The Christmas Heart

Over the weekend, a friend from college posted a Christmas memory on Facebook about being “dirt poor” … his words … as a child and how that impacted Christmas for him and his seven siblings. Christmas stockings were filled not with trinkets and “stuffers”, but with fresh fruit and hard candy, both being treats for his family in those days. Comments that followed reminded me how being raised with limited funds and receiving gifts when there was barely money to buy them puts things in perspective. 

My parents certainly saw their share of struggles when I was growing up. I didn’t really know it, though … life was just life. We had what we had and bought what we could afford, which wasn’t much in some years. My mom bought groceries on $25 a week and stretched every penny we had. 

When I was 9, we lived in a very old, small white house in a town of 6,000 people … I loved that house. It had an upper level with two rooms … and that whole area was mine. I felt like a princess! It was also haunted, but that’s a story for a different holiday!

Those were also very lean years, especially the first year we lived there. My dad sold two shotguns so there would be enough money for Christmas … I didn’t know that until many years later. My mom was a master at making the holidays special … she still is. That year, she handmade a lot of my presents; she made the whole month of December special by letting me open something small every day until Christmas Eve. 

Thirty-one years later, my blue potpourri heart permanently adorns a shelf in my spare bedroom. Once a year, it finds its way to my Christmas tree with many other memories from childhood.

I’m sure Mom made this blue heart out of scraps of fabric from other projects … she’s creative like that … nothing ever wasted. That was a long time ago, but I remember how wonderful I thought it was that she made this little gift for me. I, again, felt like a princess. 

I had a lot of princess moments when I was a kid … and Mom made most of them, often by hand like she did my blue heart, and often at Christmastime. 

My Christmas heart was one of many life lessons, although it would be many years before I understood.  It doesn’t matter if you live paycheck to paycheck or if you are are “dirt poor”. It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford to buy the most expensive or most sought after toy for your kiddo at Christmas. What does matter is that you make the holiday special, whether you celebrate Christmas or something else, and make memories that will last a lifetime. The lessons that happen as a result will outlast any toy on a Christmas wish list.