Readers help stoke fire of holiday memories

Christmas brings pretty packages to open. It also gives us a reason to open our hearts, and relive wonderful memories.

In last week’s column, I asked readers to share the stories of cherished gifts. As always, I was touched by the response.

Some of you wrote or called to tell me about gifts that were received as a child and are with you still. Others spoke of gifts that were lost to time but still shine in your memory.

Bobbie Manis, of Hayden Lake, Idaho, wrote:

“In 1954, in Northern Pennsylvania, I was about 12 years old. The local hardware featured toys for Christmas and there was a baby doll on the shelf. She looked so lonely that I came up with the tiny price to buy her even though I no longer played with dolls! Much to my surprise, the next time I was in the store, she had been replaced by another!”

It turns out that the doll had been purchased as a gift for Manis.

The doll isn’t around anymore, but she is still beloved. “I wish I still had her but the memory always brings a smile,” Manis wrote.

Another reader, “Beverly O.” wrote:

“Thanks for encouraging ‘treasure hunting,’ even at home.”

One year, Beverly realized that she had so much that had belonged to her mother and two grandmothers; she wanted to share it with her family.

“I decided to give each of my grown children something to remember those who had touched their lives,” she wrote. “I worried they might not be happy about getting ‘old’ stuff and worse yet their spouses might not be happy to have me foisting off things on them.” But Beverly discovered that old treasures are appreciated. “To my amazement, it was the best gift of the Christmas,” she wrote.

Beverly also sent a very important tip:

“If you know the items provenance, be sure to include it and a bit about the owner-even a picture if there is one.” She wrote. “This makes those long-ago family members seem much more real.”

That’s great advice for all of us. Take a minute to jot down the facts and history of those family pieces.

Dana Freeborn wrote:

“When I was five years old I received a special gift from my aunt Helen. Her daughters, my cousins, Karen and Patty, were teenagers and earlier that summer, when Karen cleaned out her closet, she handed down to me an old formal – white taffeta with layers of white net and pink satin trim – to play dress-up.”

Freeborn’s mother shortened the dress and tightened up the straps. “It was a sloppy fit, but I thought it looked wonderful,” Freeborn wrote.

That year for Christmas, Freeborn’s gift from her Aunt Helen was in big box. “I was thrilled to find a gorgeous, satin-trimmed, blue taffeta and net formal in my very own size that had been made by my Aunt Helen,” Freeborn wrote. “I absolutely treasured that dress. It was so special to me that I even wore it the day we all moved into our new house.”

Catharine Drum Scherer wrote:

“When I was three years old I fell in love with a small, furry, elephant with bright red ears that was underneath the tree. ‘Ellie’ became my closest friend. She went to college with me, saw me get married and have my own children.”

A few years ago, Scherer’s new friend, Robin, came to visit from New Zealand on her way to Scotland.

“That night, in the middle of the night, I thought I heard a voice saying, ‘Robin needs a friend. Ellie should go with her,’ ” Scherer wrote. “I resisted this strongly, but the next morning, Robin got on the plane with Ellie’s head sticking out of her backpack.”

When Scherer’s friend Robin returned from Scotland more than a year later, she confessed to Scherer that one night she had felt so lonely and sad that she considered suicide.

“Then she saw Ellie and hugged her all night. Ellie reminded her that she was loved and never really alone,” Scherer wrote.

Then Robin returned Ellie to Scherer saying, “Ellie wants to come home now.”

“This Christmas it will be 50 years since I first found Ellie under the tree,” Scherer wrote. “She is very worn but remains my best present ever.”

Madge Fackler wrote:

“I was born in 1937. Christmas was not anything extra in our home, maybe an orange or some nuts we didn’t have to gather on our Ohio farm,” Fackler wrote. “But, I will always remember a gift from my father, just a couple of years before I lost him in a train/car accident. (He was in his 40’s.)”

Fackler’s father teased that his gift was a “little red pot with a handle on top and you stir it until you are done!”

“I thought, ‘Oh daddy, you wouldn’t give me a pot!’” Fackler wrote, “But much to my surprise it was a pot – a popcorn popper pot, with a handle on top. I loved it.”

Losing her father made the gift especially important. “My dad and I enjoyed that popcorn, along with big red apples from our orchard, until his death.” Fackler kept the popcorn popper and used it after she married, but, sadly, over the years it was lost.

“I know my daddy is still smiling down at me the same as I always smile and remember my best Christmas present ever.”

Maurine Abbott of Coeur d’Alene called to tell me about a very special Christmas gift given to her mother. “Each year the last thing to go on my Christmas tree is an 89-year-old Santa that was made for my mother’s first Christmas,” she said. “He has been on every tree except on during World War II.”

Abbott said that the fabric Santa, made from “scraps of whatever red fabric was handy” is very grubby having hung on so many trees, many of which were decorated with real candles instead of electric lights.

Now Abbott’s tree is decorated entirely with crystal ornaments and white lights, the old Santa stands out. “He is tired, and so funny looking,” Abbott said. “But he is always there, every year.”

Kristina Kush, of Spokane called to tell me about her very special dollhouse.

“The Christmas I was five years old I came home from a party at my grandmother’s to find that Santa had come.” Beneath a big red bow Kush found a beautiful doll’s house complete with pieces of tiny furniture.

Over the years, on other Christmases and birthdays, new pieces of furniture and accessories were added. Now the dollhouse sits in Kush’s 11-year-old daughter’s room.

“She plays with it, and my 8-year-old son, who says he’s only rearranging the furniture, plays with it too,” Kush said.

Donna Potter Phillips, of Spokane, wrote:

“In 1951, when I was 8-years-old, we lived in Fairfield, California, near to Travis Air Force Base where my father was stationed.”

In September, Phillips and her mother took the train to San Francisco to do their Christmas Shopping. Phillips was asked to pick out what she would like to get for Christmas. “I chose “Diana,” a baby-sized, soft and realistic curly haired doll,” Phillips wrote. “I got to hold the box containing Diana all the way home.”

Then, Phillips wrote, the doll disappeared. “You’ll have to wait for Christmas,” were her mother’s words,” Phillips wrote. “It truly was a delicious agony.”

Phillips searched the house, “up and down, in and out” but never found the doll.

On Christmas morning, the doll was waiting. “Mom had found a wicker bassinette and fixed it up with flannel wrappings and blankets and she’d re-done real baby clothes from my one-year-old brother, Douglas,” Phillips wrote. “Anything else I got that year did not remain in memory, just Diana.”

The doll is still with Phillips, now spending her days in a child’s rocker in the guest room. “She’s now dressed in a baby dress that I wore and a sweater and cap that was crocheted for me way back in 1942,” Phillips wrote. “She is and always will remain special.”

In case you’re wondering where the doll was hidden for so many weeks, Phillips knows. “In the neighbor’s shed!!”

And finally, a shy reader in Priest River, Idaho, shared his Christmas memories in a phone call.

“My parents were German and when my sister and I went to bed on Christmas Eve the house didn’t look like Christmas at all,” he said. “But then they would wake us at around midnight and lead us into a magical scene.”

His uncle, who lived with them, would be in the front yard calling “Goodbye Santa Claus,” and the caller could hear sleigh bells jingling.

The gentleman recalled that there were no ornaments on his childhood tree. “The tree was completely decorated with colored lights, tinsel – thousands of strands of tinsel – and fluffy asbestos snow.”

One special year he found an electric train set-up under the tree. “I still can’t imagine how they got it all done in just a couple of hours, but they did. And it was magical.”

Thanks to everyone who took the time to contact me. I hope your holiday is a magical mix of old treasures and new memories that will be cherished for years to come.

Merry Christmas.