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A Christmas Stocking Full of Magic | Something to Say

Jason Coudriet
/
Unsplash

How many of you will open a gift tonight? Raise your hand. Alright, put them down, I can't see you anyway.

One of the sacred traditions in the humble McCallum household of old was, yes, you could open one gift on Christmas Eve. The kind of gift was always somewhere in the middle. A good gift, not a great one; a kind-of appetizer for the main event the following day.

On Christmas Eve 1960, my dad lifted my Christmas Eve gift from my stocking. It was an envelope and I didn't have much hope for it. I knew it wasn't money because Jack McCallum Sr. didn't operate that way, and as far as I can remember, gift cards weren't a thing back then.

I opened it and it was amazing. Two tickets to the NFL Championship game — this is pre-Super Bowl, remember — Philadelphia Eagles vs Green Bay Packers, Franklin Field in Philadelphia the day after Christmas day, December 26, 1960.

Now, there had been a story on Philadelphia news about how tough a ticket it was, but my father, a man of no real power or prestige or, for that matter, pocket book, owned a small grocery store that specialized in meat. And when the Taylor pork roll guys rolled in from Philadelphia, my father provided them with a sandwich, maybe one for the road, and some sports talk, and miraculously, they had come across two tickets to the game, which cost (get ready for this) eight bucks a piece.

My sister, who's gone now, used to kid me about how many times I've told the story about my 1960 Christmas Eve gift. But the fact that I have told it so many times and I'm telling you now speaks to the central significance of this event in my life.

It's 64 years ago now but I remember it clearly. Kickoff had been moved up to noon because Franklin Field didn't have lights and perhaps the game would go into overtime. So my father and I were up at dawn. We left by 7:30am; a nervous South Jersey man driving to Philadelphia. It was freezing — "Wear layers," he said. On the car ride we talked about the game, focusing on the tough packers and a few stars from the Eagles, especially a center linebacker named Chuck Bednarik, who, though we didn't know it at the time, hailed from a place called Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

I remember the drive. I remember the cold walk from the car, excited fans blowing on their hands, some taking nips from flasks. I remember the chilly seats, which seemed like paradise, the growing apprehension, the smell of peanuts and beer and mustard, the calls of the vendors. And I remember the roar when the Eagles appeared, and the deafening thunder when runningback Ted Dean swept into the end zone to give the Eagles a 17-13 lead — the final score.

The game officially ended when the Bethlehem boy, Chuck Bednarik, tackled Jim Taylor and sat on him for a few seconds as the final gun sounded. Years later, Chuck would tell me exactly what he said to Jim Taylor in those moments, but I can't repeat it on a family radio station.

I can't tell you exactly how much of this experience seeped into my but I loved it — the expectation, the tension, the various story lines, thinking in my head how I would talk about it. It kind of became me. And 16 years after this game, when I was a sports writer at the Bethlehem Globe Times, I approached Chuck Bednarik at a Lehigh wrestling match and asked him about doing a book. He agreed. It launched a kind-of second career as an author.

Some of my happiest experiences as a sports writer were arriving early at an event, watching the set-up, feeling the anticipation, and my mind often drifted to that time as an impressionable 11-year-old, being with my father at the game, a new world that opened up with an envelope in a Christmas stocking. It was magic, but then again, this is the season for magic, right?

Jack McCallum is the host of the weekly feature, Something to Say, where he shares commentary as a Lehigh Valley resident about a wide range of events and figures, both recent and old. He is a novelist and former writer for Sports Illustrated.
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