THE YEAR SANTA WENT BROKE – BFF 24

Mom explained to me that Christmas would be different for me this year in comparison to the previous several years.

I wasn’t at all concerned at first. “Don’t worry mom. Santa will bring us gifts. You don’t have to get us anything,” I had told her the day she broke the news to me. I wasn’t too worried about it, but a worry line creased her brow.

A day or two went by, and she explained to me that Santa might not be able to get me all the things I wanted either. “Santa doesn’t have much money right now either,” she had told me. I tried to convince her that Santa didn’t need money—he had his elves build all the toys. “It doesn’t matter baby. They still need money to get what it takes to build the toys,” she said.

She tried to explain to me that Christmas was all about family time, not about toys. It’s about giving, spending time with the ones you love, and helping others in need. No toys? I was never going to understand mom’s description of Christmas.

Even though I didn’t understand her verbal descriptions of this time of year, I slowly began to understand the actions that we took in preparation for the holidays.

Mom stood us in front of the tree we spent hours decorating, set the timer on the camera, and ran to get all three of us in the shot. For the first time, we took our own family photos for Christmas rather than spending extra money to have a professional photographer to do them.

During the days prior to Christmas Eve, mom came up with what she called a splendid idea. We all sat around with numerous piece of cardboard, construction paper, glue, scissors, crayons, markers, cotton balls, and such, and we made each other homemade Christmas gifts that we then got to wrap and put underneath the tree. I didn’t see much point in wrapping them after we already knew what they were, but mom assured me it would make it more exciting on Christmas morning. For the first time, we made gifts for each other rather than having a family shopping trip.

Mom put some new Christmas traditions in place for our little family. The night before, my brother and I each had a little baggy full of glitter and dried oatmeal. On Christmas eve, we sprinkled the lawn with our homemade reindeer food. We also got to make and decorate our own cookies for Santa that night. It was exciting, but in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder why we were giving him anything if he wasn’t going to be able to give us much in return. Mom reminded me not to think selfishly, otherwise, Santa would skip over our house completely.

Christmas morning came. It was the first Christmas my brother and I woke to find only a few gifts under the Christmas tree. I had asked for an XBOX from Santa. It wasn’t there. That was all I wanted, and it wasn’t there. I was disappointed. I wasn’t too interested in what Santa did bring me. My brother didn’t seem to mind. He had new toys to play with, and that was all that mattered to him.

Regardless of what we did or didn’t get from Santa, mom still woke up in the best mood ever, trying to force us to smile and be happy for what we did get. She re-told us the same thing she had told us before. Santa was broke too. This was the first Christmas we understood Santa was similar to mom and dad. Neither had much to offer as far as Christmas gifts were concerned.

Looking underneath the tree in the far corner, I saw two pairs of boots. One pair was bigger than the other. Both were black rubber. I didn’t want shoes. Didn’t Santa understand that shoes were not on my list of wants for this year?

“You have another present outside,” mom had told us when she realized I spotted the boots. I ran to peek out the window, and outside there lay a thick sheet of white covering the ground.

That was all it took. My brother and I threw on our new boots, a jacket, and ran out the front door. We spent the entire day out in the snow. We never got a whole lot of snow down south, but this year, Santa surprised us. He brought us one of the best gifts ever. We loved playing outside, and the snow was a definite perk. This was also the first white Christmas my brother and I had ever experienced.

It was the first Christmas I began to understand that money couldn’t buy happiness, but it was sure something we had always depended on to bring us happiness over the years.