This will be my sixty-second Christmas. Anything you do 62 times, you should get right. But I still seem to have trouble getting Christmas right. Maybe I have improved in my approach. For many of my initial Christmases I focused on what I was going to get. As the oldest of nine children, looking back, I didn’t get much. My folks were poor. We didn’t have a car until after I graduated for high school. For years we lived in “the projects.”
I will never forget spending hours looking through the Sears “Big Book” for the one thing I could ask for. I remember plotting with my siblings to make sure we didn’t make the mistake of asking for the same thing. I guess I’m way past that. In fact, this year I haven’t given any thought to what I might get for Christmas. I understand from those who love me that I am terrible to buy for. I like to think it’s because I’m a wonderfully complex person. My wife says it’s because I just go out and buy anything I want. Maybe that’s a product of growing up poor.
I do spend a lot of time and energy on Christmas shopping. But regretfully, most Christmas mornings I get the feeling I missed the boat with most of my gifts. I guess that will happen again this year. I bought one gift really early. I have spent the last month trying to decide who to give it to. The gift I got for my wife is something I have been told she has wanted for years and I never took the hint. Wow, what a great Christmas guy I am. Another gift I bought for one person, only to be told that she wouldn’t like that at all. I realized later that someone else would love it. So another redirected gift.
In recent years we’ve adopted “rules” to try to minimize the costs involved. This year the “adults” pulled names. We are also playing “dirty Santa” for the first time. If you don’t know what that is, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
I am notorious for breaking the rules both as to the “limit” for each gift and the rule that we only give a gift to the person whose name we pulled. Sue me. I’m a lawyer. I can handle the costs of defense.
I guess what I try to accomplish each year is the thing that my poverty stricken parents were so good at, making Christmas wonderful. My memories of those early Christmases are filled with wonder and joy. They managed to put just the right amount of Jesus in Christmas without being preachy. They were too poor to spoil us, but we never felt deprived. I have tried giving gifts that convey the message of Christmas, but they often come off wrong.
I guess if I could have one thing this Christmas it would be to have my poor parents back for just long enough for them to explain to me how they did such a great job of getting Christmas right.
I googled “Christmas” and got pages of images and only one image that included the Savior of the World. Maybe I’m not the only one whose having trouble getting Christmas right.
Merry Christmas and good luck at getting it right in your life.
Nick
Be the first to reply