December 5, 2004
If there is no joyous way to
give a festive gift, give love away.
~Author Unknown~
Christmas Memories
By Richard Exley
"When I think of the joy of giving, it is to that homemade Christmas that my thoughts return."
Brenda and I are just "kids" -- she is twenty, and I am one year older -- serving our first church. It's a small fellowship, numbering less than thirty members, located in the farming community of Holly, Colorado. It has been a lean year, and financially things are tight for us. If the truth be known, we are flat broke, and there isn't a way in the world we can afford gifts for those we love.
As I stand before the window in my small study, brooding over our unhappy plight, I recall a scene from Truman Capote's little book, A Christmas Memory. Seven-year-old Buddy and his distant cousin, a white-haired woman of sixty-something with whom he lives, are making Christmas gifts. "Tie-dye scarves for the ladies, for the men a home-brewed lemon and licorice and aspirin syrup to be taken 'at the first Symptoms of a Cold and after Hunting.'"
For each other they are building kites, like last year and the year before that. Kites are not their first choice, but their creativity is severely crimped by their poverty. If money were no object, she would buy him a bicycle, and he would get her a pearl-handled knife, a radio, and a whole pound of chocolate-covered cherries.
Suddenly she looks up, her bright eyes gleaming, and says with a frightful intensity, "It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have. Only one of these days I will, Buddy. Locate you a bike. Don't ask how. Steal it maybe."
That same feeling, or its close kin, now churns in my chest. A flannel nightgown is what I want to buy Brenda and a fuzzy housecoat to keep her warm against the winter cold, which has a way of finding every crack in this old parsonage. Earlier, when we still had hopes of a Christmas windfall, she mentioned how nice it would be to have one.
Of late she has concerned herself with other things, like Christmas decorations which we already have from last year. Beneath her determined gaiety, though, I sense her disappointment. Not about the nightgown, she can do without that. What troubles her is not being able to purchase gifts for those she loves. Brenda is a champion gift-giver, and no one enjoys it more. She has been known to spend hours, days even, searching for the perfect gift. Unfortunately, with Christmas less than a week away, it is becoming readily obvious that there will be no shopping spree for her this year, no opportunity to search for that perfect gift.
We try to encourage each other. She reminds me that we are blessed with loving families and caring friends. Agreeing, I add that no one has a right to complain who has a roof over his head and food enough to eat. Still, in spite of our brave assurances, self-pity seeps into our spirits, especially mine.
Brenda does what she can to make the holidays special. She decorates the house and bakes Christmas goodies to the accompaniment of carols emanating from the clock-radio which sits on the kitchen counter. I try to get in the holiday spirit, too; but in truth, it all seems futile to me. Even the tinsel-covered tree, standing before the window in the living room, looks somehow forlorn without any Christmas packages beneath its evergreen bows. At least it seems so to me.
More and more I find myself succumbing to lengthy periods of self-pity. I hate it, but I seem powerless to do anything about it. Moping around the house, I nearly drive Brenda to despair. Finally, she takes matters into her own hands and on a bright sunlit morning three days before Christmas she announces, "We may not be able to afford to buy gifts, but we can make them."
Though I attempt to talk her out of such madness, citing my artistic ineptitude, there is no reasoning with her. Her mind is made up, and in a few minutes we are bundled up and in the car.
As I drive, hunched behind the wheel like a youthful Scrooge, she ignores me and with childlike excitement describes the arrangement she intends to make for her parents from spray painted wild flowers and driftwood.
"And what," I ask sullenly, trying to bait her into an argument, "am I supposed to make my folks?"
Refusing to take the bait, she continues her Christmas monologue with unabashed enthusiasm. By the time we reach the river bottom south of town, I am beginning to warm up to the idea myself. Maybe I'll make my folks a TV lamp. If I use parts salvaged from a discarded lamp left by a previous pastor, it will cost almost nothing.
Parking the car, we step into a dazzling world of winter beauty. December frost has coated every branch and thistle with a brilliance that glitters and dances against the blue of the sky. Even the unsightly strands of rusting barb wire have been transformed into a thing of beauty.
Frost coated yellow grass crunches beneath our feet as we set out in search of raw materials from which to create a Christmas like none we've ever had before. Brenda heads downriver, while I turn upstream in search of the perfect piece of driftwood. We split up, not because we're angry, at least not anymore, but because we can cover more ground this way. From time to time we call to each other, and clouds of vapor accompany our shouted words. After a couple of hours we return to the car to sort our booty. Brenda has gathered spiky Russian thistles, milk weed pods and an assortment of dried flowers which we can't identify. My contribution is a collection of driftwood.
Once our materials are safely packed away, she extracts a thermos of hot chocolate from the back seat. As we munch on Christmas cookies, the bright December sun washes the last of the frost from the river bottom, leaving it a dull brown. It does nothing, however, to dampen our rejuvenated spirits. As we drive home, I find myself thinking that it is finally starting to feel like Christmas. Back at the parsonage, we set up shop on the kitchen table. Using a variety of supplies left over from her crafts, Brenda creates a dried-flower arrangement of rustic beauty. After cannibalizing the discarded lamp from the cellar, I use the salvaged parts and a driftwood stump to make my folks a TV lamp, which sits in their bedroom still.
Somehow we manage to make it home for Christmas, and in the company of family and friends our poverty is soon forgotten. It returns momentarily when it is time to open the gifts, and we wait with fearful pride for our parents to make over our handiwork. They do not disappoint us. In truth, they seemed to cherish these homemade gifts above the more expensive store-bought ones of later years.
More than a quarter century has passed since that fateful Christmas, and we have had many opportunities to exchange gifts. On occasion they have been rather extravagant, at least by our modest standards. Still, when I think of the joy of giving, it is to that homemade Christmas that my thoughts return. Perhaps it's because love has a way of turning ordinary things into treasures of the heart, and that's what Christmas is all about.
song playing....You Gave Us Hope