister Beulie found me!

    “She had gone out to look for me once it started getting dark. The moon was shining brightly, and the trees were casting their long shadows on the snow. ‘Everything was black or white,’ she said, ‘except for the Christmas present under the evergreen!’ In the moonlight, she could see all the colors of my amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater, and I looked just like a Christmas present to her!

    “ ‘See!’ she said, ‘I TOLD you the best gifts were the ones you give!’

    “After that, though, we made up a few new rules for playing hide-and-seek. Any time somebody was ‘it’ twice in a row, and they were gonna be ‘it’ again, they had to choose somebody else to be ‘it’ instead. AND if somebody was too good at hiding, and no one could ever find them, they had to trade sweaters with me!”

Review of "The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater"

    “The best Christmas gift I ever received,” said my Grandpa Arnie, “was the amazing, fantastic, stupendously ugly Christmas sweater. Boy, was it horrendous! Best thing I ever got!

    “My sister, Beulah, made it for me. She was two years older than I was, and was just learning to knit. After she’d knitted about a dozen scarves, she thought it was time to move on to a sweater, I guess. The funny thing about Beulah was that she loved to learn new things, but she never liked to stick with one very long. You should have had dinner at her place sometime: Mexican, Italian, Polish, and Chinese food – all in one meal! And after that, fifteen kinds of dessert, and all of them her favorites! But back to the sweater. She was learning all different kinds of knitting, different styles, and she wanted to try them all. In ONE sweater!

    “So, there were zigzags, and granny squares, and checks and curlicues! Some parts were thicker than others, and parts of it were what you call ‘cable-knit,’ like lengths of braided rope. There were special knots and fringes, and every color in the rainbow – and two or three that weren’t! It was TREMENDOUSLY garish!

    “But, it WAS quite comfortable -- though one sleeve was about an inch longer than the other -- and it was very warm.  You didn’t even need to wear a coat – which was good, because I had about outgrown mine. So, here I was, looking like a carnival had exploded and all of it had landed on me – and there was my poor sister Beulah, beaming with pride at the very first sweater she had ever made.

    “ ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘the best gifts aren’t the ones you get. They’re the ones you give.’ ”
*****

And so opens "The Amazing, Fantastic, Stupendously Ugly Christmas Sweater."  Young Arnie's adventures/antics center around the sweater, and serve to reinforce the lesson about how it's better to give than receive. It may also stir young minds toward creative thinking/problem solving.  Set in the world of fifty to seventy years ago, it reminded me much of the sorts of stories my own grandfathers told me.

I can see this becoming a classic read for Christmas -- its size makes it perfect for stockings, or as an ideal gift for attendees at your ugly sweater party.