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Christmas in The Worst Year

© Sandy McCollum

It was a bad year, last year. We came home on Dec. 23rd and checked the mail, then came inside to our dreary little house in the dark. It sits in front of a rock wall that's too tall to allow winter sunlight to shine on our house and yard. Sometimes after a freeze, even on a sunny day the ice never melts and it's here in the shade for months until the sun rises high enough to shine down on us again.

Once inside the house, I wished we'd never come in - we'd been robbed and every Christmas gift we had was gone. We were both out of work and knew we couldn't replace the things we'd gotten the girls, and we didn't know what to do. Luckily, we've only celebrated commercial Christmases for the last six years, and the kids already know Christmas is about so much more than gifts. It made me cry to see how easily they adjusted, after they'd been waiting excitedly as the number of gifts slowly grew each day. Even the ones that had come in the mail from family members were gone. I wondered if their ease was real, or just a show for me because I was so upset, but it turned out to be real, after all, and that made me more proud of them.

The holiday finally came, and thankfully we still had tons of food and goodies. Some of it I'd put up in summertime; fruits and berries and jams and honeys. My husband's previous employer had given us a turkey and I'd baked cookies and pies and my famous apple-raisin stuffing. Our son was home on leave for the holidays, and even without gifts, it couldn't have been more perfect. We got up, ate and I put the bird in the oven, and then we took off for Harriet Hunt Lake to play on the solid water's surface. Ryan's friend Jason was going with us - his first Christmas since his divorce, and Ryan rode in his truck with him.

There was slush all around, making the roads look dirty and ugly, but we were in such good spirits that the girls didn't even complain about having to ride in the back of the truck, under the canopy. They piled blankets and pillows back there and hopped in, singing Christmas songs the whole way. We turned onto the lake road and drove on gravel, making me feel a little safer, as I hate to ride in snow and ice. Gravel just seemed to give more traction, especially since we could see the thick slush on the road.

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