The flow of alcohol, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ:

Remembering Christmas

“Cum’on”, be honest...as a practicing alcoholic, you probably saw Christmas as “God sent” in more ways than one.

The former alcoholic in me remembers those December Christmas days of office parties, Saturday and Sunday neighborhood afternoon/evening open houses, endless wine and cheese at charitable fund raisers, and gifting fine wine and liquor.

Honestly, it seemed the excess of alcohol was the norm. But January often brought shame for my December high-jinks. And often late in my drinking days, this started my paying attention to thoughts of ...  “maaaybe” ... ah’tending ... an AA meeting! ... But then again ... maybe not.  Ohhh, those recollections.

I ask myself, honestly, did my December binge morph into the devil’s debt the payment for which was called in January?

I recall that my “last binged-based Christmas” was just that. My shame and anxiousness, festered and grew and ate at me until the early days of the Easter Season when I finally surrendered and went to my first AA meeting at “East One.”

But yes! Many AA meetings after that first one, I still have no doubt I need to recall those December days. They contaminated my life and accelerated my slide down to my deepest alcoholic days. I absolutely do not wish to return to those days. I do not wish to recall the details; shadowy generalities are adequate, thank you. But I must keep just a tiny bit of those days as reminders of the alcoholic depths I had fallen into.

Christ taught us this. We are sinners and always will be. He tells us of how to live our lives by following His path. We admitted we needed His love to provide a new way of life. We work at it in our meditations with Him.

And AA calls us to reach for Bill and Dr. Bob, the Twelve Steps, and the hands of people who have learned to walk the paths of sobriety seeking that “next right thing” in their own lives. 

Referring to our “days of alcoholic rage” is not a comment about going back out but an observation that I need to recall these Christmas alcoholic days and get to a meeting to erase the memory.

I recall one personal episode. T’was Christmas Day in Denver where my son lives. Cold, windy and a stormy snow. Waiting for dinner, Christmas presents opened, noon, quiet, tired of TV and the yakking talking heads and football color talkers. I wasn’t thinking about “going back out” but there was a shadow of those Christmas mad houses. I was not interested in playing “chicken” with that shadow.

I asked my son, “Is there an AA Clubhouse in Denver, and where is it?” It was an easy distance, we headed out, the only car on the road. The Clubhouse was as usual a grand old house someone had left to serve as Denver’s central AA gathering place.

Jammed with people. All laughing and exchanging stories. A typical AA pre-meeting gathering. Then the meeting itself, the same words of every AA meeting were exchanged, words heard at any AA meeting in the world.

What would Christ have said? ... you know well what He would have said...He was there with us talking with each of us and like us, enjoying the feelings of our unity.   

What a marvelous time to feel the presence of Christ, Bill W, and Dr. Bob. a presence wherever we are.

That day, a cold snowy afternoon, that Christmas Day in Denver many years ago, that’s where I was.

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati.