By Jim Dickson
Last night Susan and I watched “A Christmas Story.” Hands down, it’s our favorite Christmas movie. It always brings back great Christmas memories for anyone who came of age in the post World War II era.
Like the town in the movie, things were simpler in the little town where I grew up. Kids either walked or rode bikes to neighborhood schools with their friends without fear of being killed in traffic or assaulted by some demented pervert. The only kids who rode school buses were the ones who lived out in the country and had no access to a local school.
I don’t remember anyone whose parents drove them to school. The only thing that you had to worry about on the way to school was running into the local bully, much like the one in the “Christmas Story.” I am sure that every town had one.
In those days before there was a television in every home and a hundred channels to choose from or computers, most of what you learned came from books, teachers or stories that you were told by your parents or grandparents. Many of the kids that I knew had learned to read at home before they started school. If you were lucky and you had a set of encyclopedias at home which contained a world of wonderful information, all you had to do was to open them and they took you anywhere you wanted to go and anything that you wanted to know.
At school you were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, American and world history, literature, music, art, and later on homemaking and wood or machine shop. For better or worse most of the teachers knew your older brothers and sisters and your parents, sometimes that worked to your advantage, sometimes not so much.
I am fortunate to be able to remember many great Christmases when I was a kid growing up. They involved wonderful family dinners, BB guns, bicycles, electric trains, fruit cakes, German cookies and candy from the family next door, finding just the right Christmas tree, and decorating it with my family.
My first Winchester single-shot .22 rifle when I was old enough, stories that my grandmother would tell about her childhood growing up in the Wild West, hugs from my crazy aunt who always smelled like lilacs but gave me great books to read … I was a lucky kid!
I have now been fortunate enough to have experienced Christmas 83 times, most of which I still remember, and that in itself is a Christmas miracle. But one will always stand out in my adult years.
The first year that Susan and I were married was a tough one financially. We both had jobs but we were living from hand to mouth with not much left over. We were away from family, and didn’t have the time or gas money to get home for Christmas.
That Christmas we were especially broke and we had resolved that there would be no presents, no turkey dinner, or even a Christmas tree. It looked pretty bleak, but it turned out to be one of the best Christmases ever.
I came home from work on Christmas Eve and opened the door to see a wonderful sight, and one of the best Christmas presents ever. The apartment house where we lived was decorated with pine boughs and had some left over. Susan had salvaged the top of a tree, and decorated it with spools of thread wrapped in red ribbon, with strings of popcorn around it. We have had a lot of beautiful trees over the years, but that one was by far the best we ever had, and the chicken that she baked for dinner was delicious! We learned that year that the gift of love is by far the best Christmas gift you can get or give.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Born, raised and educated in the Southwest, Jim Dickson served in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Vietnam before a 35-year business career. Retired to St. Helena Island, Dickson and his wife are fiscally conservative, socially moderate and active in Republican politics, though they may not always agree with Republicans. Having lived around the country and traveled around the world, Dickson believes that the United States truly is the land of opportunity.
