Christmas Letter

Hello all!
Below is the Christmas letter us girls and boys received from my mom this year. Aaron and I decided to not receive and to cut back giving this year for fear our children would get too caught up in the commercialization of Christmas. We have decided to make this kind of giving (and receiving) an annual thing. I love hearing my moms stories of growing up on the reservation in Eastern Montana I hope some day she publishes all her short stories. Back then and even back when I was young...we knew how to live and love one another without giving into too much pressure of these holidays. Enjoy the letter.


Christmas is a time for giving and receiving.

If I think back as long as I can remember I have always had a good giving Christmas. It started with Christmas decorations, Christmas lights, Christmas Carols and songs on the local radio station giving us a Christmas repertoire in order to help us get into the Christmas spirit, going to the Wolf Point JayCee’s Annual Christmas Party for all the towns’ children. We got a free movie and a very large brown paper bag with an apple AND an orange and peanuts in the shell and multicolored Christmas candy for their fundraising efforts to make sure all the town children got some sort of Christmas gift. It would always be a snow-filled day and I remember waiting in line for my free bag of candy and my show ticket with my nose and cheeks as red as a cherry.

Then as I got older there was always the Catholic School Christmas Play. Ha, I remember in the first grade I was supposed to be an angel who carried a candle taper. For some reason my mother bought me a large candle pillar instead. I was so embarrassed because some of my male classmates told me it looked like a bomb instead of a candle. How I wished for a small taper like everyone else. In my nervousness I started to nibble at the candle and by the time of the play my poor candle looked like a mouse had gotten into it. I can still remember my line I had to memorize. We all practiced our play lines constantly because Sister Mary Frances told us it would be the best gift we could give the Baby Jesus to learn our play lines for Father O’Reilly, our parents and everyone else at the play I was so scared and tense. I started, “ I tell the world” I deeply cleared my throat in terrified fear and started over in a small very shaky nervous voice, “I tell the world that the true light of the world has come.” At this point the audience burst out in laughter at my recitation and delivery of it. I looked over in fear at the school Principal, A very formidable Sister Mary Elaine and she had a small smile on her face. It was the first and last time I ever saw her smile. The Catholic School Christmas plays got better and easier for me every year. It had a reoccurring theme of how God gave us his only begotten son, the Baby Jesus and how the Angels came to give the Shepherds the first news of the Savior and how the 3 Kings from the Orient came to give the Baby Jesus the first Christmas gifts. My earlier Christmas’s were always centered on giving.

I never knew until I was older how the Christmas presents under our tree got there and sometimes I wondered if we were going to get anything under the tree but somehow, magically what I had wished for, The beautiful bride doll with her satin and chiffon gown and pearl earrings, white high heels and NYLONS! Real ones, from the Piggly Wiggly, or the little tin doll house with the hard plastic furniture and dolls to go with it, Or the most wonderful set of Blue Willow dishes I had seen at the window of the Tot & Teen Shop or my beloved Raggedy Ann doll. Later came the red headed beehived hair Barbie with 3 sets of clothes. I loved these toys so much. Santa always really knew what I wanted the most and I ALWAYS got it for Christmas. Santa had given me these most amazing gifts. I was so blessed and when I went back to Catholic School after the Christmas holidays, the Nuns were always eager to remind us the meaning of why we received those precious gifts. They were because of Jesus’ birthday. They were given to me in love. And I honestly believed it to be so too.

As I grew I watched the anxiety on the face of my Mom and Dad in the weeks before Christmas. Money and food on the table were always a problem. We ate a lot of wild game and homemade unleavened bread many times or oatmeal soup with rabbit and salt pork. Butter was a luxury as was store bought bread and canned goods. Vegetables and fruit were things we got to eat only occasionally except for Grandmama’s canned June Berries. Sometimes our neighbor Blackie Sherry who drove an old beat up truck would stop by and give us the better fruits and veggies he would scavenge from the local grocery stores for his pigs. There were 6 kids and my Dad worked only seasonally. My Mom worked as a waitress with minimum wages for years until she got her CNA and began to work at the local hospital. I never knew until I was older that Mom layed gifts away months before, paying a little at a time until Christmas. Or when she wasn’t working, she would RUN HER FACE as she put it, or charge Christmas gifts so my siblings and I had a gift-filled Christmas. Something in her always made her want to give, especially at Christmas.

From an early age I was taught to be hospitable and to go as far as to give the clothes off my back to others. It was a Michif thing I was told. Giving was in our blood; it was in our very make-up from generations past. It wasn’t something we took for granted, we were taught to give and give and give. I remember always sharing pop-sickles with others or half of my penny candy. It was almost a sin to eat in front of others without sharing. I did my giving from the heart. I never did it in bitterness or greed. I always gladly shared what I had so whoever was with me had the same joy I had.

In my early married years, My Husband and I always struggled financially, yet miraculously we always had a Christmas for the girls. This one particular Christmas comes to mind. We had so little that year, not the kind of Christmas I wanted to give the kids. Incredibly, then an unexpected refund came from the power company. We all got dressed and went to Kalispell Christmas shopping for presents the girls had asked for. We were so happy about being able to do that we stopped for a Christmas Eve dinner and even forgot we usually unwrapped presents on Christmas Eve at about the same time we were eating. Giving not just anything but what our girls most desired was so important to us.

One time I asked my Dad how he spent Christmas as a child. He told me they all went to Mass. It was the primary event, going to church to celebrate the real gift to us all, the Baby Jesus. He also said there was always a Christmas Pageant and bags of candy and nuts to follow. That was all, just the Christmas Mass and bags of candy. Even a bag of Christmas candy was an awesome act of giving. He so appreciated his only Christmas gift every year.I asked my Mom the same question once and she told me her childhood Christmas was about going to Midnight Mass and seeing the Baby Jesus in the Manger and singing all the wonderful, old Christmas Carols. She could only remember one Christmas as a little girl when she received the most amazing gift from her parents, A wind- up Donald Duck. She still talks about how much she loved her very special, only ever Christmas toy from her Mom & Dad. She grew up during the depression and to get such a gift was truly a miracle for her and it must have caused much hardship for my grandparents to give it to her because they had no money to buy such a frivolous gift. I think my Grandfather, who was a notorious horse trader must have traded one of his best horses to get enough money to buy his family Christmas gifts. It was a loved-filled Christmas.

Mine too are loved filled. I so enjoy seeing the happiness on my children or grandchildren’s faces when they open a well, thought out gift from me. Yes, most of my Christmas gifts are purchased from the commercial markets in the country. (I have been known to make home made too. And my dear mother is right at this moment knitting socks and scarves and slippers for her many children and grandchildren.) But the thought and love behind them is not something anyone can take lightly no matter how they are made or purchased. It may all look like a commercialized Christmas this year to some but always remember the giver of the gift must truly care about you to give you a gift. And when we think about it, the first giver of gifts was the Creator when we were all given the gift of the wondrous Savior, Jesus Christ. He paid it forward and hopefully we all do too when we give and receive with grace.

Merry Christmas and don’t forget to give and receive in love.
Hugs and kisses,Mom