Christmas Riches

By Melissa Willis
Each Christmas Eve, after the remains of the Seven Fishes have been cleared away and replaced by trays of pizzelles and mugs of extra-strong coffee, my family gathers around the table to reminisce about holidays past.
Each of us has our own special memories, the stories we tell time and again. For as long as I can remember, my mother has been telling the story of the year she got a bicycle for Christmas.
It was 1958 and Mom was 8 years old. She had been begging for a new bicycle for months and was consistently met with a “we’ll see” from my grandmother. As the holidays drew closer, the family finances suffered a huge blow when both my grandfather and great-uncle Frank were laid off from their jobs at US Gypsum in Southwest Philly.
Mom knew the family was struggling and was convinced she wouldn’t be getting any Christmas presents that year, so she was shocked when she crept downstairs on Christmas morning to find a brand-new bicycle standing by the tree. Despite the difficult times, her parents, aunt and uncle had scraped together every cent they had to get her the one present she truly wanted.
When I was a girl, this story was totally lost on me. Like most children, I had no concept of money and the possibility of not having Christmas presents had never occurred to me. After all, my brother Paul and I always had piles of presents underneath the tree.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized the sacrifices my own parents made to put them there. When I was 3, my mom took a job fixing ATM machines because it paid more than her previous office job. She was called out at all hours of the day and night, missing bedtimes and family dinners but that Christmas, the Barbie Dream House I so badly wanted stood brightly next to our tree.
When I was 4, my dad was out of work and finances were particularly tight. I’m sure there were store-bought gifts that year, but I couldn’t name any of them. What I do remember is coming downstairs on Christmas morning to a gigantic wooden toy chest (big enough to stuff my little brother in) and a child-sized wooden refrigerator. Dad had spent weeks building them in the basement, cutting and sanding the wood and covering them in Holly Hobbie contact paper. I loved them instantly, even more so when Dad told me Santa’s elves had made them especially for me in their workshop.
If I thought long and hard enough, I could probably find a story like this to match every Christmas of my young life. Some years, my aunts chipped in to help us through the holidays, while in other years, my mother would trudge through the stores on Christmas Eve after receiving her holiday bonus from work, then stay up all night to wrap our gifts and place them under the tree. However we got there, there was never a single Christmas my brother and I went without.
There are certain truths you learn as an adult that completely change the way you view your childhood. As I got older, I began to realize how much work it took to make my childhood Christmases magical. Funny enough, realizing how little my family actually had also helped me to realize how rich I truly was.
(Willis writes from Marcus Hook, Pa.)