When I was a teenager, my mother was an alcoholic. And not a very nice one. You know how some people get silly and funny and some people just start talking until they’ve been up all night and solved all the problems of the world? Well, my mother wasn’t one of those. She was a mean drunk - a screamer. She used to throw my father out on a pretty regular basis. When I was younger, I used to run and hide in the cellar when she got going. Even now, screaming scares me. It doesn’t even have to be real yelling - just raised voices make me nervous.

Well, Christmas was never a good time for us financially. It was a rough season, and we were lucky to have food and heating fuel, let alone thinking much about presents. I used to ask for things like notebooks for school and deodorant and, once in a while, socks or a hair brush. I know these are things that a lot of people take for granted. My husband doesn’t think of these as gift items at all. But, that’s what I needed most, and what I had the best chance of being able to afford. So, Christmas was usually pretty lean.

When I went back to school after Christmas vacation, I lied about the beautiful things I had been given…skirts and sweaters, necklaces and cologne, records and books. I don’t know if anybody ever noticed when these things never showed up. It wasn’t right to lie about it, but I just wanted to be as good as the other kids.

Well, this particular Christmas Eve, my mother really went on a tear. She started drinking and got meaner and meaner by the hour. She had taken her best shot and thrown the Christmas tree, so decorations were scattered all over the floor. My father and I were both scared, trying to keep up some facade of joy. I remember trying to sing Christmas carols, hoping it would make her happy. It didn’t. She was running after me, screaming and complaining and threatening. I knew it wasn’t her, but the damned bottle talking. But it was Christmas Eve. It was supposed to be a special, happy time. She sure picked the wrong night to get drunk.

When my mother was drinking, I never stood up to her and faced her down. Partly, I don’t believe she was able to understand common sense, and partly I was just plain scared of what she might do. I guess it was safer and easier to kind of shrink out of sight into the wallpaper and let her wear herself out. Eventually she would start throwing up, and eventually go to sleep.

This Christmas Eve, she chased me up the front stairs, yelling at me. I reached a small hallway at the top of the stairs and there was nowhere to go. Geez, she didn’t even look like my mother when she had been drinking that much. I don’t know what made me do it; I don’t know where I got the strength from. I turned around and faced her. I stood my ground and looked her straight in her bleary, angry eyes and said quietly, "It’s Christmas Eve. It’s supposed to be a time for miracles. I need a miracle."

For a minute she just sort of stopped in her tracks and didn’t say a word. She looked at me for a moment, but it seemed like an eternity. Then she started to cry. "Aw, " she said, "She wants a miracle." Maybe it was sarcastic, maybe it wasn’t. I’ll never know. But she calmed down and I went downstairs to put the Christmas tree back up. I guess I can honestly say I got my Christmas miracle. Was the miracle the strength I found to finally face her down while she was in a drunken rage? Was the miracle that she stopped and maybe heard me? Was the miracle something far greater, something that holds within it the truest meaning of Christmas? I don’t know.