The Free Press: Getting Christmas Right, At Last, by Joe Nocera:
When I recall the Christmases of my childhood, I can’t help but wince a little. It’s not that they weren’t magical; they surely were. I can picture in my mind’s eye coming down the stairs—no, racing down the stairs—with my eight brothers and sisters, all of us pushing our way into our small living room, and looking for a piece of white cardboard with our name on it.
That’s where our individual stack of presents would be: bicycles and wooden trains; toy trucks and Play-Doh; Hula-Hoops and Lincoln Logs and cowboy and Indian getups, complete with cap guns. (Hey, it was the 1950s.) The lights on the tree would be on, and the cookies left for Santa half eaten. We would scream with delight as we ripped open each present, and then show them to our “surprised” parents, who beamed with their own delight. We kids fought a lot growing up, but never on Christmas morning. …
I know that it gave my parents great joy to hear our cacophony of squeals on Christmas morning. But as I would realize much later, their approach to present-giving had an effect on me that was not entirely for the better. …
I realize that it was done out of love, but surely our love for [our parents], and theirs for us, would have been no different if they had given us two or three presents instead of the 10 or 12 or however many we received each year.
I wish I could say that I had absorbed that lesson by the time I became a parent myself, but I hadn’t. My first wife and I raised three children in Northampton, Massachusetts. … My wife and I would make lists of what we should get each child, and every year, I would promise to stick to the list. But I never did. I would spend afternoons in New York scouring the stores for their gifts instead of doing my work. As Christmas closed in—and with my wife telling me that we had more than enough—I would run out to find one more gift. Or two more. Or three more.
And on Christmas morning, my kids would squeal with delight as they opened their presents and my wife and I would feel the same kind of deep pleasure that my parents must have felt when I was a child. But I always knew I’d overdone it, because some of the presents were forgotten five minutes after they’d been opened. …
My parents are no longer with us, so I can’t ask them why they felt the need to buy us so many Christmas gifts. But I know why I did it. It was my way of trying to make up for being an absentee father, my way of saying, “See how much I love you?” I was mimicking my parents’ behavior, failing to understand—as I believe they failed to understand—that there are far better ways to show your children love than to give them a mountain of stuff.
I got remarried in my 50s, and today I have five grandchildren and a 15-year-old son. I haven’t been a believer since high school, but my son and wife have both put Jesus at the center of their lives. On Christmas Day, nothing will be more important to them than attending church and contemplating the birth of Christ.
This year, a present or two will be exchanged among various family members, but it will all be low key. My days of being agitated that I haven’t gotten enough presents are over. It took me a while, but I’ve learned that what matters isn’t what you do for the ones you love on Christmas but what you do for them all the other days of the year.
None of my grown children are afflicted with the compulsion that my parents and I had to buy presents. They and their spouses are all wonderful parents, calm and wise and with more perspective than I ever had when they were little. I usually email them and ask what their kids might like from their “Grandpa Joe.” They make a suggestion. I try to get it and bring it when I see them over the Christmas holiday. The kids open the one thing I’ve gotten for them, look at it, marvel at it, show their parents, and then (usually) start to play with it. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get a hug.
What took me so long to get it, I wonder. Merry Christmas.
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