Welcome to Pink Saturday! For a festive twist, our hostess, Beverly, has proposed that for today’s sharing, we tell about one of our childhood memories about a special holiday. For a complete listing of all those participating today, just click here.
The memory I’d like to share is about a Christmas when I was a very young girl…I’m thinking I was about eight years old. During that era, just the arrival of the Christmas editions of the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs were a much celebrated event in and of itself. For hours on end every child in my family would turn the pages and dream of what Santa might bring. I’m sure most of us had the catalog memorized by the time Christmas rolled around.
All photos from vintage Sears catalogs were obtained here.
Except on this particular Christmas, whether we were told or not, I don't rightly recall, the children in my family knew Santa wasn’t coming to our house this year. You see, my father was deathly ill. In fact, he had been in the VA hospital, in another state for months and no one knew when he would be well enough to come home.
Despite what I mentioned about the obsession with the Christmas catalogs during that era, I do not remember feeling sad about knowing there weren’t going to be presents under the tree. Perhaps the deep concerns about my father and his health overshadowed the desires of wanting any new toys for Christmas.
But then it happened…
A package was delivered to our home from our area’s VA service coordinator. It was from my dad! In it, were gifts for each member of the family. They weren’t extravagant by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they were things he had made himself. I imagine the VA hospital with many long-term patients had an activity director who tried to ease the long days by introducing different projects for the men to work on. Beyond the sheer excitement of receiving a gift, it was “the knowing” that my dad must be doing better if he had the energy to make these gifts!
During this same Christmas, on Christmas Eve day there was a knock at our door. Apparently someone had given our name to one of the local service clubs and they showed up bearing gifts for each member of my family. They weren’t even wrapped and we didn’t care! I remember a tall man standing in our kitchen with a large sack. One by one, he asked each of us our name and then reached in his sack and pulled out a gift for us. Mine? Bubblecut Barbie! I cannot begin to tell you how much I loved that doll for years and years.
While I know that at first blush this might not seem like a happy holiday story, but to me, it will always be a beautiful Christmas memory. One I’ll never forget. I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned from this experience for anything. It was a priceless life-lesson in learning to give to others who have fallen upon hard times. You never know, until you are the recipient of such kindness, how much it means to be at the receiving end of such thoughtful generosity.
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As a footnote, I will add that my father suffered from a rare, tropical lung disease he contracted while serving as a Marine in World War II while stationed in the South Pacific. It took years before he was properly diagnosed. While there was no known cure, he learned to manage the disease. In fact, in the South Pacific, the life expectancy of someone with this disease was only 39 years. My father, I am happy to report, lived to be 87 years old!
