Christmas Triggers

Last week I talked about the “Oranges in the Stockings”, and those simple joys of small gifts on Christmas morning.  

Christmas stockings go way back in both the Woods and Smith family traditions. For us, it was a way to postpone the feeding frenzy of opening presents until after breakfast. In my Smith family growing up, we had stockings, a proper hot nourishing breakfast with clean up, and then, and only then, we’d push on to the real business of presents. But that’s another story, maybe best for the shrink.

For many years Tony & I played the game of gathering and hiding “stocking stuffers” all thru the year, then finding a way to sneak them into their appointed places on Christmas Eve. Now that the children have grown and gone, the mantle of responsibility has gone along with them, and we love hearing the stories of how they have produced the magic in their own homes.

Without giving it much thought, we always ended up, after placing the small gifts inside the stocking, realizing that there was a lot of room left over.  And so to be pretty, we’d fill the space with fruit.  It was just what we did, put the toys in and then grab whatever was in the fruit basket to top them up.

Mandarin oranges are a staple in Japan, locally farmed and very plentiful …… and cheap.  The Japanese name is “Mikan” (pronounced “mee-kahn”).   At the peak of the season my kids would eat so many that their palms would turn yellow from the mikan-carotene.

The Christmas season in 1991 was a bittersweet time. Our 16-year-old son Trevor was dying from leukemia.  One day he was resting on the living room couch and I sat with him by the Christmas tree. 

I asked him, “What is the one thing you most love about Christmas?’

If he’d have said ‘walking on the moon’, we’d have tried to arrange it. But what he said stunned me. Without thinking, he smiled and said, “Mikans in my stocking”.

As simple as that.  

Well, the ‘mikans’ in Denver, Colorado at Christmas cost a pretty penny, but you can be assured he had a stocking full of them! 

If I say, “Christmas triggers”, does that produce any memories?  I’d love to hear what comes to mind when you start thinking about the season.  

For me, I guess it would be snow ice cream – always plentiful around our Colorado house in December. Tony’s preaching this Sunday about riding 1000 km at night with his Mom and Dad to Ruidoso, New Mexico to spend Christmas with the Grandparents. He talks about waking up on Grandma’s couch with the sounds of breakfast in the other room. Yep, a Christmas trigger. 

What about you? I hope your memories are good ones. If not, then what better time than now to set about making one? I hope I get a chance to sit down with Mary and Joseph and listen as they reminisce about their first Christmas. Okay, maybe that’s theologically a little shaky, but in the meantime, I’d love hear your musings

Merry Christmas!!

Marsha



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