For me, Christmas has always been a clear, cold night. I grew up in a small Midwestern town during the 50s and 60s. There was never a better place or time to grow up. Of that I was certain. And my perfect childhood was never more perfect than at Christmas. I had a Peter Billingsley, Christmas Story Christmas every year. I was that chubby little kid with the horn rimmed glasses and nerdy clothes with the three-buckle snow boots who wished for and got the Red Ryder BB gun on his ninth Christmas. My Mom always told me that “being poor” was the best thing she and Dad ever did for my brother and me. But if we were poor, I never knew it, for my childhood was a happy one. My folks knew how to keep Christmas well. They saved all year so that they could pile presents under the tree and make Christmas day a joyous time for two little blond-haired boys who waited behind the bedroom door at 5:30 in the morning anxiously awaiting Dad’s annual proclamation: “Well, it looks like Santa has been here again!” And there on the floor beneath the magnificent Christmas tree, illuminating the house and warming the living room with the radiant heat of 500 lights, and adorned with glass balls and plastic icicles, lay the cap guns, rocking horses, Radio Flyer wagons, sleds, paint sets and stereoscopes, chemistry sets and board games that would provide hours of endless enjoyment for us. Each year my folks vowed to cut back, and each year they never did.

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