My Favorite Christmas

With each Christmas, I am reminded of previous Christmases. Of course this makes me think of my absolute favorite. Oddly, it wasn't the holiday in which I received exactly what I had wanted (typically something involved with music) or with travel or what-have-you.

I walked into my father's room to see him at his desk. He hunched over a stack of bills; he released the ones in his palm. I could see him give up. It came through his pores, emanated through the room.

"I'm two months behind the mortgage."

At 13 I wasn't sure I understood what he told me. I knew we had been getting food from the local food charity and he had been receiving foodstamps, but I didn't have insight into the rest of our financial situation. My father would leave every morning when I left for school. He came home in time to make dinner. He spent a lot of time combing through the newspaper and on the phone. For a while, he was a paperboy.

I looked over my father's shoulder and saw the past due signs in red. His fingerprints stamped on the pages, which told me he had pondered over each and every bill more than once.

Christmas was a week away. "If I miss one more, we may need to leave," Dad said in a whisper, as if he couldn't quite believe it. I knew we had been in this position before. When I was younger, he had lost his job at a radio station. If you asked my father, he'd say he lost his job because he was a smart ass. This time, he lost his overnight gig to automation.

"That's okay," I said. I kissed him on the cheek and left his room. I tried to think of ways to raise money. I picked up my own paper route to help ends meet. I thought of calling everyone I knew to see if they had a spare radio station job; the one job that made my father happy.

Typically the evening of Christmas Eve, our house would be filled with thunking and kerplunking. I was banned from his room and the attic on Christmas eve. My father waited until the very last minute to shop. He shoved along with the other last minute shoppers to try to find the Cabbage Patch Kid, the Smurf, the fill-in-the-blank toy of the hour that he had made just enough room on his credit card to purchase.

This specific Christmas, there was no kerplunking. No sounds of crinkled plastic or of tape whizzing off of the dispenser.

I awoke Christmas morning to find our artificial tree decorated with the ornaments we had for years and years with a single gift under the tree. I waited for my father to join me at the tree's base (he had to get his cup of percolated coffee) for me to unwrap my present. It was an antique doll. One that had been left to me by a great aunt and had been specified for me not to have until I had reached the age of 13 (otherwise I would destroy it in my youthfulness). I was a little confused by the gift since I had already played with it quite a bit.

"I'm sorry," my dad said. "I wish we had more."

I looked up at the sparkling lights, the glistening baubles, the sincerity in my father's eyes and I knew that this was perfect. I didn't need presents. We had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and I had a loving father who wanted so badly for us to have a normal Christmas that he found something to wrap and place under the tree.

"You weren't supposed to get the doll until now," Dad said. "I couldn't stand the thought of you waking up Christmas morning to nothing."

Of course I was worried that we would lose the house but I knew we would figure it out. We always did. I got up from the floor and hugged my father. "This is the best Christmas present ever."