Title: A Christmas Memoir 2013

Our first Christmas was a delightful one. We had practically nothing and appreciated it all.

We were both in graduate school and had little money. We were living mostly on love and a few odd jobs. My wife did some clerking in a store. I picked peaches, painted houses and taught at a local high school part-time. We managed our apartment house in exchange for rent.

Adding it up, we were poor, but we did not know it. It was neither an object of self-depreciation nor pride.

We were able to buy a Christmas tree our first year. It was short, but well-shaped. We decorated it with handmade paper ornaments and a string of lights. We crowned the tree with a dove left over from the decorations at our wedding.

The material things we exchanged that year are long forgotten, but we remember the day as if it were yesterday.

As time went on, our family grew along with our wants and needs. We waited in line for two Cabbage Patch Kids. We made long lists of things to do and buy. I built two dollhouses in my workshop. My wife took the handwritten want lists to the stores.

In 2005 I spent Christmas in Stanford Hospital. We exchanged gifts as I lay in bed. That year I received a polyester, vascular graft in my chest. It was not my favorite gift.

Over the next half decade I relearned about what a difference other people’s concern can mean.

Last year, 2010, I spent part of the week before Christmas in the hospital in Portland. My kidneys had failed from being over medicated. I don’t remember last Christmas much.

It is interesting how priorities change. The biggest gifts are not under the tree and the one most remembered may be the least tangible.

Most of us have all we need in the way of things. We might need a little more conscience, appreciation, and generosity. Those latter virtues may best be acquired through experience. They don’t sell them at Neiman Marcus or Wal-Mart.

We may wish to teach our children to be more giving and less greedy, more thankful and less tightfisted, but it is difficult to do in the middle of a season where our nation’s financial health depends on our spending.

We do not long for the good-old-days because, for the most part, they were not always good. We do, however, remind ourselves that our happiness has never been based on what we get. Our happiness has been based on being grateful for what we’ve got.

It is important that our economy rebound and that those who do not have the necessities of life are cared for. It is each of our responsibilities to reach out to those in need. We don’t do it out of guilt, but out of gratitude.

My personal plan is to stay out of the hospital this Christmas unless it is for visiting someone else. As well, I plan on making sure that people know that it takes very little to bring holiday joy. At Christmas, as in art, less is more.

We will hang up our stockings side by side for the 47^th time this year. On Christmas morning we will walk, not run, to see what is there.

Over coffee and scones we will thank one another for thoughtfulness. Mostly we will remember to be grateful for another Christmas with our family and friends.

They didn’t come from Neiman Marcus or Wal-Mart either.