One of my favorite holiday memories is of skiing the sparkling, snow-packed slopes of the Santa Fe Ski Basin, just a 20-minute drive up Canyon Road from my low-rent apartment in the adobe city below.

I traversed those intermediate trails from morning till night on Christmas Day, nearly the only skier on the mountain, and barely stopped long enough to have a cup of hot chili -- my Christmas meal -- and to tighten my boots.

I've rarely been all that sentimental or even excited about Christmas, except for those few years when my age was in the single digits and there was always a slight possibility that something "wicked cool" -- in the language of the day -- might be under the tree that morning.

That was back when I spent the weeks before Christmas hunting down the presents that my mother had hidden somewhere in our cramped, little house, and nearly always in their cluttered bedroom closet.

As the eldest, I took on that job with a zeal that could overcome all obstacles. Stacking a chair with books, clothing, even shoes, I climbed as high as possible to poke my fingers all around the upper shelves until I felt the distinctive corner of a box. All worthwhile presents, I knew, came in a box.

Next step was to carefully examine each box, which was already wrapped in red or green paper, for a tiny, faint initial -- B, D or A -- that was usually, but not always, penciled in near the tape. I was the B -- for Becky, and those were the only boxes I cared about. The others were for Dicky and Amy.

In my most brazen moments, I tore back a corner of the wrapping paper, bit by bit, trying to see what was inside. It wasn't enough to know something had your name on it, I had to know what it was before it finally became mine -- I am still a failure at waiting patiently or handling the agony of anticipation.

After figuring out, or not figuring out, what the box contained, I would then try to tuck the torn part back in with the rest of the paper, assuming my mother would never in a million years notice that I'd been snooping. She might later give me a hard look, and even ask, but I had developed and honed such fine skills of denial that short of stretching me on the rack, I would never confess.

My younger brother and sister would later beg me for insights into what Santa might have brought them -- they were no better at waiting than I was -- and I would eventually give in, knowingly but menacingly telling them that "yeah, yeah, they got something for you, too. But just don't tell or I'll kill you."

Unlike most kids I knew, who tore open their presents the minute the sun came up on Christmas morning, flinging ribbons and bows and paper and boxes aside to get to the next one, we were forced to eat a bowl of Rice Chex or Cheerios first and then open each gift one at a time.

That meant sitting through my brother getting a stupid cap pistol or cowboy hat and my sister getting a stupid pair of hand-knit mittens or colored pencils and my mother getting a stupid box of chocolates and my father getting a stupid winter hat that looked just like the stupid winter hat he got last year.

I don't remember most of what I got for Christmas as a child -- unlike my husband who has lists of every present he received starting at age two -- except that I know there was an Easy-Bake Oven one year and a Midge doll and a Barbie doll another. With teeny-tiny fashion outfits hand-made by my mother.

I come from a long line of Grinches -- my father rarely picked up our tree until two days or even the day before Christmas, choosing one of the last on the lot, the one that had been left behind. I appreciate this far more now than I did then -- having such a scrawny Christmas tree was painful at the time, especially when comparing it to the big, lush ones that filled the corners of other people's living rooms for weeks before the big day.

Fortunately, though, this humiliation did set me up to love the tear-inducing finale of A Charlie Brown Christmas, when Charlie Brown, depressed from all the commercialism, tries to decorate the drooping branches of a nearly needle-less tree for a school play. He gives up and goes away.

Finally, Linus finds the tree and starts to breathe life into it with ornaments and flashing lights from Snoopy's doghouse -- in the end, the little tree is glorious and all of the characters gather round to sing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."

This year, my husband and I are planning a big Christmas Day brunch for two, then the unwrapping of a few simple presents -- one at a time -- before heading over to the local cinema to catch the black comedy "Up in the Air," which seems to be opening nationwide that day just for empty-nesters like us.

In the meantime, don't tell my husband I've been snooping around in the closet.

Photos:
First: Did you really think that was me? www.abc-of-skiing.com
Second: Christmas card my husband made before we were married.
Third: Knitter's website: www.gettinitpegged.com
Fourth: Christmas card my husband made after we were married.