A dose of Christmas past
When I was growing up, my mom wanted the birth of Jesus to be the main thing, not presents. She told us when we were young that Santa wasn’t real, just a puppet of materialistic manipulation, and if someone hadn’t created him first, Hallmark and Walmart would have in a joint venture. Even though the birth of Jesus was supposed to be the main event, we did get a few gifties on Christmas morn. Money was always tighter than tight. Mom would comb Goodwill for the months leading up to Christmas for stuffed animals that didn’t look totally shabby, or other toys that weren’t missing too many pieces. We never went into Christmas with expectations. I still didn’t enjoy watching the toy commercials leading up to Christmas, foreshadowing of what other kids would be playing with in the post Christmas wake. On Christmas morning mom would put a few unwrapped items out for us, displayed on a white sheet. I always knew my mom was doing her best to give us a special morning, and mostly, that was enough for all of us.
Of the gifts I received as a child, I remember three. One was a soft doll with clothes my sister sewed for me by hand, took her weeks. Another was a record from my brother by Jean-Pierre Rampal, famous flutist, his first present to me. My brother had gone away to high school for the year and came back looking and acting all civilized, complete with presents for all of us. The last was a new, not used, stuffed Snoopy. My mom and I were walking through Sears and they had a display of him in all different sizes. She said she could afford to get me the smallest one for Christmas. I made some snide comment about how we never got anything good, like big stuffed animals. I could see the sadness in her eyes immediately. On Christmas morning the big Snoopy was on the white sheet. She had gone and exchanged the small Snoopy worth a bus ticket, for the big one worth two week’s of groceries. I came to despise that smiling dog. Every time I saw him, I remembered that deeply sad look in my mom’s eyes in the store, and felt like crap.
There was a time when our kids were smaller, when I went nuts on toys at Christmas. I wanted to give them the type of elusive Christmas I had dreamed of as a kid. I thought they would be over the top amazed and appreciative, award me some kind of Christmas Oscar. My golden statue dude never arrived. Since they had never been part of a poorer family, my Christmas creations were status quo for them. They’d never felt what it was like to enter stores to only look at stuff you can’t have, to wear secondhand clothes, live on potatoes, noodles, and eggs. I came to realize I was doing those over the top Christmases for no one but me. After the lightbulb flicker, I gave my head a shake and stopped using Christmas as therapy, toned down the gift-giving frenzy. But here and now, once again, I’m strongly inclined to dial the gift-giving down yet another significant notch.
A dose of Christmas present
Yesterday and today I went into the city to do Christmas shopping. Living here, however, doesn’t fuel the normal hot pistons of holiday materialism. I was born and raised American, I should have materialism happily coursing through my veins no matter where I’m living, with shopping turbodrive kicking in at Christmas like an internal alarm clock.
At first I attributed my soft desire to shop-til-I-drop to the lack of snow, or not cutting down a tree with the girls, or not putting up my mama tree with only fancy white ornaments, not wrapping teacher’s gifts. But the more I unpacked my dulled desire, I realized that everyday when I walk outside my gate, I see moms and kids hauling firewood on their heads, old men begging, the kids selling bracelets in the street or shining shoes, the women selling bananas for a few cents a piece. I just can’t spend a lot of money when living in this reality.
Here in our Guatevillage, Christmas is low key. There are few indicators that the holidays are upon us, other than vendors in the market selling reindeer made out of twigs, or twinkling lights with music. Just try to find lights that don’t twinkle. You can bust the music box with one accurate swing of ahammer or eight inaccurate ones.
Most people don’t have extra money to spend on nonessentials. Many families do come together for tamales, a special treat saved for Christmas and birthdays. The children may or may not get a gift at midnight, fairly inexpensive ones like dollar store quality back home. For the affluent, Christmas probably looks more like the North American model, but I haven’t seen any of those yet.
While here, not only have we abandoned parts of our Christmas past, like the explosion of presents under the tree, but also attending about 25 Christmas functions at work, church, with family, each of the kid’s schools, and at their extra-curricular activities. Our current Christmas doesn’t involve even one formal or informal program, and not even a meal with others, since most of our friends go back to the States.
This year we will have Christmas in Monterrico, a beach on the Pacific coast. We also did this last year as a family, and I’ve been told by the girls that it is now officially a family tradition. The girls loved setting the baby turtles go into the ocean, like Christmas presents to the sea. My youngest called them tortugitas-regalitas, little turtle presents. I will never forget those moments.
We will have a Christmas meal, perhaps buying tamales from the woman who sells them on the street, we will open a few gifts. But the main gifts with be the simplicity of spending the day together, reading in hammocks by the sound of the waves, then gifting some turtles their freedom and watching them shimmy on the black sand at sunset into the Pacific. I already know that like the three gifts I still remember from my childhood, this will be one of those Christmases which will remain etched in my memory.
A hope for Christmas Future
I’m not quite at a place where I could go present-free. On the gifting continuum, I’m more like a vegetarian who doesn’t want to go vegan. I still enjoy giving a token gift or two. But it is impossible for me to live in this place, surrounded by poor people, and lavish my kids with expensive gifts. My girls want for nothing, and we buy them stuff year-round in both the “needs” and “wants” categories. This year I’m giving my 14 yr old a simple bedspread, some pjs, three headbands, a pen, and some chocolate. Even those few items cost more than the average worker makes here in more than half a month. My hope is that even when we are doing Christmases in more affluent parts of the world, that we will conduct our gifting as if there are people carrying firewood on their heads just outside the walls of our house.