-By John Armor
It was a simple question, posed to us in the Highlands Writers Group. “What was the best Christmas gift you ever received?” That question made me think deeply.
I discovered that gifts change as years pass. I don’t mean the obvious, that you get different gifts in different years. I mean that the gifts you did get, even long, long ago, change with time.
I was six in 1949, when the first Christmas I clearly remember, came around. We lived at 205 W. College Avenue, in Salisbury, Maryland. On the Eastern Shore, Salisbury was, and mostly still is, a sleepy little agricultural town. We had a chicken wire enclosure in the back yard that held laying chickens, one rooster to keep them on their toes, and a couple ducks. We also had a one-car garage no longer used for a car.
To my six-year-old mind, that was adequate space for a pony. I began giving hints in August for a pony and a bale of hay, come Christmas. To make a long story short, a pony was not in any way a practical gift. As I recall, my main gift was a bicycle with training wheels. But that’s not what I came to talk about.
That first house I lived in was perfect for Christmas morning. The staircase from the bedrooms was closed by walls, as it came halfway down the back wall of the house. Then, there was a large, square, open landing as the stairs turned to come down into the living room. When we went to bed the night before, there was nothing of Christmas in that room. But the next morning, ah, the next morning…..
There were five of us, then. Three boys of which I was the youngest, plus my folks. I still believed in Santa Claus. I now know that my older brothers were under threat of death if they wised me up about Santa before I figured it out for myself. When we reached that landing the next morning, I would see a fully decorated tree and gifts all over the floor. But there was one important step before that.
There was a family tradition which involved us leaving the largest stocking we could find outside our doors on Christmas Eve. I had an over-the-calf, stretchy, grey wool athletic sock. The next morning it contained an orange, several tangerines, a small box of Sun Maid raisons, a bunch of walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, and a small box of Jordan almonds. There were a couple handfuls of assorted hard candies. There was also a hinged metal nut-cracker and a bowl for the nut shells. Connected to the goodies was a requirement that we boys had to stay in our rooms with our candies and nuts, until our parents came to get us.
It was a generation later, when I was in the parent business, that I learned the importance of that sock full of goodies. By then, I had put together my share of children’s gifts that come in a large box. They also come with instructions apparently written in English, but obviously filtered through two other languages beforehand. And I had altered the family tradition so the tree plus all the toys no longer had to be completed in one night.
In short, when my oldest child was the same age I was, the year that I wanted a pony, I realized the stresses and challenges my parents went through, turning that ordinary living room into a Christmas garden in a single night. They had frazzled patience and a serious lack of sleep. That’s why it was essential that we kids be kept in our rooms until late on Christmas morning when we would come down to that landing and see the tree and gifts that Santa Claus had brought.
In short, that sock was chock full of love, not just candy and nuts. That fat grey sock with a red trim was the finest gift I ever received, or would receive, or could receive. It just took me a generation to discover that simple truth.
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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