On Christmas mornings in my youth my brother and sister and I would bolt awake shortly after dawn and dash into the living room to ogle the mound of gifts beneath our silver tinsel Christmas tree. With a rush of excitement we'd have a go at our Xmas stockings that were laid out in our traditional spots around the tree and stuffed with such goodies as playing cards, jacks and rubber-ball, whimsical surprises, colored pencils, dice, and, my perennial favorite, the Whitman's Chocolates four piece sampler. I'd make short work of the chocolates and jacked up on sugar and giddy with expectations my siblings and I would wade through the gifts and try to guess by heft and a couple shakes what was inside each box. Shortly thereafter my parents would get up while kidding us about the early hour of their rising. And with good cheer my mother would whip up a festive pancake breakfast. Then we would gather around the Christmas tree and turn the mound of gifts into a mound of torn apart and discarded wrapping paper.
One year we had a second Christmas at the house of my grandparents Nana and Pa. On the trip there however I was nauseated and we stopped at a pharmacy in a city along our way with the hopes of getting coke syrup to settle my stomach. The pharmacist told my father that he was out of luck that the store didn't have what he was looking for and that there wasn't another drugstore for many miles to come. With disappointment we drove off. But we hadn't gotten more than a block away when I spotted a sign for another drugstore. With the pharmacist's insistence that there wasn't another drugstore for miles around still ringing in his ears my father stopped with some reluctance. It couldn't be. Sure enough however it was a second drugstore. It also had the coke syrup. My father got back in the car with the curative and a good mind to punch the first pharmacist in the nose for lying to him when he had a sick kid to attend to. My mother said to chalked it up to the guy being a jerk and my father swallowed his anger. And we were once again on the road. I would however remember that lie for many years to come and it would fester and lead in part to an over all cynical world view: you could never really trust anyone.
Christmas Eve in 1969, when I was twelve, our family was invited to a party at the home of Jack Dempsey. The festivities took place in his cellar. It had been converted into a family entertainment center equipped with throw-rugs, plush seating, stereo system, and a bar. Jack Dempsey was like my father a prison guard. Though friends however the two men were of different mind-sets. For, unlike my father, Jack Dempsey had ambition. (This I'd learned through an overheard discussion between my parents.) He was going to school, studying for tests, and ascending the ranks in the prison system. I was in awe of the man and his possessions, for he was I could readily see better off than us. Here was my first example of someone not living by the code of my parents: Be grateful for what you've got, a philosophy honed in large part by their having lived through the pains and wants of the Great Depression. Here was proof of the possibility that I might one day aspire and claim a place in a strata of class above my family's own. Later that night Santa arrived at the party and handed me a gift. It was the 45-rpm record of the Temptations performing Cloud Nine.
Over the years of course besides the goodies from Santa we also gave one another gifts. One year early on I gave my parents a pewter cocktail set that I'd picked up at a church sponsored tag sale. They never used it. One day a year or so later I found it packed away on a cellar shelf for useless junk and experienced disappointment that ached and throbbed in my chest. But life went on. In the Christmases of my callow teens I gave my brother albums of bands I liked with the thoughts I'd later claim them for myself. Our stocking stuffers changed too in my latter teens and early twenties. Instead of jacks and rubber-ball and colored pencils we got packs of cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets. Some traditions however remained. Our Whitman's Chocolates sampler I was always happy to see was a consistent stocking-stuffer. And somewhere along the way my parents one year gave my brother a drum-set. For they were generous and as I'd one day come to see very tolerant and giving to sacrifice their peace and quiet to my brother's diligent practicing and more to the point my daily pounding out lumbering renditions of the drum solo in Inagaddavida.
In the weeks leading up Christmas time I could be a nuisance, too. This was especially true the year I got it into my head that I just had to have Lotus the three album set of Santana live in Japan. I connived and wheedled my parents in the weeks leading up to the Christmas. Every day I'd mentioned the albums. They told me to lay off for crying out loud. But I would not can it. I badgered on. I just had to have it. They did not disappoint me. Come Christmas day a gift wrapped Lotus was laid out in the mound beneath the Christmas tree. My father an ardent Frank Sinatra and lush jazz fan humored me and turned over the family stereo to a playing of that all so important gift. As I glowed with each guitar solo my father shrugged his shoulders. To each his own.
Adulthood brought along a more subdued Christmas spirit. My parents however lost nothing in regards to their generosity. There remained no matter the year a mound of gifts under the tree come each Christmas. Sure in those later years the gifts were more utilitarian and the stocking stuffers bore less whimsy. But my parents gave freely of themselves and took more delight in the gifts they were giving rather than getting.
Christmas in 1989, found us gathered around my mother's hospital bed. We gave her that year comfortable sleeping clothes. She would as it turned out never get to wear them. For three days later she died. And Christmas as I knew it, a magical day when all slights and familial squabbles were forgiven with a blanket amnesty, was forever linked to the past. In subsequent years I would experience melancholy each holiday season. But I would carry on and find in the quiet hours of Xmas some solace in my cherished memories of that special day of the year when we as a family somehow rose above our individual human frailties and loved one another unconditionally.
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