By JALETTA ALBLRIGHT DESMOND
I remember our horrified looks and rolling eyes. We didn’t disguise our stifled moans very well. It was the Christmas season but the scene was no Currier and Ives picture.
The gaudy pink and white aluminum Christmas tree my father hauled into the living and plunked down in the spot where a real Frazier fir usually stood was not graciously received. My father, recently laid off, had been temping at an office and the manager generously offered him the garish Christmas tree, circa 1970s, because money was obviously tight for our family that year.
The three of us kids were aghast as we studied the shimmering pastel branches. We immediately rejected the tree, saying we’d rather have nothing than have that! I think I even remember someone stomping out of the room in protest. My mother admits that it might have been her.
Last year, the holiday season was kicked off by the official announcement that we were in a recession. Economic indicators are improving, but we have scraped through what the president called in his speech this week “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” I’ve seen friends and neighbors struggle with job loss and I’ve watched homes sit empty from foreclosure or, simply, failure to sell after a family has relocated. Things are improving, but many folks are living on ever-tightening budgets and most of us are still using more caution with our spending. So, this childhood memory has particular poignancy and relevance.
It stings for me to remember the insensitivity we showed that holiday ... how our protests and complaints must have wounded my father’s already bruised ego. He was desperately trying to make our Christmas special, despite the economic conditions, and we coldly rejected his efforts.
My father loved Christmas. His face lit up with the joy of the season, even if we had little money to spend. He would happily wrap anything and everything — a pair of socks or a dime store toy — “just so everyone can open something,” as he always said. He was a wide-eyed kid around the holidays but we must have drained some of the excitement out of him when the kitschy tree he carted in conjured up such decorative disdain.
He was doing the best he could, relieved probably to have something to stand in the spot that had been vacant that holiday season. It probably was difficult for him to accept the tree — a kind yet admittedly charitable gesture. But he likely thought of us kids, needing something that might by Christmas morning have a few gifts scattered under it. So, he accepted it graciously and we rejected it rudely.
Even now, it grates against my heart to remember that scene. What I would give to replay it differently. I’m reminded of a TV show I saw awhile back, where a reporter noticed an African girl had a small brightly colored handkerchief spread on a box to decorate her dirt-floor shack. Its single purpose was to simply bring some tiny expression of beauty into her impoverished life.
And we complained about a Christmas tree that would likely have had her jumping for joy. She would have been honored and thrilled to display it ... and to share it with all who visited.
From her sweet effort to make something pretty of her poverty comes an important lesson: to make the most of what you have, care for it and appreciate it ... and share it. She displayed her pretty handkerchief not to show off, but to share it.
Last year we made a decision to cut back our Christmas and give more to those in need. I don’t think my girls felt anything was missing. I hope, in fact, they felt they gained more from giving more rather than getting more.
As the years passed in my childhood, we would often reminisce about that Christmas, laughing at the tree and ourselves for the ugliness it brought into our home — and the ugliness it brought out of us. Hopefully the legacy it left is this: to bring out beauty where there is ugliness ... with a brightly colored handkerchief, a pink and white aluminum Christmas tree, or an attitude transformed from unappreciative to grateful.
Jaletta Albright Desmond is a self-syndicated columnist who writes about faith, family and the fascinatingly mundane aspects of daily life. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two daughters. Contact her at jdesmond@bdtonline.com.
