A few days before, Michelle invited us to her house for dinner and to help decorate the tree. When the time came, she was overtaken by a nasty sinus infection but managed to soldier through.
Christmas morning, we were over early to see Ben and Ella open presents. It was a wild time of wrapping paper everywhere, oohs and aahs, and happy chaos. When the last present was opened, Sheila and I went back home to mind the turkey and dressing cooking at our house while Michelle finished the rest of the meal.A couple of hours later we were back for what has become our traditional Christmas meal, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, Grandma Cook's sweet potatoes and Robert's family favorite cheese grits. For dessert, Michelle baked a pumpkin pie and an absolutely decadent chocolate cake layered with a rich cream cheese frosting and infused with Kirschvasser.
After lunch, Michelle and I settled in to watch Holiday Inn while the kids played with their toys and Sheila and Robert worked on a puzzle. Holiday Inn was a tradition in our house as Michelle was growing up. We always watched it. This year, I was asleep on the couch in fifteen minutes and snored through part of the movie.
I couldn't really have imagined a Christmas like that when I was a child. I remember Mom and Dad putting away a dollar a week (a lot of money when you only made forty or fifty per week) to pay for our Christmas. I would get one or two presents and valued them highly. There would be a simple meal, chicken or pork chops. There might have been a canned ham or maybe even a real ham if the company had been good to the employees that year. Once or twice there was a turkey. "Christmas" was for kids then. I don't ever remember Mom or Dad getting a Christmas present. We usually attended a short church service on Christmas day.The kind of Christmas we enjoyed this year would have been the stuff of dreams and television in my childhood and certainly not the reality of a factory row family living in a four room farm house and running cattle to make ends meet. The values of Christmas then were first religious. We celebrated the birth of Christ. I remember Dad sitting in his chair reading the Christmas story from Matthew ... after Mom asked him to of course. I remember being taught to be thankful that we were warm and dry, with adequate clothing and good food to eat. And, I remember being taught to be thankful that we were all together because that wasn't always the case for some people, particularly as I grew older. During those years, just like now, the young men of some families were .... elsewhere.
I hate to admit this but I am always a little embarrassed and a little uncomfortable with the amount of money we spend on presents for each other. Granted, we have the money and we are not extravagant like some but still it seems excessive. There were so many gifts that the children couldn't appreciate their value. Excess sometimes leads to ingratitude. Little Ben was happiest stomping around in his new boots, playing with a whiz bang toy truck that Gwenda bought him and tearing down the hall to "dunk" a tiny basketball in the toddler hoop set that Sheila bought him. The rest of it was just stacked aside for later. At times like this, my mind often goes back to a Christmas season while I was in the Navy. Part of our "winning their hearts and minds" cargo for Colombia was several pallet loads of donated toys to be given to the local charities. Street kids were everywhere around the docks. Some had no family and no place to live. All hustled a living around the docks the best way they could. I was on duty guarding the open bow doors. One kid just stood out there looking in at all of those American castoff toys. We watched him for a while. He apparently wasn't a lookout for larger thieves and he never made a move toward the ramp. He just stared at the cargo there on the ramp waiting to be unloaded.
After a while, somebody on our guard detail reached through the netting and pulled out a very used but still functional toy trumpet. He handed it to the kid and motioned for him to scoot. The little boy was wide eyed at first and then a huge smile broke out on his face. He ran off a few steps and began tooting his new horn. The whole time we were there, we heard that kid tooting that cheap, half worn out, toy plastic trumpet around the docks. Somebody griped that we should have given him something quieter but it wasn't a serious gripe. It was obviously the best toy the kid had ever owned. Maybe the only one.
I think we sometimes forget just how blessed we are.
