Christmas Presence: Jewelry, a Musical Powder Box, a Bike, See's Candy and Double Acrostics
by Julia Sneden
I read somewhere that we have the Magi to thank for the tradition of bearing gifts at this time of the year, but I suspect that like many other Christmas customs, gift giving has its roots in pagan times. Surely the Celts' celebration of winter solstice, or the Saturnalia of ancient Rome, or other assorted gatherings of the ancient world included the giving and receiving of gifts. It's an urge deeply embedded in human nature. For that matter, anyone who has ever received a dog's gift of a proudly retrieved stick, or, from a cat, the much less welcome gift of the remains of a mouse or bird left on the master's doorstep, knows that gift giving extends to the rest of the animal world, too.
I once knew an outrageous and utterly charming elderly woman who, at parties, would hold us young folk spellbound by reciting the provenance of her dazzling jewelry collection. "Now this brooch," she would say, pointing to a spray of diamonds, "was the gift of a maharajah who admired tall women. And the ear bobs came from Lord La-Di-Dah, who scandalized the New York Navy Ball in 1913 by dancing every other dance with me, all evening long." And then, fixing us with a piercing look, she'd grin wickedly. "I've always heard that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but don't you think receiving is a lot more fun?"
There have been lots of memorable Christmas gifts in my life, both given and received. I remember vividly that the year I was six, I noticed my mother's fondness for a musical powder box that stood on the cosmetics counter of our local drugstore. I relayed the information to my father, who then hatched a rather intricate plan whereby my brother would somehow distract my mother while he and I purchased the music box. The store even wrapped our gift, and to this day I can see the bright blue paper, covered with winking white Santa faces in red hats — perhaps a patriotic nod to wartime, all that red white and blue. Somehow we sneaked the parcel out of the drugstore and into the car, and then into the house where I was allowed to hide it under my skirted dresser. Our collusion was even more thrilling than the present, I think, but Mother cried most satisfactorily when she opened it. The music box sat on her dresser for more than fifty years.
I remember the Christmas that I was wild to have a bike. I was seven years old, and the world was at war, which meant that metal and rubber products went to military uses. No one was making toys or bicycles. Somehow my mother found a secondhand bike that she painted a hideous yellow and put under the tree. I can still recall my dismay when I saw it. It was a bike, all right, and I didn't mind that it had a few dents or that the paint was still sticky in some places. But it was a boy's bike, a smaller version of my brother's, not at all what I had had in mind. I felt like crying, but I knew I couldn't. So I put a good face on it, and rode the darned bike all over the neighborhood and dared anyone to laugh at me. No one did, probably because we were all making do with what we had, in those days. And a couple of years later, when the war was over, there was another bike under the tree, this time a dazzling, brand new blue and red girls bike with a basket and a bell.
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