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Even though retailers are looking at a potentially glum holiday season in
this period of economic hardship and declining sales, I think this could be a
truly joyous Christmas for families.
Without the indulgence of frenetic holiday gift-buying, families can instead
find comfort in home- and hand-made items which address real needs, instead of
wants and amusements. We can also find peace in spreading love and in truly
giving of ourselves.
These are some of the ways our Democratic Family remembers holidays past.
What memories will you and your family make this year?
--Gerry Richardson
● When my girls were young, I did many things to be able to stay at home
with them. I had a business where I organized home parties and took orders for
personalized gifts, much as a Tupperware lady might.
I personalized everything from colanders to barrettes and sweatshirts. It
was a joyful time, and even now my girls remember many of the things we made
together during those years. I made gifts for the whole family, whether they
liked homemade or not. Hah! One day when my niece, Kelly, was about 12, she
told her mother, "If Aunt Judy makes me one more thing, I think I will
die."
She did not, of course, and she is now a beautiful woman of 34. She told me
just this past fall how much she really LOVED everything I made for her and how
special it made her feel. Her parents divorced, and her life was a roller
coaster for years. She said my homemade personal gifts were something she counted
on.
They made her feel loved.
So pull out the glue gun or the paints, or bake something ... whatever you
are good at. And share your love. You never know who will appreciate it for a
lifetime.
--Judy Wagner
● I remember when I was about four, the most popular doll in the stores was
a "Betsy Wetsy," who would drink a bottle and instantly pee all over
you. I was positive my life would end on Christmas morning if didn’t get Betsy
Wetsy. Since I was a little rambunctious and had gotten up one morning and
covered my sister from head to toe with Crisco shortening, my parents told me
they weren’t sure Santa was going to come through with my request. I wrote
Santa a letter of apology, and for a couple of weeks I resisted my natural
urges and became a perfect child -- I helped around the house, refrained from
punching my sister, and smiled cheerfully at everyone. It paid off. On
Christmas morning there was Betsy Wetsy sitting under the tree waiting for me.
It was the best Christmas present I remember as a child ... although, in a
tribute to the fleeting glamour of store-bought gifts, two weeks later I was
holding Betsy Wetsy out the window of our car and accidentally dropped her at an
overpass. My dad refused to go back and get her!
--Leisa Gunter
● We have a famous story in our family. My father was coming home for
Christmas (before he was married) and was arriving VERY late on Christmas Eve.
He hadn't bought a present for anyone - not for his parents nor nor anything
for his two sisters, so when he got home, he got out a pen and wrote "and
Grover" on the gift tags of every present under the tree. The next
morning, every present opened was from a family member AND GROVER!
--Jo Ann Hallmark
● My mother was widowed at age 35 and had four young boys to raise. I was
the second oldest at age ten. Obviously, money was very, very tight which meant
very sparse Christmases so far as presents were concerned. Our Christmas
usually consisted of maybe a pair of new socks and some fruit.
But every year for as long as I can remember, my mother made a fresh coconut
cake at Christmas. She started with the whole coconut which we would crack
open, cut the meat out, and grind in the hand-crank sausage machine. Mother
made all the layers and frosting from scratch, used the ground coconut between
the layers and on top, and poured the drained coconut milk onto the cake. The
cake was then put in the "front room" (which was unheated) until
Christmas. We called it "Mother's rotten coconut cake" because by
Christmas it was so juicy it just fell apart. It was delicious and was always
the "star" at our Christmas meal. Long after I had married and left
home, Mother continued to make her coconut cake, and I always looked forward to
it when we visited during the holidays. Mother passed away earlier this year,
but her coconut cake remains strong in my Christmas memories, for which I'm so
thankful.
--State Rep. Cullie Tarleton
● I grew up near Brevard,
North Carolina, and attended a
small, one-room Methodist church out in the country. Every year we had a
Christmas pageant, complete with bathrobes, singing all the carols that we had
in the Cokesbury Hymnal. And every Christmas we all got a gift bag from the
church. Every bag had exactly the same thing in it -- an apple, an orange, a
couple of cashews, a peppermint stick, maybe some other candy in a hit year. I
remember thinking, even as a child, that it was the perfect Christmas gift. We
all got exactly the same thing, no matter how old we were, no matter whether we
were church members or not, no matter whether we were members but only came to
church for the pageant. In my very youthful and simplistic understanding, it
was the perfect symbol not only of justice but of grace, poured out on
everybody, generously, constantly.
Now I know that justice is more than mere equality. It is also
proportionality. But I still think that grace and mercy and compassion are
boundless, deserved by all, regardless of station or potential or past, and
needed by far more than will say.
--David Holden
● When I was about 12, I discovered my mother’s secret stash of
chocolate-covered cherries. She had buried them in the bottom of the old
chest-style freezer, under the chuck steaks and frozen chickens and pints of
corn-off-the-cob – all the stuff that we put up every year on our little west Texas farm.
I knew she had a secret stash, and I had been searching high and low for it.
Chocolate-covered cherries were her main weakness at Christmastime, and she hid
them from a household full of males because – let’s face it – we would have
eaten every one of them in approximately three minutes.
I had gone hunting into the freezer because I’d run out of every other
possible hiding place, and lo & behold! there it was … the little 4x8 box
marked, deliciously, “Cordiale Cherries.” I lifted the lid. Just three of the
little compartments were empty of their cherries, out of a dozen total, so
Mother had been carefully controlling her own impulse to gobble. Craftily, I
lifted the bottom cardboard to reveal the second layer of cherries and snagged
one. She’d never notice.
Awww, the gooey pleasure, and I discovered the unutterable charm of a frozen chocolate-covered cherry, so much
more interesting in texture and temperature!
I went back the next day and took another from the bottom layer and another
the day after that, noticing that now there were four cherries missing from the
top layer. It dawned on me by the fourth day that eventually my mother would be
lifting that cardboard separation and would discover my larceny, and I got
physically queasy with the dread of it. What would I say? How would I lie? What
would she do to me? I stopped pilfering, went cold-turkey on chocolate-covered
cherries, and waited for retribution.
Christmas is for lovers, and my mother demonstrably loved me. Days passed,
and then weeks, and though she must have discovered by then the missing
candies, she said nothing to me about it. I thought I’d gotten away with
something.
On Christmas morning I found under the tree an even bigger box of Cordiale
Cherries with my name on it. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both
knew I’d be a better boy, probably, by ’n’ by.
--J.W. Williamson
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