A look back at memorable Christmas gifts

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From a very early age, I was determined to be financially independent. My creativity made up for what was sorely lacking in my weekly allowance. Inspired by a magazine advertisement to sell magazines, I asked, “why the middleman?” and knocked on the doors of all my neighbors. selling old publications off our coffee table.

Someone didn’t find it cute and ratted on me to my mom, which quickly ended that enterprise.

Another time, along with my friend Louise, we decided to make and market soap. We didn’t have a clue as to what went into soap but it was something everyone used and hey, we were willing to experiment. Unfortunately it was in her basement and her mom didn’t think it was cute either.

My point here is that I was constantly looking for sources of income, especially around the holidays. I had a Christmas list and gosh darn it, I would do my own shopping for my parents
and sister.

One particular gift still stands out for me over many years. Barely older than 10, I had five dollars in my pocket to find my mom a perfect something that year. Just a little background info ... my mom and her friends loved to play cards. No bridge for this group; they were poker players long before it became fashionable.

So you can imagine my joy when I found the set of drink glasses on display at Kresge’s in the Village Shopping Center, decorated loudly with playing cards. They were hideous, but well within my budget.

Of all the gifts over all the years, that memory remains vivid, not so much because of the glasses, but because my mom, God love her, used them for many years to come.

What are the memorable gifts from your past?

Margery Kranz, Hammond: I think it was in the late 1940s. My dad was never the same when he came home from the war but my mom worked hard to keep things together for us. There wasn’t much money but she always made sure my sisters and I had some kind of Christmas gift. That particular year, we came down on Christmas morning to find new stockings decorated with evergreen and filled with homemade cookies and candies. Looking closer, we started to recognize bits and pieces of the stockings. Mom had taken clothes we had outgrown and quilted a personal stocking for each of us. I’m not sure we appreciated it as we should at the time but oh, how precious those stockings grew as we grew older.

Louis Spivak, Cedar Lake: The Christmas I was 17, my dad took me into the garage and handed me the keys to the Chevy truck he had worked two years to restore. I’ve never loved a car so much in all my years and I don’t think I ever will.

Helen Brugge, Crown Point:
A rabbit fur coat and matching hat when I was 12. I’ll never forget it. I know that mom went without a new, warm coat of her own that year.