In reality there was a lot of angst and stress in my family around and because of Christmas. There was never much money and yet my mother and grandmother wanted it to be perfect and that meant lush and lavish and extravagant.

      All that just meant that the winter coats we got were well made out of good wool by my grandmother and hemmed up enough to make it through several winters and several growth spurts. The doll Santa brought might have been store bought but the clothes were hand-made and one year they saved all sorts of food cans and boxes for us to have a make believe grocery store, complete with baskets they repainted from the florist shop that they got with old bouquets.

     Each gift, no matter how small, was wrapped carefully with a pretty bow and gift tag. The bows were recycled and the gift tags were cut from last year’s Christmas cards with pinking shears to make them fancy and we loved them. The biggest, best gift I remember getting from Santa as a kid was a plastic record player that I shared with my sister and we each got 2 record albums to go with it. Mine were “Mary Poppins” and “Nikki: Dog of the North” and my sister got “101 Dalmations” and “Little Toot.” We listened to these over and over again…To this day I probably remember every word of all of these records.

       Over the years my parents got divorced and I worried that Christmas would never be the same but my parents made Christmas happen in spite of their differences. It was different but it was still Christmas. There were special treats, a beautiful tree full of glass balls and tinsel and on Christmas Day itself everyone got dressed up. When we were old enough to stay up really late we went to the Christmas Eve service at church where we sang all the familiar old songs and saw all our friends and their families, too. Each year we looked forward to going to these services when we were home from college and later still when we had our own young families. Looking back it was a true piece of New England Americana but back then we just thought it was what everybody did.

       As I grew into becoming Santa along with my young husband I realized how much love and effort our parents had put into this special day and we tried to make the day equally special for our own children. The family grew and included in laws and step sisters and things got sort of complicated. Some years the magic seemed to have died but still, we could usually find some good laughs hidden among the torn papers and leftover bows and the squabbles in the kitchen.

       Today our own children are grown and our young grandchildren look at our old Christmas tree ornaments and ask where they came from. They look at the old pictures and I do, too. So many people are gone, missing from our Christmas table forever but as I look around there are new ones here, also full of laughter and love. Christmas has changed but it is still Christmas and I still love the excuse to be indulgent, to bake silly cookies that look like my corgi and to hear the old songs that take me back to my own childhood Christmases. These days we have become the old folks and the little children are a generation removed.

        It is true that Christmas is way too commercial and that sometimes it seems our society is way out of bounds with the spending and the celebrating. It is true that many dig deep for charities at this time of year, forgetting them when the summer sun returns. It is true that many seem to have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas and that others are offended if anyone mentions the religious aspect.

      It is also true that at this time of year, no matter what our spiritual or religious beliefs, we think of giving to others instead of getting things for ourselves. We feel happy and hopeful when we see children smiling and waving at Santa Claus and we give dollars to those more in need than ourselves. Even the grumpiest, stingiest among us can usually muster at least a few smiles when we hear the little kids sing and really, that may be the greatest gift we can give each other, a real honest to goodness smile.

        And so at Christmas I am sometimes tempted to say “Bah, Humbug!” and make like Scrooge or the Grinch but in the end I always seem to hear the little kids singing, even if it’s only the little kids in my heart. Their song overpowers the grumpies every time.

        I’m glad Christmas comes around each year. My beliefs and expectations have changed a lot over the years but when a sudden twinkle of light from the star on top of the tree flashes and awakens all my happy memories and merges them with all my hopes for my grandchildren’s futures as a star did oh so many years ago time seems to collapse into a moment of hope and joy. And that is why I still love Christmas. It’s the hope and joy that are the real gifts of the season. The rest is all just wrapping.