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Back When It Meant Something
(While this essay isn’t formally part of our Lost Palm Springs series, it does draw on personal recollections from the mid-century era.)
As a kid, during the 1960s, the night before Christmas felt medically unsafe. Sleep was impossible. I’d lie in bed staring at the ceiling, heart pounding, consumed by a low-grade anxiety fueled entirely by anticipation and sugar cookies. Waiting for Christmas morning felt like a test of endurance, and I failed it every year.
My mother loved Christmas—not in a Hallmark way, but in a strategic way. She didn’t just buy presents; she curated them. Every gift had been considered, evaluated, probably purchased on sale, and then hidden for months. She was the kind of shopper who could tell you where something came from, how much it originally cost, and how much she actually paid for it. And never EVER did she remove price tags incase she had to return something! (To this day I still get anxiety removing a price tag!)
Sears was practically a second home. Some gifts may have been bought there nine months earlier, or maybe at the Green Stamps store, and stored somewhere we were forbidden to go.
One year, she dragged me to Sears because they were having a sale on stereos. This was not a casual shopping trip. We had a plan. We arrived two hours early, and when the doors opened, I was to run—actually run—to the stereo section and grab one so we could secure it for my brother. I remember the adrenaline, the crowd, and the fear of failure. Looking back, it was basically training for capitalism.
By Christmas morning, our living room was impassable. The tree was drowning in gifts. My brother and I spent weeks shaking boxes, holding them up to our ears, trying to decode the sounds. And the number of gifts had to be equal. Not approximately equal. Exactly equal. Any discrepancy would have resulted in emotional devastation and possibly a federal investigation.
We never opened a gift early, even though we wanted to. My mother’s wrapping skills made that impossible. She wrapped gifts so precisely with beautiful homemade bows that tampering would have been immediately detected. The woman missed her calling as a forensic investigator.
Christmas morning meant waking the folks who were probably hungover from martinis after having to assemble bikes the night before, then charging down the stairs to see what appeared overnight. Some years it was a new Schwinn Stingray. One year, two white cats—even though I was disappointed because I really would have preferred another puppy! My mother believed in making Christmas memorable.
My dad’s contribution was documentation. He filmed everything on an 8mm camera under blinding hot lights that felt unnecessary and punitive. There’s footage of my brother and me opening gifts while shielding our eyes like prisoners of war. I’m fairly certain this is where my cataracts originated.
After the gifts came my dad’s annual desire to burn all the wrapping paper in the fireplace. This usually resulted in flames shooting out, my mother screaming, and new scorch marks appearing on the mantel. One year, my dad suggested burning the Christmas tree as well. My mother responded in a way that made it clear this was not his decision to make. In hindsight, my dad may have had a mild fascination with fire.
Once we’d barely begun enjoying our toys, we were dragged to Catholic Mass, where we sat thinking exclusively about what we were missing at home. Afterward, we made visits to friends’ houses to compare loot. One friend received a book of Life Savers every year. The same gift. Every year. And somehow, I was deeply jealous of it.
My parents were middle class but at Christmas time, we felt spoiled. There’s no way around that. It was materialism in its purest form. But it was also love—wrapped in paper, stored for months, and presented all at once. At the time, we didn’t understand how fortunate we were.
As adults, we tend to inventory our parents’ mistakes, catalog the emotional damage, and discuss it with therapists. But I think it’s important to remember this part too. They weren’t perfect, but they tried. And sometimes, they really nailed it.
Nowadays, Christmas is completely unique. I hope to sleep in. I don’t buy gifts. I put up a tree with minimal enthusiasm. There are no presents underneath it, and I don’t expect any. On Christmas Day, I mostly just think about when I can take the decorations down and whether they’re worth storing or should just be thrown out.
It’s anticlimactic. And honestly, a little sad.
But I still have those fond memories—the sleepless nights, the chaos, the cats, the scorch marks, the brief annual truce between my brother and me. I’m grateful for that. Even if the magic didn’t survive adulthood, I’m glad it existed long enough for me to remember it
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