From Giving Thanks to Sharing Joy

The march to the holidays beyond Thanksgiving seems to start earlier each year – Christmas decorations appear in stores in October, holiday music plays on the radio in mid-November, and Black Friday deals are hawked well before Thanksgiving. It seems Thanksgiving – this day set aside for gratitude, for gathering with loved ones and sharing food – gets short shrift in the hurrying to what comes next.

The rush to Christmas and the relentless barrage of spend-centric advertisements is my holiday pet peeve. I love the holiday season, including Thanksgiving, and I will buy a good few presents in the coming weeks. But I will not join the shopping hoards hopped up on caffeine and consumerism during Black Friday or Cyber Monday or any other cutesy-monikered days following Thanksgiving.

I don’t like shopping, or crowds, on a normal day, and the two together are soul crushing for me, which negates the joy of finding presents to give to loved ones. I’d rather hold on to the feel-goodness and relative calm of Thanksgiving for another few days.

I understand, of course, that these days and weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are crucial to the bottom line for many stores, both the big chain outlets and the Main Street boutiques. I realize that Christmas and Chanukah are holidays in which people traditionally bestow gifts upon friends and family members. But bestowing thoughtful gifts is not the same as simply buying more stuff, even if the sales are incredible.

Whether we are religious or not, whether we celebrate Christmas or Chanukah or both or something else, whether we are surrounded by family or far from home, this season is meant to celebrate hope and peace, love and light, helping others and sharing joy.

                                                                                                                       

With three children in the house, it is easy to embrace the joy of Christmas. My kids are at the sweetest age for holiday magic, for baking cookies and decorating the house and visits to Santa. Come Christmas morning, they will find presents under the tree and stockings brimming with goodies.

I know that these – the brimming stockings and pretty presents and, most importantly, the excited children – are among my family’s many blessings. And I try to carry the spirit of Thanksgiving into the holidays beyond so that gratitude is mixed with the sometimes chaotic joy. Surrounded by gift-touting grandparents and aunts and uncles, my children know Christmas to be a time of plenty – plenty of love, plenty of good food, plenty of presents to unwrap.

Sadly, there are many children who do not know a world of plenty, and this lack of abundance must be exacerbated during a season when joy-filled advertisements of colorfully-wrapped gifts abound. I cannot imagine what it is like to wake up as a child to a Christmas morning without presents.

When I was a kid, my family picked a tag or two each year from the Giving Tree at our church. We kids would help choose a child, nameless to us, based on age and the few other details we could ascertain from the clothing sizes and toy interests listed on the small tag. We were always amazed that there were kids, just like us, who may not have presents to open on Christmas day.

A few years ago, when my own children were young enough that the boxes and wrapping paper were more fun to play with than the gifts they concealed, we chose a tag from a similar Giving Tree effort. All three of my kids were small enough to ride in the shopping cart as we looked together for warm boots and clothes and a few toys we hoped the unknown child would love. My kids were too young then to really understand what we were doing, and to my great chagrin we have not picked a Giving Tree tag since.

This year, moved by a friend’s efforts on behalf of a Giving Tree child, I am inspired to again choose a name with my children and to endeavor together to provide a bit of holiday joy to another child, who is probably not so different from my own.

My friend, as she was shopping for clothes for her Giving Tree child, sought advice from the sales clerk. When he learned of her mission, the clerk told my friend that people like her were responsible for the gifts he woke up to on the Christmas mornings of his childhood. He told her how much that had meant to him, and that it would mean more than my friend could realize to her Giving Tree child, too.

If that’s not clear testimony that these efforts to share a bit of holiday magic are worth it,

I don’t know what is.

My children are older now than that first year we picked a Giving Tree name. They’re old enough to wish for certain coveted things under the tree on Christmas morning. They’re old enough to understand that not everyone has a holiday season filled with family and hugs and happy surprises. They’re old enough to know that a kind act, no matter how small, can sometimes make a big difference in helping another person feel good and loved and happy.

It seems a good lesson to remember, no matter how old we are, during this season of hope and love and joy – and of giving thanks. Kindness can come in many forms. A smile from a stranger on a dreary day. A heartfelt compliment from a friend. A hug during hard times. And the simplicity of gifts to open on Christmas morning.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 28, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Comfort and Joy

Early this week my youngest daughter was sick. Normally spirited and silly, she spent a couple of days sad and tired and on the couch, cuddled up with two favorite items given as gifts. The first is her pink, pajama-clad stuffed dog, given to her when she was only a few days old by her Aunt Laura, and which she sleeps with every night. The other is “Auntie Carol’s blanket,” given to us last Christmas by someone who has known me since I was new to the world.

Auntie Carol is not technically my aunt, but the woman who was my next door neighbor for the first 18 years of my life, and who adopted the entire neighborhood to love. My children have met Auntie Carol only a couple of times, but they adore the soft, cream-colored blanket she crocheted for us. Perhaps they can feel the love of this woman who is kind and gentle and one of the most truly sweet people I have ever known. Whatever she put into that blanket has made it a coveted treasure in our home, and one that brought a semblance of comfort to a sad little girl with a fever and sore throat.

We all have gifts that are cherished for the comfort and joy they bring to us. Some of them are favorites for a short while, others for a lifetime.

For my 25^th birthday, my mother gave me the diamond from her own mother’s engagement ring, strung on a simple gold chain. I have worn that necklace on the rare occasion that I am dressed up, but also when I need a little extra luck or support. It belonged first to my grandmother, and so when it hangs from my neck, I feel her spirit is with me. I wore it on my wedding day, along with the diamond studs my almost-husband presented to me the night before, which were a perfect match.

When I had my first babies – twins – my friend Becky, who has been my buddy since we were ourselves wee babes, sent me a ridiculously soft robe and super cozy socks. Another time, those gifts would have been just plain nice. But at that exact point in my life they were a touch of luxury when I felt both happy and exhausted, but certainly not luxurious.

Some of my favorite gifts now are those that remind me of my past, distant or recent. My mother

has given me albums filled with photographs from my childhood through to my children’s first years. My son and daughters love to look at these photos, to see how Mama and Uncle Billy and Uncle Michael looked as kids, and what Nana and Poppy looked like years before they became grandparents. A picture really is worth a thousand words, and just as many emotions.

Tucked away here and there, in my office, in the drawer of my bedside table, in the basket on the kitchen counter that holds various “stuff,” are little treasures from my children. Birthday cards made before they could write, self-portraits of each of them drawn in crayon with perfect u-shaped smiles and big ears and no noses, notes in washable marker declaring, “I love Mama.”

Those love notes are mere scribbles to anyone but me. My Nana’s diamond is just a diamond to anyone else, but it is a sentimental treasure to me, just as the earrings my husband gave me are special because they were his last gift to me before we married, left on my pillow on the eve of our wedding. The photographs from my past contain my memories, and those of my family. The super-soft robe from Becky is special because she knew, at that exact moment in my life, that I needed something warm and soft and easy. Auntie Carol’s blanket is simply a blanket made from neat rows of soft yarn, but for me and for my children, it represents the comfort of home. 

The best gifts are not necessarily the ones that come in the biggest box or tied with the prettiest ribbon. The best gifts are the ones that bring us joy and comfort, whether through touch, familiarity, promises of the future, or memories recalled.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears in the March 8, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.