When you think about all the Christmas gifts you have received in your lifetime, which ones mean the most to you? Do you have a piece of jewelry, a set of golf clubs, a family portrait, or a book that you cherish? Or do you cherish a different kind of gift?
I was 6 years old when I received my first unwrapped Christmas gift. I woke up early that Christmas morning and went into the living room, expecting to catch Santa placing gifts under the tree. Instead, I saw my father putting together the toy kitchen I had put on my wish list. Fearing that I would be in trouble for getting up so early, I went back to bed and woke up a few hours later to see my toy kitchen perfectly assembled and waiting for me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my father’s decision to stay up late, possibly losing a night of sleep so that his children would awaken to fully assembled toys, was a precious gift to us. My father worked long and exhausting hours six days a week at his dry cleaning plant, so for him to forgo much-needed sleep was quite a sacrifice. More than 60 years have passed since that Christmas morning, and I can still see my dad on the floor with a screwdriver in his hand.
My mother gave me two unwrapped gifts on my first Christmas as a married woman. The first was a pair of porcelain bells she had been putting on our tree for as long as I could remember. When I was little, I would gently shake the tree’s branches so I could listen to the bells jingle as they rocked slowly back and forth. Even now, I shake my tree to listen to them. These bells may look fragile, but they have survived decades of ornament abuse.
The second gift was a recipe for date nut cake, something my mother made only at Christmas. She got this recipe from neighbors who enjoyed sharing their own recipes. I fell in love with this delicious cake, and it has become a holiday treat I look forward to each December.
My mother-in-law Lucy also gave me two priceless gifts. The first was a fudge recipe from an old issue of Good Housekeeping. It took me a while to learn how to mix all the ingredients and quickly pour them into a buttered pan, but I finally did. From that day on, this fudge became a holiday staple.
Lucy also gave me an appreciation for Frank Sinatra’s music, particularly his Christmas music. One December, not long after Lucy died, I was making fudge and was in the crucial stirring and pouring stage when a Sinatra carol came on the radio. I will never know how I managed to finish making the fudge while wiping away tears, but I did. Perhaps it was a Christmas miracle.
The two greatest gifts I ever received are memories of my children at Christmas. I will never forget my older daughter Anne’s first Christmas when she spent the entire day ignoring her new presents and playing with the boxes they came in instead. I kept trying to hand her a toy to distract her, but she would put it down and pick up another box. I vowed that the next Christmas I would find a store that sold only empty boxes and do my shopping there.
I will also never forget the look on my younger daughter Kathleen’s face as she played with her new dollhouse one Christmas morning. As Kathleen gently put the dolls and the furniture in place, she sang “Up on the Housetop,” her favorite carol. Despite having a raspy voice because of a mild cold, she managed to summon her usual enthusiasm and belt out the song. Fortunately, we had the foresight to record our daughter on her fourth Christmas so we could revisit her performance not only in our memories but also on video.
I have yet to unwrap a gift that has given me better memories or greater pleasure than gifts that had no wrapping. I can carry these unwrapped treasures with me wherever I go, and I am certain they will only get better with age.
Read CityView magazine’s “Home for the Holidays” December 2024 e-edition here.