Childhood Magic in Christmas

"The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!

The jocund travelers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes!"

-A Christmas Carol, Ghost of Christmas Past

I marvel even today how powerful the past is to us in the spectrum of things.

How a photograph, a smell, a word, or even an ornament can bring me back to the past. It can instantly bring me back to the memories that have so long since been forgotten.

I have such wonderful Christmas memories that hold a key place in my heart and mind. Our Christmases as children were never fancy, we had little money or means to make it so, but in my mind, they were as good as gold... Let me tell you why.

The people and lessons I learned that made Christmas magical for me are from those in the images above.

First is my Grandma Feickert. Now it may sound like a weird lesson to be learned, but she taught me one of the most profound things and that is how to receive. By my own nature, I love to give gifts, give my time, give of myself to show love, it is my love language on how I give it, but I have always struggled in feeling worthy to receive or in how I am supposed to act when I am given a gift. She by nature and by her example showed me what appreciation and graciousness really mean.

If you look at the picture of my grandmother I had given her a handmade clay pot made in my 3rd-grade class. In all reality, it was a shabby, poorly painted piece, but look at the excitement on her face. You would have thought I had given her a million dollars. It was all in the way she gleamed at opening it. For something so meager she delighted in it. I remember going to her house months later and seeing that ugly little pot placed prominently in one of her rooms. It showed me in such a strong way how much she loved me, how much she cared, all because she received the present in the kindest way possible. She taught me truly that it was never the gift given, but the love that it was given with, that something so small, could stay in my heart forever. My dad was always great at that as well, he told me once how gracious my grandma Feickert had always been and in his lifetime he had learned the same lesson from his own experiences.

My father later in life would write a story of one of those moments about him receiving gifts, he wrote about a gift from my younger brother and the impact it would have on him over the years.. Here is a link to the story:

Candles for Christmas

My parents are in that second picture... they taught me all the lessons I would ever truly need in my heart for Christmas. They were a team and worked together and did all that they could to give their 9 children the best holidays possible.

I learned of the magic of Christmas from them, how the smallest and best gifts were those given from the heart. I only in the last 10 years really understood the great sacrifices they made to provide us with the memories they did. I understand them now, I see them as hard-working, tired adults, who worked and worked to provide us with a home, heat, food, clothing, and in now being an adult, how they truly did the best they could.

There is a gift that comes with maturity, in understanding how the magic was created, how despite the fact that in their minds they don't feel they gave us enough or were enough that to me, they were... As a child, I never saw that, I never knew what they would go without just so we could have something to unwrap. The various jobs and tireless hours they worked to create our memories. I have no real recollection from my childhood of a lot of the gifts I was given but I remember the joy in opening them, or how my mother would make the presents look extra fun with a ton of ribbon.

The gifts that have stuck in my mind are fun ones, ones they gave each other, the gift of the gourmet pickles I got from my dad, the drawings I gave my Grandpa Feickert, or the endless amount of colored pencils every person in my life kept giving me. It was knowing how my dad knew my mother loved Diet Snapple's, so he filled an entire Rubbermaid tote full of them, or how they took our extra Halloween candy and placed it in a box under the tree from a mysterious family member named, "Jack-o-Lantern." It was the small things the small threads in time that wove the tremendous tapestry of my memories. As my dad said in his story he wrote about the Christmas Candles, " Part of ... maturity has been to come to the realization that the only true gift, is a gift of self. The gifts of the heart have influence far beyond the usefulness of the latest gadget or gimmick."

How blessed I am to have had those memories. How lucky I was.. It only takes a moment to look back on the past and be grateful for those who left an impact.

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

-Laura Ingalls Wilder