Well, it is almost too late to worry about cards not addressed, presents not purchased and baking unfinished. Guess gals, we'd better just call it quits and sit back and enjoy this holiday instead of reaching it in a dead heat with a nervous breakdown.
Some of the excitement and a lot of the secrecy slips out of Christmas when all the children get beyond the "believing in Santa" stage. Remember the night before Christmas when we'd spend anxious hours putting together a doll house, a wagon, setting up the electric train or finishing a dress? How we went to bed in the early morning hours only to be awakened by the squeals of excitement from the living room short few minutes later. the fact that you and your husband had presents also under the tree seemed secondary to watching the children and their joy. Remember the tales you made up about how Santa managed to get into your house without a chimney to help him make his entrance? Or why there were so many Santas--and just which was the "really genuine, for sure one?"
Christmas, probably more than any other holiday is for children--or at least the young in heart. It's a time to marvel anew at an Infant's birth. A time of lump-in-the-throat beauty, of joy. A time for remembering.
My grandmother for instance, told of her Christmases spent on Put-In-Bay Island. A place that lost complete contact with the mainland in those days before telephone and airplane. Sleighs pulled by horses were taken across frozen Lake Erie and a man went ahead of the horse to test the ice with a sledge hammer. Winters were three months of a deep freeze, and you learned to depend neighbor upon neighbor for help in emergencies and companionship in fun.
I can remember my mother when she was in a "tell me a story" mood would tell about an exciting Christmas she once spent on this Island with her own grandmother. The permanent Island residents arranged church parties, sleigh rides, and caroling groups. The large Island hotel, a white, rambling, Victorian place with spreading verandas and many rooms, gave a yearly Christmas party for the local children.
"Each girl," my mother would continue, "received a doll. One with a real china head and leather arms and legs. That was the first doll I ever owned. They'd been purchased months before and brought in on the last boat to make it through the freezing water from the mainland."
Christmas seems to be getting out of hand in this business of gift giving. Don't we seem to worry too much about the amount spent on the gift, whether it equals the price of the one received? For instance what about the advertised twin helicopters or "his and her" submarines for that couple who have everything?
Our outlay of mechanical marvels for our children, complete with dolls that walk and talk and every kind of an electrical or battery run game is a far cry from the Christmases of our grandparents or even our own.
Pop remembers a depression Christmas when he received ice skates--the clamp on variety.
"That was all there was with my name on it under the tree," said Pop in his yearly disapproval of the many packages under the tree.
"We didn't always have a tree," declared my mother. "We hung our stockings over the backs of dining room chairs. We picked a chair and put our name and our stocking on it Christmas Eve so Santa would know. We usually got an orange, some hard candy and the rest walnuts. Imagine my grandchildren being satisfied with that."
But in defense gals, of our Christmas buying, we probably do over indulge our youngsters. Do place more than a single item under the tree. Do run around frantically searching for that particular TV mentioned toy. Do pay high prices for special gifts.
But as adults our homes cost more than our parents. Probably we live, not more economically, surely, but longer and have more advantages. Which, in turn, we try to pass on to our children.
Written December 26, 1963