Mike Parker: Has the Spirit of Christmas Past died?
The National Retail Federation released its annual holiday forecast on November 6, predicting retail sales in November and December will grow between 3.7% and 4.2% over 2024. That figure translates into total spending between $1.01 trillion and $1.02 trillion.
Forbes magazine published an article on November 18 that said consumers are reducing their spending this holiday season, but the per person expenditure is still on average $1,552.
Sales. Gifts. Nearly $1,552 in spending.
Merry Chri$tma$ 2025.
How different Christmas has become. My mother grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. She was born a year before the Black Monday of 1929 began the economic sinkhole that grew into “The Great Depression.”
Christmas for my mother meant a shoebox containing an orange, an apple, and some hard candy. Children in today’s affluent America can scarcely imagine the time when their grandparents or great-grandparents lived, times when a couple of pieces of fruit and a few pieces of candy were the chief Christmas treats.
Other highlights of Christmas for my mother and her sisters might be a doll, or a set of jacks and a ball, or sometimes a coloring book and crayons. Mom told me that one year she and her sisters received a metal tea set. None of the girls had an exclusive claim on the tea set. They were expected to share what, at that time, was an extravagant gift.
The Christmas tree that stood in my mother’s home was small. Her dad purposely cut a little tree from the evergreens that grew on his farm. Since Mom’s family dressed the tree with handmade decorations and a few tinsel icicles, a small tree required fewer decorations. No lights adorned their Christmas tree. Mom grew up in a home without electricity — or indoor plumbing.
She often experienced a “white Christmas,” but she does not remember any fondly. In the part of the mountains where she grew up, once the snow fell, “we didn’t see the ground until next spring,” she explained.
Mom has strong feelings about the materialistic nature that forms the spirit of Christmas present.
“When it’s your birthday, who gets the presents?” she asked. “People go in debt to buy things they can’t afford — and then worry all year how they will pay for it. What your children really want is your time and your love.”
Let’s fast-forward about 20 or so years. What was Christmas like for a Lenoir County farm family in the 1950s? According to my wife, Sandra, her father would cut a four-foot pine from the farm he tended and put it in a corner of the living room on a table.
“Mama would mix powdered Fab laundry detergent with water, and I would whip it like cream. After the Fab was ready, I’d take a table knife and spread it on the branches of the tree to look like snow,” she said. Her family added lights, glass balls, and lots of tinsel.
Sandra’s family exchanged only small presents. One year she bought her father a tie. Another year, she found a special gift for her brother, Leneave. The gift was a radio with pieces that flipped outward to transform it into a toy rifle.
Christmas past holds a special memory for her.
“It was the only time of the year that we had apples and oranges,” she said. “Daddy would buy a half bushel of oranges, a dozen or so apples, and a dozen or so tangerines. He also bought some walnuts.”
In her home, family members hung stockings around the doorframe.
“Santa would stuff my stocking with a bottle of pink Desert Flower hand lotion and some chocolate-covered peanuts,” Sandra recalled. On Santa’s last visit to her, the Jolly Elf brought two matching poodle dog lamps. She still has — and treasures — those lamps.
For the Dawson family, the big event was the visit to Aunt Mae’s home. Family members from North Carolina and Virginia gathered at Aunt Mae’s here in Kinston, where they enjoyed what most people consider the traditional Christmas dinner. After dinner, family members exchanged gifts.
Most children today cannot understand how little materialism infected the spirit of Christmas past. Sadly, given today’s whirl of buying and wrapping and partying, most adults have a hard time remembering earlier days and simpler times — times when Christmas did not mean gifts piled on top of gifts. Christmas offered, instead, an opportunity to be with family and to rejoice quietly in God’s blessings.
Especially the greatest gift of all — the gift of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus.
Let’s pause to remember. Young people, ask your grandparents what Christmas was like for them. You might be surprised — even shocked.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. He can be reached at mparker16@gmail.com.
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