December 20
A Christmas Memory
One year, it took my family over 12 hours to unwrap the presents that lay under the tree in the sunroom of our house at 500 N. Main Street on Christmas morning. Of course, we paused to baste the turkey and took a break for dinner. We opened the door to our friend Justin who came bearing a new record player and stopped to visit with him. Still, we began at 9 a.m. and did not finish until 11 p.m.
This marathon occurred not because of too many presents. Beth and William, my niece and nephew, were still future possibilities, not present incitements to excess gift giving. Indeed, there were only five of us – my brother and sister-in-law, my mother and father, and myself. All our needs at the time were modest – a tie here, a record there, a gift certificate to Wayside Gardens. So why did it take us so many hours? It was the way my mother approached the task. It was a way that would not survive the arrival of toddlers.
We started right at the agreed upon time, having eaten our traditional Christmas breakfast of grapefruit, loaded with brown sugar and topped in the center with a bright red maraschino cherry, and cinnamon yeast rolls, a confection I had been making since 8th grade home economics. Seated around the tree, we began with an appropriate admiration of its decoration and comments on the history and provenance of various ornaments. This was followed by an appropriate appreciation of the wrapped outlay underneath.
Despite her protests we made sure that my mother got the first gift. Since we rarely threw out a re-useable tag, she might read “To Mom From Judy” with the “Judy” crossed out and replaced by “Dan.” Or perhaps it had originally been “To Dad From Judy” and so much revising would have occurred.
Given a gift, my mother would first comment on how beautifully the gift was wrapped – the neatness of the corners, the combination of paper pattern to ribbon color, the care employed to make sure the paper could be used for a future Christmas. Because we re-used the paper just as we re-used the tags, year after year, and some papers were downright historic, a fact that naturally led to the second stage of my mother’s approach. A paper used on gifts in other years might evoke memories of those past gifts and givers.And so, in this way, in true Dickens fashion, each Christmas came larded with memories of Christmas past and made provisions for Christmas future.
My mother began the opening by wondering what could possibly be inside the box. A gentle shake – perhaps glass beads for her flower vase? A tracing of the size — perhaps a book, Shepherd’s Historical Atlas? A hefting of the weight – could it be pruners? Then she would begin to unwrap, asking always for the silver letter opener I gave to my father the first Christmas after I graduated from college. I was once again sane and had a job and an income that enabled me to be extravagant, so everyone got wildly expensive gifts that year. With the letter opener, my mother would carefully separate the scotch tape from the wrapping, making sure not to rip the paper. Once the gift was opened, surprise and delight followed, along with pleasure at the thoughtfulness shown in its choice.
My mother liked to put her gifts to use immediately, if possible, and so if glass beads were indeed the contents of the present she had just opened we would soon have flowers in a vase on top of the piano across the room from the Christmas tree. If the gift were an article of clothing, we would be treated to a fashion show.
Not all gifts could be put to immediate use, but there was no limit to admiration. Or to the stories that each gift might elicit about its origin – I heard you say you needed pruners; I thought the Atlas might help you with that course you are taking on World History; you really need a new sweater, Mom, and I saw this one and thought, that’s you.
And so it went. And so time passed. Each of us did the best we could to follow her example. Indeed, none of us wished to do it differently that day. Indeed, I could not imagine a different approach. This, I assumed, was the way everybody approached Christmas gifting.
Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that others often took a gift, tore off the paper, opened it up, said something nice, and put it down. Or, stranger yet, in some families people opened gifts at the same time. And never re-used paper or tags. Worse still, imagine my chagrin to discover that for many with whom I shared our approach, the very thought of taking that kind of time to open gifts struck them as a kind of hell.
I get that. But here’s the thing. Looking back, I think – what else would I have wanted to do that day? How could a day be better spent than by sharing it with my beloved parents and brother and sister-in-law, taking time to be together, talking, telling stories, remembering, caring? Could a day have ended more perfectly than ours, as we listened, over cocoa topped with marshmallows, to the gift I gave my mother of the latest recording of Joan Sutherland on the new record player which Justin had given us and only had to be plugged in to work?
Consider Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for Living a Life.” They are as follows:
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Substitute “surprise” and “delight” for “astonishment” and you have my mother on Christmas morning.
Looking back, I think –my mother was not just sharing with me a way of approaching Christmas gifts. She was teaching me a way of approaching life.
Sara and I reuse our Christmas wrapping, and we have trained those who join us in the celebration to do likewise. We use the same silver letter opener that I gave my father so many years ago to separate the paper and the tape. I cranked a bit this year as I wrapped my presents because the only tags we had were ones that stick to the paper. Pasting one of these to the lovely papers Sara bought for us this year will make it harder to reuse it next year. So I had recourse to simple slips of white paper to mark the name of the recipient on the gift.
Next year I will get us the kind of tags you can slide under the ribbon. I look forward to seeing “To Judy from Sara” revised to read “To Sara from Judy.” Not too hard a switch, I’m thinking.
Our tree this year. Looking forward to sharing it with friend Kathryn and daughter Sonya
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