A little giving is all it takes for a perfect Christmas
Black jelly beans and bunny rabbit droppings look almost identical.
This little-known fact may not come up around your holiday dinner table, but it’s been a source of deep division in my family for more than 100 years. This legendary tale goes back to my grandparents’ Oregon farm, where the family faced lean Christmases with eight noisy, rambunctious kids.
Christmas stockings might have held an orange and an apple and perhaps a few pieces of candy. Nothing more. My uncle Jim was the oldest and the most serious of the Franco tribe, the only boy who came from Italy with my grandmother. In those childhood days, his favorite treat in the whole world, seldom available, was black jelly beans. When he found his stocking full of what he thought were these treasures he was delighted, but the delight was short-lived. His brother Jack had filled the stocking with “gifts” from the farm’s bunnies. Jim threw the unwelcome pellets all over the living room in a fit of rage which lasted 50 years. The brothers never spoke again.
You think Christmas isn’t like it used to be? You’ve got that right—and it’s a good thing.
Still, I believe the Christmas spirit is still alive. “Look for the helpers.”
Mr. Rogers always said that.
Mr. Rogers would have recognized Dave and Shelly Whitesell of Lakewood. This family with their seven kids, ages 21 to 5, makes it a point to plan ways of helping others as the focal point of their Christmas celebration.
“The holidays aren’t just about us,” said Shelly, “We teach the children by saying, ‘Are there people around us who need help?’ Even cutting our Christmas tree, we’ll look for people who can use a hand.”
Dave added, “It’s amazing the people you meet if you just talk to those around you.”
He told of getting involved in a school program to provide weekend backpacks for hungry children through someone he talked to in line at the supermarket. Google “opportunities to volunteer my time,” said Dave.
“It’s important to start by giving back,” the Whitesells say.
Apparently, the hot toy for kids this year is an interactive dragon that hatches after you agitate his egg. This little dragon costs $50. The Salvation Army could buy a lot of meals with that money.
If you do survive the stockings and toys, there’s still the matter of Christmas dinner, which can be very tricky. Peggi Selden Rowe relates her cooking misadventures in her slender new book, “Help! Peggi’s Cooking A Turkey!”, which she will be giving to family and friends this year, and selling on Amazon, of course.
Peggi is glad to skip Christmas shopping because she’s fighting a rare type of breast cancer. When her condition was diagnosed, she was told that she had perhaps a year to a year and a half of life left. That was six years ago. She was the 10th person enrolled in a study of this disease by the University of Washington, and now the longest-lived of that first group.
Peggi wrote that, as the daughter of a daughter of restaurant owners, she never learned to cook. Still can’t. Even today, she says, people are invited over for dinner with the promise, “Peggi won’t cook.”
She writes about how she stuffed a 26-pound turkey, and “I shoved it into a turkey oven bag made for a 22-pound turkey. It was sort of like seeing an overweight lady shoved into her little tiny pantyhose. We finally got it in, shoved it into a pan that was really way too small and shoved it into the oven and then went and visited and had fun. Then we smelled smoke. The kitchen was on fire.”
All was not lost. She still had Jell-O salad. “Nobody likes Jell-O salad,” she says. What did they eat? Jell-O salad.
In every Christmas story, there must be a baby. My friend Barb is the grandmother of a beautiful little boy who has had multiple heart surgeries since his birth eight months ago. Though he is still unable to eat solid food, he approaches this first Christmas full of wiggly joy, unaware of the prospect of more surgeries still ahead. The wise men approaching his little bed are the gifted doctors and surgeons who are determined to give him the life of any normal active boy.
So there you have it. The perfect Christmas. The helpers, gifts, the baby. The star? As Dave Whitesell says, “It starts with giving back.”
Merry Christmas.
Where to find Dorothy in December
Dec. 3: Bartell Drugs, University Place, noon-4 p.m. Book signing, “True Tales of Puget Sound.”
Dec. 6: Lakewood Senior Center, 9 a.m.-noon. Swimming Upstream – recording Christmas Show with Lakewood Senior Radio Players, Generation Gap and John Munn as Santa.
Dec. 7: King County Library, Mercer Island Branch, 2-4 p.m. Book signing.
For information about these events and Peggi Seldon Rowe’s book, contact Dorothy at: dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com, 253-582-4565, or P.O. Box 881, DuPont, WA 98327.
This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 6:01 AM with the headline "A little giving is all it takes for a perfect Christmas."