[Barksum]

LOL I'm running to WalMart on Friday too, I think, because I need a vacuum and they have one on sale. Sigh.

Ok, here's the story. Even my DH thinks it's pathetic. LOL

"Way back in the old days when I was a little girl...." Well it wasn't that far back, but far enough that it was awhile ago! Anyway, we didn't have much money. My parents had moved the family to Alaska as part of a missionary program. We had very little money and were dependant on donations to us through the mission. Anyway, Christmas rolled around and we had no cash. We had plenty of evergreens for decoration and lots of imagination so the house was all dressed up. (Think silk purse, sow's ear. LOL We had a very basic house. Shelter, nothing fancy.) My mom had scrimped around and gotten enough yarn to knit mittens for my sister and I. We had some candy and walnuts, I think, for our stockings. But we weren't able to purchase anything for each other. Not wanting our tree to have nothing under it on Christmas morning we came up with the idea to wrap things we already had.

We found mis-matched socks (yes, a curse even in the old days) and wrapped them up. Since we didn't have many socks those packages didn't exactly mound up under the tree. We wrapped things stolen from each other's rooms, marked them for the person we stole them from, and sneaked them under the tree. This helped, visually, to make the tree look a little more festive. Then Mom came up with the idea to cut out pictures from the catalogs of what we would like to give and put the pictures in the stockings of the person we'd give them to if we could have afforded it.

On Christmas morning we opened our mittens (somewhat surprised, as we had seen Mom knitting them), and then unwrapped our socks and the items we'd purloined from each other. Then we looked through the stockings and at the pictures of all the things we would have bought for each other. We had a blast!

After opening the gifts (which took, what? a whole 10 minutes?) we had friends over to dinner. Everyone brought potluck -- stuff like bear, moose, salmon, etc. because that's what was cheap (!!!) as it wasn't store bought. LOL The kids all ran around and we had a great time.

Now you have to realize that for the most part all our friends where just as poor as we were, so it wasn't as if any of us felt left out because our friends had a pile of gifts and we didn't. Not one of my friends got a bicycle or board game for Christmas. Most of us got something that was needed, inexpensive, and only that one thing. There might be some candy in the stockings, too, but for some families there wasn't enough for even the necessities, let alone frivols. So all in all my sister and I didn't feel all that left out or slighted.

This is one Christmas that is always at the top of the list when we start reminiscing. We have many happy memories of our childhood and this Christmas is not remembered as a sad time at all, due in large part to my mom's happy nature and attitude, I'm sure. (There's a lesson there, I'm sure....) However, when we talk about this to others they all just look scandalized that we had such a deprived childhood. LOL It must lose something in the telling.