Christmas Reminisces

Well, here we are again at the beginning of the Holiday Season. As children, we started thinking of Christmas after Thanksgiving, when Dicken's Christmas Carol was serialized on the front page of the Douglas Dispatch. Store shelves began to carry more shiny toys. Our lists were carefully written out and Santa was assured of how well we had behaved during the last year. The intensity of our interest quickened when the Christmas tree came into the house a couple of weeks before the big day. The tree was decorated with fragile glass balls that were older than any of the children. Strings of lights and tinsel, and strands of aluminum ice sickles were draped over branches. Each day new packages would arrive and be placed under the tree after being shaken. Our imaginations provided endless alternatives as to what was concealed. We secretly searched under beds and in the backs of closets to discover what might be hidden. From the kitchen came a succession of baking smells; cookies shaped like snowmen colored with sugary icing, and cakes and pies.

Going to sleep was difficult for our thoughts were filled with expectation and sweet anxiety that we might be disappointed. The nervous tension that had been mounting for days would finally overcome us. We would fall into a fitful slumber, only to awaken long before the morning. The linoleum was cold beneath our impatient little feet as we hurried to see what Santa had left.

The piles of presents under the tree always seemed to have doubled overnight. New packages wrapped in colorful paper, each with a personal tag, spread across the floor. Some toys were already setup and were ready to play. Who could resist an electric train rapidly running around a circular track running between the wire wheels of a new bike? Dolls for the girls sat in pretty ruffles atop huge boxes. Santa had come to OUR house, the annual miracle had happened again.

Parents were rousted out from their wrinkled bed to witness the truth of the Santa story. Soon the living room was filled with torn paper and stuffing intended to disguise the contents of boxes. A nurse's kit filled with pink sugar pills for a little girl who would grow up someday to be a nurse. Always there was a board game whose pieces would be lost before the end of the day, and something that would break after being played with once. Then there were the new clothes and stuff that we needed, but that had no real chance of finding favor with a child. Finally, the family would sit around and exchange their personal presents.

The presents often were not purchased, after all where could a child get enough money to buy a new car, or an airplane, or a magic dishwasher? Girls embroidered handkerchiefs, or napkins carefully stenciled with blue swans. Little boys made potholders woven from elastic, or straw. A leather belt tooled at camp, or a picture drawn in art class, would be passed admiringly from hand to hand. They weren't little presents because the care and thought that went into them was large. Such presents might never be really used, but would be put away in sweet-smelling cedar chests as mementos and remembrances.