I often hear people refer to the fun things they do with their kids and grand kids as the process of making memories. And some times of the year those memories stick more than others. This is one of those times.
I look back at my childhood and realize that my mother and father spent a good deal of effort making our holidays memorable. It was a time when literally no holds were barred when it came to joy and giving for them. Being the youngest I am sure that I reaped a lot more gifts than my two older sisters did during the holidays as a child, but it’s funny that the best Christmases I remember are when they were out of school and working while I was still a child. If anyone spoiled me more than my parents it was my sisters. My wife always tells me that I lived a Leave It To Beaver life as a child, and she points to the Christmases at the Shaw house in the 1950s and 60s as being one of those Theodore Cleaver moments.
She is pretty much right.
We were also lucky as a family because I don’t remember our family facing many bad things during the holidays, such as long illnesses or deaths from November through early January in any year. I think the most disturbing thing that happened is that one Christmas my youngest sister, who was about 17 at the time, got a rebellious streak in her about some older guy she had been going out with, and my dad had to come over one evening from milking the cows and lay the law down about her not being able to go out with the guy.
Not so nice for everybody
We seldom raised our voices in anger in our house, but that time it happened and I remember sitting in the front room of our home and just staring at the Christmas tree thinking about how hard it was to bear listening to all that. On the other hand, being only nine years old at the time, it still registered with me that maybe not everyone had wonderful warm Christmases like we did each year. That thought was actually reality shaking the comfortable tree I had been in forever where I thought things were just hunky-dory for everyone that time of year.
That incident happened about two weeks before Christmas and I remember going to school that Monday and wondering if those kinds of things happened to a lot of people. I mentioned to one of my friends, just telling him a little about what had occurred and he said “That kind of thing happens every year at my house. My old man gets drunk and usually he picks a fight with someone in the family before Christmas. You can count on it.”
To my dismay he said it with a smile on his face, seemingly thinking it was all just natural and funny.
“But we still have a great Christmas at my house,” he said finishing up.
I wondered how that could be? How could you be excited when you knew that was coming every year?
But that was only the first step in me realizing Christmas for everyone was not like in It’s A Wonderful Life where things always turn out well.
About the same time I also visited one of my more casual friends houses about a week before we got out of school for the holidays. We went there after school one afternoon and unlike at my house, his mother was not there. She was working and I found out he didn’t have a dad who lived with them. In the front room of the house was this little scrawny Christmas tree with three presents under it. Otherwise the house was just plain, unlike ours that screamed the holidays in almost every room. I was shocked by what I saw. In my naive state of mind I asked him about what other kinds of decorations they would be putting up and he looked at me and said “This is what we have and it is a lot better than last year. At least we have a tree this time.”
Years later I realized that my friend’s family, unlike most of my middle class compatriots, had always lived in poverty. I have often wondered about what happened to him and how his life came out. He moved just before we went into high school and I never saw him again.
I also had another friend, a very bright and gentle boy, who hated Christmas. He missed most of the programs at school and shied away from coming to anyones house during the holidays. I asked him about it once and he told me he hated it because it was during the holidays, when he was younger, that his dad was injured in an industrial accident just before Christmas. That holiday season all he and his family did was stay at a hospital hoping their father would be alright. His father lived through it, but was severely disabled and that changed their lives forever. They basically went from being a family who did well and was independent, to one that relied on their church and the government to get by. The accident and the aftermath of seeing everyone else with such joy and with so many gifts had made him hate the holidays.
So all this made me wonder what Christmas was really like for other kids. My Beaver Cleaver world was under attack. Yet I had other friends that seemed to have as good or even better Christmas seasons than my family did. The judgments I made came from being young and not understanding that there is much more to Christmas than just material things, despite the fact my mother had instilled in me the true meaning of what Christmas was time and time again.
I still remember my favorite Christmases from the time I got my first real bicycle when I was eight to when it got my first tape recorder when I was 12. But since I finally did grow up (I know some of my family and friends would say that is debatable) I later realized that the memories of everyone being together, in a happy state, most of the time, was the important part of the season, not what I or others got as presents.
Consequently, in discussions we have had about Christmas over the years, my wife and I spend our time trying to make some very good memories for our grand kids and our great grand kids not only by giving them nice things, but also by spending time with them and really getting to know them. We want them to remember Christmas’ as being special but we also want them to put those memories in a place where those recollections will blend into the other good things we do together throughout each year so when they get older they will have the feeling that they had a good life as youngsters, one that they want to pass onto their children.
For us good memories are the gold standard at Christmas. There really is nothing else you can give them that is more important than that. It is also something, unlike the latest video game or cell phone, that will last them a lifetime.
The best Christmas gifts are the fond memories
Rick Shaw