I turned seventy-one less than two weeks ago. My age and current reflections on the Christmas season influenced the writing of The Ghost and Christmas Magic. I’ve been thinking a lot about the elders in my life who no longer join us around the Christmas tree. Or maybe they are in spirit; I just can’t see them.
When writing The Ghost and Christmas Magic, I thought a lot about family Christmas traditions. In truth, it was a highly personal reflection. Growing up, my Christmas stocking was one of my favorite traditions.
It wasn’t about getting stuff; it was about the love Mom poured into the stocking stuffers. Gift giving was Mom’s love language. She would wrap each tiny stocking gift in Christmas wrapping paper. And every Christmas as my sister and I would eagerly open our stockings, Dad would remind us how he just got oranges and walnuts in his stocking when he was a little boy, and how he had to wait until after Christmas dinner to open gifts. Oh, it wasn’t said in bitterness, but playful teasing—however, it was all true.
On our first Christmas at Havasu Palms, I had just turned fourteen, and my sister was eighteen. Our previous Christmases had been extravagant, with an abundance of gifts—but that year my parents had poured all their money into the new business venture, they had no extra cash, and we understood instead of a mountain of gifts that Christmas, my sister and I could each ask for one thing we wanted. I believe my sister asked for a makeup mirror, and I asked for a sewing box.
That year, my sister’s and my stockings proved to be the most memorable. We were living out in the middle of nowhere—literally. There was nowhere for Mom to go Christmas shopping for stocking stuffers, and Internet shopping was not a thing. And we didn’t even have a real telephone—only an unreliable mobile phone in Dad’s truck, which wasn’t something you could use for catalogue shopping.
Despite the shopping challenge, our stockings were stuffed with tiny, wrapped packages, as they had been for all our previous Christmases. Upon unwrapping the stocking stuffers, we soon discovered where Mom had gone Christmas shopping—Havasu Palms’s little store (I wrote about that store and posted a picture in the previous blog post).
My sister and I found it utterly hilarious. Mom had wrapped candy bars, packets of gum, and cheesy Havasu Palms souvenirs the previous owners of Havasu Palms had stocked in the store. One was a little hula girl that both my sister and I wish we still had. There was also a little metal tin of pain medication (I remember Midol, my sis remembers Bufferin) in each of our stockings—but instead of the pills, they each contained a neatly folded five-dollar bill.
My sister and I agree that the stockings from Christmas 1968 were our favorites, which proves, if gift-giving is your love language, it doesn’t mean it has to cost a lot of money.
This Christmas will be a quiet one for my husband and me. It will be my second Christmas without my mom. It will be over thirty Christmases without my dad. I know some people complain about how the mental load of preparing for Christmas falls on the mother—while the men in the family just show up. But that was not true for my parents or my marriage. And I don’t think that is the case in the marriages of my daughter and son.
My dad was like a big, excited kid at Christmas. I remember him painting Christmas murals on the windows of our first Covina house. (Dad was artistic, like my daughter.) He made his homemade fudge and popcorn during the holidays, oyster stew on Christmas Eve, eggs benedict on Christmas morning, and prepared the turkey and stuffing for Christmas dinner. He and Mom worked side by side in the kitchen. And Dad was usually the one to take my sister and me to buy the Christmas tree.
While Mom was the primary gift shopper, every year Dad would pick out something special for my sister and me—something just from him. His gift for Mom was always last minute and extravagant.
I know our adult children often roll their eyes when we tell stories and reminisce about days gone by. They see it as us living in the past, and they find it especially annoying that we often repeat the same stories.
But the truth is, it’s not about living in the past—it’s about embracing the rich memories of our life, which is especially comforting as we look down the road and understand this journey of ours is coming to its final mile. That doesn’t have to be a sad thing—it’s not if the journey was filled with adventure, memorable experiences, and people we love, even if those people are no longer with us.