A Christmas flea-market gift resonant of John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas’: James Patterson

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Christmas comes once a year. It changes people forever.

John Lennon’s 1971 song, “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” is a holiday classic. He sang that Christmas is for everyone: “For rich and the poor ones.”

One Christmas, in the early 2000s, I saw this timeless lyric play out in the lives of two men in a New York City parking lot.

On weekends, the parking lot was converted to a flea market where sellers of old clothes found buyers in need. It was near Manhattan’s Union Square, in the West 20s.

It was a cold Saturday afternoon. As usual, old clothes and handcrafted items were for sale. The clothes were from apartment evictions, store closures, and donations. It was near Christmas.

I bought cufflinks from a young artist. He had made them with images of silent screen star Louise Brooks. I bought another pair with images of former President Ronald Reagan. The price was right at $10 a pair.

Christmas was in the air as buyers, young and old and rich and poor, searched the used goods. While browsing, I suddenly and unexpectedly saw what the spirit of Christmas can do and the lesson it can teach us.

A bearded man, underdressed for the cold, looked over old clothes on a table. He needed warmth. He needed the spirit of Christmas.

I was looking, with a profit motive in mind, for vintage rock concert T-shirts for $1. I had found them at this same flea market before.

The underdressed man searched through a mound of old clothes on a long table. Clothes for men, women, and children were all tangled together on the table. Unsanitary was a word that came to my mind as I looked for a financial bonanza in the form of a vintage rock concert T-shirt that I could sell.

As another person battled with me for an old Prince concert T-shirt, the underdressed man took an old, ragged coat from the used-clothes pile, He tried it on as if he were in a fine men’s clothing store.

Though the man did not say anything to anyone, the look on his weary face signaled that he was relieved to find a coat in, or near, his size. He stood silently. I suppose he was enjoying a few minutes of warmth before returning the old coat to the table and walking away to face the bitter cold.

The seller of the old clothes stood nearby smoking a cigarette. The sight of the underdressed man in the old coat had gotten his attention. Ordinarily, business is business in Manhattan, even at an outdoor flea market in the dead of winter. But this was Christmas.

The seller crushed his cigarette on the pavement. He walked over to the underdressed man.

“It’s OK, man,” he said.

The underdressed man, still silent, nodded in appreciation. I will never forget the look of gratitude in the poor man’s eyes. He walked away wearing a warm coat, likely his only Christmas gift. After a few steps, he turned to say, “Merry Christmas,” to the salesman.

With another cigarette between his lips and a few tears in his eyes, the salesman said: “Yeah, Merry Christmas, man.”

I caught the salesman’s eye. “I have been there,” he said. I gave him $10 and a “Merry Christmas.” I learned a valuable lesson. It doesn’t take much to make someone’s life better.

The author at the Imagine mosaic in Central Park, erected in memory of John Lennon not far from the site where the ex-Beatles singer was shot to death in 1980.Courtesy of James Patterson

Lennon’s lyrics to “Happy Xmas” include: “And so this is Christmas (war is over); For weak and for strong (if you want it); For rich and the poor ones (war is over); The world is so wrong (now).”

The world, though, was right on that long-ago winter day in a parking lot where the spirit of Christmas came alive. I am grateful that I saw it.

A final lyric from John Lennon: “A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”!

James Patterson is a writer in the Washington, D.C., area.

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