Christmas Memories

A few weeks ago, I gave a lesson in Relief Society about finding the spirit of Christmas. I'm not sure how well the lesson went, but it turned my mind to recalling Christmases past and to a deep sense of gratitude for my parents and what they taught me about the meaning of Christmas. I thought I would share some of the memories conjured up--with a call to my brothers and sisters to add to the archive.

I have fond memories of decorating the tree while Mom made hot chocolate and cookies. The unwrapping of Christmas gifts happened four times a year in our home. The first was when we dragged out all of the Christmas boxes and, with great delight in the ritual, unwrapped every ornament and Christmas trinket from the layers of tissue and toilet paper that protected them. (The second was on Christmas Eve, the third on Christmas morning. The fourth I'll write about another day.)

Dad would take us in the evening to one of the ad-hoc Christmas tree lots on State Street in Orem to select a tree. Dad would pound trees on the ground, looking for "holes" in the branches, and we would discuss each candidate's shape and smell. I always hoped it would snow so I could stand among the trees and look up to the sky, getting dizzy at the sight of the moving white flakes and feeling wonderfully small and surrounded.

One year we got a tree from the high-end lot across from the Scera Theater. We watched it be taken into the plastic-covered green house to have white flocking sprayed on. That was the year that Grandpa Lear tried to give me five dollars. I really wanted to take it. Five dollars was a lot of money to me. But I was afraid that Mom and Dad would be angry, thinking I had asked Grandpa for money. So I refused it. He insisted, I refused. And so we continued. But Grandpa Lear was a iron strong and stubborn man. I should have known better than to match wills with him. Later that night, I noticed Grandpa's five dollar bill tightly rolled and tucked into the branches of our Christmas tree. I still remember the way my heart swelled when I found it and thought of my Grandpa hiding it there for me.

I can see him walking from our house to his old blue truck with a custom cover he built on the back, complete with windows, shelves, and benches. At six foot four inches tall, he towered over tiny Grandma Lear. Barely over five feet, she weighed less than a hundred pounds in her days as a horse woman. Once a jockey, then a farmer's wife and mother of thirteen, now a grandmother of nearly one hundred with years of accumulated hard labor, her steps had already become slow and heavy. Grandpa was wearing his standard issue--blue denim overalls, long canvas coat, and ornate cowboy boots.

My Grandpa did not show love in warm or overtly tender ways. It usually came in the form of gruff and even harsh teasing. You had to be tough to endure Grandpa's version of love. I sometimes thought you had to be tough to merit his love in the first place. I was tough, or at least I was able to act tough, and the money left for me in the tree was an "I love you" from my Grandpa Lear.