Merry Christmas

I wrote this last year and I was thinking about it today, now that the bearer of hotel soap gifts is gone and the bearer of Readers Digest presents is in such declining health.

This year, my parents wrapped up a few things from my grandparents' apartment and put them with the other gifts under the tree.  They were all trinkets purchased to benefit the National Federation of the Blind, another one of my grandma's passions.  I opened a talking watch, magnifying glass and travel alarm clock.

They mean the world to me.

The Reader’s Digest Years

By: Kristen Forbes

When I recall any Christmas spent with my family, a few images inevitably come to mind.  I can see everyone wearing the pajamas we opened on Christmas Eve. I can see the mass of paper on the floor, the cups of coffee moved aside and the pile of failed lottery tickets stacked on the table.  There are the magazines we get in our stockings, the candy we eat all morning, the sleepiness in our eyes and pile of clothes and gadgets at our feet.  Christmas is like clockwork in my family and there are some things that will never change, from the coffee cake we eat for breakfast to the checks from grandparents we save for the very end.

In some of these memories, during a certain period of time that lasted probably somewhere around ten years or so, something else was always inevitable during our Christmas celebration.  This something else was – well, it was something else.  It was manifested madness.  It was a study in the art of the polite response to a bizarre gift.  It was, as we fondly refer to them in my family, the Reader’s Digest years.  

These were the years when my grandpa, year after year after year, entered the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes in hopes of winning the big crash prizes.  He never did win any big – or small – cash awards, but he entered so often he received a seemingly endless supply of trinkets and gadgets.  These trinkets and gadgets became our Christmas gifts.

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” to an eight-year-old girl quite like a faux gold ring too big for even her thumb, an oversized man’s watch, or a travel alarm clock. 

The Reader’s Digest frenzy was compounded by my grandma’s endearing habit of passing along the free gifts she received during her travels.  It was not uncommon to unpeel the holiday wrapping paper and find a bar of hotel soap, mini shampoo or a sewing kit inside.  We added these to our pile of gifts, their presence as welcomed and inevitable as any other holiday tradition.

My favorite part of the Reader’s Digest years was when one of us would get to her present from my grandpa earlier the others and we could all watch our future unfold as that person opened the present.  Whatever the “prize” was that year – a clunky necklace, a calculator, a battery-operated device none of us could ever figure out – would be the prize that year – as in the prize, as in that’s what each and every one of us would get that year.  So not only would I receive a ring so big it probably wouldn’t fit my biggest toe, my sister and mom and dad would also receive absurdly large rings.  We could match.

Eventually, my grandpa stopped entering the sweepstakes.  I don’t know what happened – if he was talked out of it, if he arrived at the conclusion on his own that despite his many years of efforts, he’d likely never win that big prize, or what – I just know that one year the weird gifts stopped. The Reader’s Digest era was no more.  We went back to receiving checks and chocolate.  My grandma’s freebie presents faded too, which meant no more shower caps or hotel lotions.

Every year, I find myself hoping the gifts will make a comeback, hoping I’ll reach under the tree and see a box that looks and feels like it contains oversized jewelry or hotel giveaways.  Is it really Christmas without them?  How can we sit around in our pajamas, eating coffee cake and scratching at losing lottery tickets, if we’re not going to open any Reader’s Digest pens or pendants? 

Life goes on.  We drink our coffee and read our magazines, open our boxes of clothes and eat our candy sleepily.  It’s still Christmas, and it will always be Christmas, even if we take all this away.  Still, every year, I look under that tree and hope that one of those boxes – just one – contains a token from the Reader’s digest sweepstakes.

Kristen Forbes is a freelance writer.  To view her blog, visit www.krissymick.blogspot.com.