My First Christmas Address

In terms of money spent for Christmas this year, 2024/2025 was an extremely lean year for my family and me.

And in terms of some of the really expensive technology items I've seen my grandchildren want and receive for birthdays and holidays, well - I will never be able to meet those wants and expectations no matter what kind of year it is.

But the last way I want to present a gift is with an apology that it isn't more - or see crestfallen faces when something at receiving something insignificant.

So I put some very hard thought and time into Christmas this year, despite being sick.

On Sunday, I spent an entire day, wrapping and decorating some really modest gifts for all the grandchildren, which went into small Christmas bags.

But several days before that, I wrote this Christmas speech. If you can believe, the speech held everyone's attention. Two of my kids actually recorded it. 

And the excitement that followed when the paper started flying really surprised me. Not only did the mood remain elevated the rest of the day, I believe the speech set expectations (in a good way) for birthdays and holidays going forward, recementing the element of surprise and delight in giving, receiving, and sharing.

So if you need a dose of inspiration today, I'm including the speech in this post.

Happy Wednesday!

As a grandma with lots of grandkids and little money, it sometimes breaks my heart that I can’t afford all the expensive technology things my grandkids love and really want.

But then I read this article last month called, “Why the Best Gift You Can Give Your Grandchild This Christmas is a Book.” And this paragraph really stood out to me.

If there’s one thing grandparents understand, it’s the fragility, the brevity of life. We need to keep giving books as if we missed the memo that ‘technology rules.’ We know that big, sullen teenage lump really wants something techie, or cash — mostly cash, and that you are just a means to providing the latest gadget. But teenagers are sullen and oafish because they’ve learned a thing about life, so you can play them at their own game. Keep handing over books.

And this got me thinking. Yes, I know reading is often presented as a chore, something we “should” do that really isn’t very fun, like eating raw broccoli instead of chocolate chip cookies. We all know kids need to read to become successful students and successful adults in the business world.

Well, that reasoning would turn me off reading, too.

And the more I thought about it, the more I felt bad for kids who prefer technology over books and reading. And I feel especially bad for kids who can’t read, struggle with reading, or hate to read.

Because the non-reading kids are missing out on so much.

I really feel bad for kids (and adults who used to be kids) who haven’t spent hours of their childhood reading.

Yes, I know it’s “feel badly.”

I spent hours of my childhood reading because I had a mother who’d bought a subscription to the Weekly Readers Children’s Book Club, where we got a book in the mail each month.

And I had a father who used to read those books to my sister and me until we were old enough to read books ourselves.

I feel bad for kids who didn’t grow up having a father who made up tunes to sing along with the ditties in the books, “I’m the gift bear for the king. I won’t stop for anything!” or the snake’s song in the “Crows of Pearblossom” (for those who didn’t know Aldous Huxley wrote a children’s book):  I cannot fly; I have no wings; I cannot run; I have no legs. But I can creep where the black bird sings And eat her speckled eggs, ha, ha! And eat her speckled eggs.”

I feel bad for kids who never felt the rejection the Witch of Hissing Hill felt from her witchy customers (who came from miles around to buy one of Gizelle’s cats)

Far back in the hill country is Hissing Hill.

It's a bare lonely spot, with one twisted house

and a tall fir behind it.

Once upon a time the hill was aswarm

with black witch cats.

Cats arching their backs on the rooftop,

cats chasing up the fir tree,

cats yowling on crooked fence posts,

cats hissing in every corner of the shackly house.

And all of them black, black, black.

Her cats were the witchiest, the wickedest, the very worst, wonderful witch cats in the world…until the day one of those cats birthed a yellow cat named Gold.

“Now Gold was yellow and Gold was nice, but she had a bit of mustard in her yellow for spice.”

I feel bad for kids who never met Little Devil when he got sick or tasted the hot spider soup his mother made him (“Wait for the gloom to come, my son!”) or took the advice of his best friend Fritz, who said Little Devil was sick because he wasn’t doing enough good deeds (Ollie ollie zonka choo!).

I feel bad for kids who’ve never met Stevie and his Seven Orphans or played impossible hide and seek or tasted “salty” beet greens or had to obey dinner rules that included no more than one elbow and one knee on the kitchen table in “Good Ole Archbald.”

I feel bad for kids who never saw golden windows from afar, longed to be part of the Knights of the Silver Shield, met Marty from Mars, or felt the longing Danny Drake had for a dog named Bozo – and since their house was too small for a dog, Danny instead brought home mice, frogs, and ants – all named Bozo. Spoiler: Danny eventually gets the dog.

I feel bad for kids who never experienced “earning a playground” or accomplishing a “five-dollar yard,” who never cheered for Bunnyboy when he saved the columbine, mourned with King Charlemagne at the death of Roland the Noble Knight in battle, felt the fear of meeting Grendel the giant in the celebration hall for a fight only one would win, or saw the miraculous pitcher with their very own eyes.

I feel bad for kids who never saw Curious George make a fishing pole from a mop handle and  wall hook and then bait the hook with a slice of cake and who never left Old Bohemia with Nanka and to learn – in America – that a pancake is sometimes also a hat.

I feel bad for kids who don’t know that one is the engine, two is the boxcar, three is the covered hopper car. I feel bad for kids who never survived nearly drowning because the terrible Miss Dove wouldn’t let them get a drink of water in class.

I feel bad for kids who never experienced the world from the vantage point of the Poky Little Puppy and his four siblings after they dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world through the meadow, down the road, across the green grass and up the hill, one after the other.

I feel bad for kids who never felt the discontent of Scuffy the toy Tugboat (Scuffy was sad. Scuffy was cross. Scuffy sniffed his blue smokestack. “I won’t sail in a bathtub. I was meant for bigger things”). I feel bad for kids who never learned about boundaries on their behavior with Tootle the Train and “red flags waving,” or felt the loyalty of Mike toward his steam shovel Mary Anne, a steam shovel that could “dig as much in a day as one hundred men can dig in a week.”

I feel bad for kids who didn’t know that Mr. Willowby’s Christmas tree came by special delivery, full and fresh and glistening green, the biggest tree he’d ever seen.

I feel bad for kids who do not even know that where they walked to school each day, Indian children used to play, all about their native land, where the shops and houses stand. and the trees were very tall, and there were no streets at all, not a church, not a steeple —only woods and Indian people.”

I feel bad for kids who never slept beneath a sidewalk with Booker T. Washington or watch him sweep a floor so well that its lack of even one speck of dust earned him a college education. I feel bad for kids who never hung out with George Washington Carver as he invented face powder, shampoo, shaving cream, hand lotion, insecticides, glue, charcoal, rubber, nitroglycerine, plastics, and axle grease all from peanuts.

I feel bad for kids who were never “snowbound” with John Greenleaf Whittier or who never slept in the house with James Thurber the night the bed fell, or who never got deathly in the drenching rain the night the last leaf fell.

I feel bad for kids who’ve never felt the heart-stopping terror of Pew the blind pirate tap-tap-tapping his way down the sidewalk, who’ve never stolen a hot air balloon with other escaped prisoners only to be blown off course and land on a mysterious island having to fend for yourself with these strangers, or felt sorry for the frog who was in love with the jailor’s daughter, who knew in his little frog heart his love for her couldn’t not work because he was a frog and she was a woman.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I love reading books. And I like writing books, too.

Uncle Tim helps write some of my books. And Aunt Rebekah takes all the writings and turns them into books.

You’re probably not too curious about what we write or why we do it. You’re probably more curious about what’s in the little bags – and maybe disappointed that we don’t have many gifts to give this year.

But circling back to the beginning of my Christmas speech, “if there’s one thing grandparents understand, it’s the fragility, the brevity of life. We need to keep giving books as if we missed the memo that ‘technology rules.’”

Last year we had lots of gifts for you under the tree. This year, a lot of money went to pay medical bills.

So this year, we have some smaller gifts for you that we hope you’ll like.

And I am giving you the option (and you don’t have to do it) of picking out one book that I wrote (note: most picked out two, actually...surprised we even wrote and published books) to take home with you.

           You can read it or give it away or throw it away.

If you can’t read it by yourself (or if you don’t want to read it yourself), I can read it to you, a chapter at a time, over a video call. This way, we can enjoy the story together.

And if that sounds like a boring gift, I don’t care.

It’s not only what I have to give this Christmas; it’s what I WANT to give this Christmas.

I’m giving the gift of self, of imagination, and the opportunity for us to experience something together you can’t get anywhere else.

Merry Christmas!

P.S.: Copies of this speech are available to take home upon request.