The Stolen Christmas

As festive as this season is, it is also very stressful for many.  Actually, this is probably the most anxiety ridden time of the year.  Much of that stress has to do with the purchasing, giving, and getting of gifts, and the lack thereof.  One might say that the root of all (or much) Christmas anxiety is the want of gifts.  We all want to get and give gifts that will be remembered forever.  The fact is though, we seem to remember Christmases more by the activities surrounding them than we do the gifts received.  To be honest with you, I can hardly remember any particular gifts I received, but I can remember a lot of Christmases.  I remember the festivities and family time. I remember shopping trips even....but I don't remember the gifts.

My family seemed to fluctuate from one year to the next between "Big Haul" Christmases and "Slim Pickins" Christmases.  I mean, every Christmas was good, but some Christmases were just more lucrative than others.  This year was one of the biggest Christmases ever though, probably the biggest.  If I remember correctly, my parents spent upward of $400 on the four of us that year.  That was a lot of money in those days!  We had gifts stacked up under the tree and all over the room....and that was before Santa visited.  We were excited!  I could hardly wait for Christmas morning when I would get to open up my share of the Christmas haul.

I'm not sure where we had gone, but we had all loaded up in the car and gone somewhere.  When we returned home we were devastated at what we found.  The front door was wide open.  We walled into the living room and saw nothing but the bare furniture and a lonely tree.  We were shocked.  My baby sister was especially upset, sobbing uncontrollably.  I don't recall, but figure I was pretty upset myself.  Dad was beyond upset.  He was livid.  The first thing he did was call the police, then went to our neighbors to see if they had seen anything suspicious.  They remembered seeing a strange truck leave  our driveway.  We got the description and shared it with the police.

Well, if I remember correctly, the police came and left and I believe my dad went looking for that truck.  I'm sure Mom could only hope he didn't find it!  He was back, and my sister was probably emotionally exhausted.  Anyway, she went to her room....maybe to mourn a Christmas with no gifts.  I don't totally recall how the next few moments transpired.  I figure my sister let out a scream and my parents went running into her room.  When I finally made it to the room everybody was standing around her closet staring with looks of shock on their face.  The closet was packed full of Christmas gifts.  With them was a note from my Uncle Buddy with writing on it to this effect, "I have told you guys to lock your doors!"

Well, we were excited to have our gifts back, but we were also pretty irritated with Uncle Buddy.  Actually, for a short time I believe Dad was more angry with his Uncle than he had been with the alleged Christmas thieves.  He called him and they had a few choice words.  Honestly, Uncle Buddy had no idea how far his little prank would go.  He simply thought he would teach Dad a lesson for leaving the front door unlocked.  

Well, Dad and Uncle Buddy patched things up eventually as they always did.   I figure by the end of the day we were all laughing about the whole ordeal.   Of course, this was after we had called the police off and gotten a pretty good lecture from them on the error of filing false police reports.

Believe it or not, I do not recall any of the gifts received that Christmas, but I do recall that Christmas very wall. Dad and Buddy would chuckle about that day on occasion for many years to come.  I am not saying go break into a family members house and hide all their gifts.  That could cause some serious family conflict.  I am saying though, don't sweat the gifts too much.  More importantly, make memories.  The gifts will be outlived, but the memories will last a lifetime.

Oh, Dad did get even, but that is a whole different story...