Christmas Memories

I have a hard time writing about Christmas memories. I believe my first Christmases were probably the most lucrative though I don’t remember what I was given. The problem was with my expectations from that point on. The first Christmas I remember was after my father left his career as a pastor, and my family moved into the farmhouse where my father was born and lived until he went to college. With three brothers and a sister, and my parents suddenly dependent on farm income while Dad took college courses to become a teacher, we were suddenly dirt poor. Our church brought us each a gift that first year on the farm. They gave my sister and I a doll. I should have been more appreciative, but I thought they were ugly. They were huge and their heads were really hard (not ceramic – before long they peeled).

In the years that followed, we were generally given one gift apiece. I had the dubious advantage of having a birthday close enough to December that sometimes I got a nicer present than the others, if so it was for both birthday and Christmas.

One year Dad took us all to a toy store to see what toys we liked. Then when we weren’t looking, he signaled the clerk to check it out for him. My youngest brother, who still believed in Santa Claus, didn’t know the whole story. He found a cowboy hat he really liked and tearfully begged Dad to buy it for him. Later he saw the clerk pick up the hat and carry it to the back of the store. “My hat!” he cried. “She took my hat!” Later when he opened his Christmas gift, he was excited to have a hat like the one in the store.

We were only on the farm for three years before we moved to another town where my father started teaching. My brother Keith, who was three years older than me, soon got a part-time job while he was in junior high school. That year he surprised each of us with a small Christmas present. He gave me a baton. The next few years each of us kids purchased little gifts using the allowance money Dad was now able to give us. That added a lot to making our Christmas times brighter. But I still dreaded for any of my friends to ask me what I had been given for Christmas, because it seemed like nothing in comparison to what others were given.

We moved again when my father became a college instructor. The first year finances were so tight that we were all given something for the house. Dad wrapped up a trash can, a broom, and other similar items so we could each unwrap something. I believe my youngest brother probably got a real present, but the rest of us were considered old enough to understand. We continued to buy each other little gifts so there were a few things to keep.

It was the Christmas dinners, which were changed to Christmas Eve dinners while we still lived on the farm, that the family especially enjoyed for many years. The Christmas of 1966 was painful because my brother Keith had been killed in an airplane accident three months earlier. It was a year after our last move. I later moved 500 miles away for employment and later marriage, and I was unable to come home every year for the Christmas dinner.

When I married, my new husband considered Christmas presents to be something you gave your children. So my gifts continued to be meager. One year I was given two pair of socks.

I eventually divorced my first husband and remarried, but finances continue to keep our Christmases meager, and I still dread for anyone to ask me what I was given for Christmas.

But in God’s economy, noting is wasted. If I have learned my lessons well, I can see that when my eyes are on the material gifts I have received, I have chosen to be the loser. But when I take my eyes off my material gifts and blessings, and put them on the greatest gift of all, when God himself stepped down from heaven to live inside a tiny baby who would grow up to show us the way to eternal life, and then to die on a cross to pay the price for our sins so we could enjoy an eternity with him… I am overwhelmed with joy of the purest kind. God knows what he is doing. I might have missed this altogether if I’d been given all the gifts I thought I wanted growing up.

I’m thankful for those who kept reading to this point. I didn’t expect this to be so long when I started writing it. I invite you to enjoy the Christmas card I created for all my friends at www.janicedgreen.com/Merry_Christmas