The Best Christmas Ever: A Table, a Doll, and the Magic My Parents Made

Photo by Jeanne Gehret

Making holidays sparkle for our grandchildren this year brings to mind my own favorite gift as a child.  This episode isn’t about a faraway trip or an expensive present. Instead, it features a table, four chairs, and parents who quietly transformed curbside castoffs into the best Christmas gift I ever received.

A Christmas Morning Full of Wonder

The faded snapshot from that morning always makes me smile. Dressed in my Christmas best, I’m unwrapping a large doll with great delight. (I still have the doll.) Even better is the memory of finding a child-sized table and chairs, painted bright white, waiting just for me that year.
Long after it passed into another little girl’s hands, the origin story of the miniature dining set warmed my heart.
Dad had spotted the little table and chairs on a neighbor’s curb, headed for the dump. Making a hasty U-turn, he loaded it into the car, brought it home, and with Mom spent long evenings sanding, repairing, and coating it with fresh paint. He could have bought something new. But in true Dad fashion, he chose the more imaginative path that made a gift far more desirable than something off the shelf.
Even as a girl, I recognized this as a trait uniquely my parents’: they could make things. One year, when I returned home after Girl Scout camp, I discovered my former little-girl bedroom transformed. Mom and Dad bought me brand-new pieces of furniture and painted it my favorite color—orange! Mom sewed a bedspread with matching drape tiebacks. Together, they freshened the walls with new paint. Voila! The perfect place for me to journal my pre-teen experiences and write my first stories.

Parents Who Could Make Anything

That was typical of them. Dad could do plumbing, wiring, carpentry, painting, and car repair. An electrical engineer, he held several patents for his inventions and, even into his late nineties, was creating gadgets to make life easier for everyone in the family.
A lover of beauty in all its forms, Mom was a champion seamstress. Snowsuits, velvet gowns, and upholstery projects emerged from her sewing machine. Gardens took shape to supply her with flowers to arrange for our table. As a child, I danced on the lawn outside her window, moved by her piano renditions of Beethoven, Strauss, and “Moon River.”
But the Christmas that most captures Mom and Dad’s spirit wasn’t about anything they made. It was about something they gave away.
When one of my father’s coworkers lost his job that November, he lamented that he couldn’t provide any Christmas presents for his large brood of children. Even though Mom and Dad struggled to make ends meet, they bought a cashier’s check for a large sum and sent it anonymously to the other family. No signature or return address or expectation of thanks—just the desire to assure that Christmas magic would still enchant young children as they woke on Christmas morning.
That was my parents: seeing need, stepping in, and giving more generously than others realized.

How These Memories Shape the Stories I Write Today

Perhaps that’s one reason I love writing about the Anthonys. They, too, gave of themselves—time, resources, conviction, courage—over and over. They believed in putting good into the world and tending those who needed help. In many ways, the spirit of my parents’ Christmases lives on in the characters I write.

Looking back now, I realize the best gifts aren’t always wrapped in bows. Sometimes they’re pulled off a curb and lovingly restored. Sometimes they arrive as anonymous envelopes. Sometimes they’re the steady hands and full hearts of people who choose generosity as a way of life.
See the wonder on my little-girl face in the photo? It’s the same wonder I feel when I remember what love can build, restore, and quietly give away. Merry Christmas!