It’s almost December and the Christmas spirit has not entered my soul yet. It’s not like the old days when I didn’t realize what was going on in the world. The magic went out of Christmas when the last of my kids stopped believing in Santa Claus. Now, buying the tree, putting up the lights and buying the presents are just another chore. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown at Christmas.
Last night I was at the YMCA with Avalon and my son, trying to work off the cruise weight. As I was pedaling away on the stationary bike, A Charlie Brown Christmas came on the TV. I watched it for the first time in years. I loved it as a child and loved watching it with my kids. It first aired in 1965 when I was two years old. I’d forgotten that the theme of the cartoon was the over-commercialization and secularization of Christmas. Imagine that. Charles Shultz thought Christmas was too commercialized in 1965. Think how far we’ve come, with hordes of ignorant dumbasses knocking each other to the ground on Black Friday. The scene that made me laugh was when Charlie Brown’s little sister asks him to write her letter to Santa Claus:
Sally: Please note the size and color of each item, and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself: just send money. How about tens and twenties?
Charlie Brown: TENS AND TWENTIES? Oh, even my baby sister!
Sally: All I want is what I… I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.
All I want is my fair share. It seems that 1965 was the beginning of this mantra. Is it a coincidence that LBJ’s War on Poverty programs began this very same year? The secularization and commercialization of America began in the mid 1960s. The credit card was introduced in 1969 and we were off to the races. Everyone in this country wants what is coming to them. They just don’t want to pay for it. Our society is driven by greed, materialism, debt, and an attitude that they deserve something for nothing.
The true message of this brilliant cartoon must really irritate the progressive do-gooders that dominate in this country. A cartoon that references Jesus Christ in a positive manner and describes the true meaning of Christmas could never be introduced onto network TV today. I purposely use the term Christmas rather than holidays because I hope to piss off the secular nitwits that want this time of the year to be nothing but a shopping exercise of excess. I do not look forward to all the commercial crap I’ll need to deal with over the next four weeks. What I will look forward to is Christmas Eve at my house. My wife has 8 brothers and sisters, with dozens of neices, nephews, grandkids, etc who are all invited to my house for a wild day of drinking, eating, insulting and a good time. My mother in law will gather the young kids around the table with a birthday cake for Jesus. I’ll listen to stories from my father in law, who has already beaten off cancer twice and now has it again. I will go to bed that night with my Christmas spirit intact, knowing that family and the love of my wife and kids is all that matters in the long run.
Merry Christmas!!!
26 Comments
ALEXISTAN says:
Let’s not forget “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. The good one, voiced by Boris Karloff and animated by Charles Jones. That one always hits me in the ticker.
” My wife has 8 brothers and sisters, with dozens of neices, nephews, grandkids, etc who are all invited to my house for a wild day of drinking, eating, insulting and a good time.”
Traditions are what Christmas is all about. Traditions and family. When you’re cleaning up the mess after they all go home, just keep telling yourself that.
I was the same age, and CB xmas had the same effect on me. I knew at a young age, via Charles Shultz, that Christmas was a commercial fiasco. It did little, however, to slow me wanting what I wanted. I used to look forward to watching Charley Brown Christmas all year. It was always a magical night when it came on, along with Frosty the Snowman. I have ‘em on DVD, and enjoyed showing them to the kids. A simpler time, before socialism, diversity, affirmative action, 100 million government parasites, Wal Mart and Chinese goods. This used to be a great, pretty good country and place to live.
“A cartoon that references Jesus Christ in a positive manner and describes the true meaning of Christmas could never be introduced onto network TV today.”
A cartoon that says “all I want is my fair share” would never get on either.
Sally: “Snap cards!! Send me hundreds of Snap Cards!!”
I’m sorry I ever lied to my kids about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Ferry and the rest of the bullshit that has been co-opted into materialism and consumerism.
Celebrating the birth of a long dead Jew … by buying each other shit even though He himself despised materialism … and on a day that CLEARLY is NOT his supposed birthday … not to mention the fact that He was against man-made holidays ….. and with ‘traditions’ that are 100% pagan in origin …. by a population 95% of whom don’t really know jack-shit about Him and couldn’t even name what He said were the ‘two greatest commandments’ ……….. well, that’s just pure insanity.
I look forward to having a little to give. Some to charity, some to my SO, some to my disabled Vet friend, and some to my Mom. That and I’ll probably be getting my very own .38 as a present.
For classic Christmas TV, add “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” with Burl Ives.
My family is far-flung, so Christmas is far more about getting together than it isw about gifts, which have been scaled way back in recent years. Heck, we are all trying to get rid of stuff!
Christmas died when Christ was replaced with “X”, as in X-Mas.
Some people would like you to believe that “X” represents Christ’s name in Greek where the first letter is the Greek ‘chi’, pronounced ‘Kristos’.
This is pure bullshit, considering the fact that 99.99% of the population has no friggin clue about this Greek rendering. The merchants and sellers of shit killed Christ a second time when they replaced Him with ‘X’. They can go fuck themselves.
You want to give you kids a real Christmas present? Take them to a soup kitchen and feed the hungry. Or, go to a hospital and put on a skit for the sick and dying. You’ll be doing God’s work. You want to give your wife a real Christmas present? Write her an original poem from your heart telling her how much you love her. (That’s what I’m giving Ms Freud this year.) But, beware, she’ll probably have a heart attack (then your kids can do a skit for her!).
I have a favorite Christmas story; written by O. Henry in 1906. Amazing that back then he used words like imputation, parsimony, and mendicancy. Imagine that … a trillion dollars in edumacation monies later, and we’re stupider!
Anyway, it’s a beautiful story and I’m pasting the whole thing here … all 2,078 words of it. Why? Because I can. And because flash does it.
=================================
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.
Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’
Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
All I want is my fair share. It seems that 1965 was the beginning of this mantra. Is it a coincidence that LBJ’s War on Poverty programs began this very same year? The secularization and commercialization of America began in the mid 1960s. The credit card was introduced in 1969 and we were off to the races. Everyone in this country wants what is coming to them. They just don’t want to pay for it. Our society is driven by greed, materialism, debt, and an attitude that they deserve something for nothing.
Easy and instant credit and welfare for all , the Greatest generation’s gift that keeps on giving.
Dear writer of this article
thank you for your perspective I agree with you.
I have never watched Charlie Brown all the way
through. I just watched it for the first time. yes the my fair share stuck out as a
Sore spot for me. God bless you and Merry Christmas
If you feel you have received some value from this site, donations will be gratefully accepted to help support my efforts to provide you with the truth about our unsustainable economic policies
Make Recurring Donation
To Donate by Check
Mail to:
Jim Quinn -
P.O. Box 1520,
Kulpsville, PA 19443
Random Quote
A Fourth Turning harnesses the seasons of life to bring about a renewal in the seasons of time. In so doing, it provides passage through the great discontinuities of history and closes the full circle of the saeculum. The Fourth Turning is when the Spirit of America reappears, rousing courage and fortitude from the people. History is seasonal, but its outcomes are not foreordained. Much will depend on how tall we stand in the trials to come. — Strauss & Howe
ALEXISTAN says:
Let’s not forget “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. The good one, voiced by Boris Karloff and animated by Charles Jones. That one always hits me in the ticker.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
29th November 2012 at 11:45 am
Eddie says:
” My wife has 8 brothers and sisters, with dozens of neices, nephews, grandkids, etc who are all invited to my house for a wild day of drinking, eating, insulting and a good time.”
Traditions are what Christmas is all about. Traditions and family. When you’re cleaning up the mess after they all go home, just keep telling yourself that.
You are blessed. (I know you know that.)
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
29th November 2012 at 12:18 pm
AWD says:
I was the same age, and CB xmas had the same effect on me. I knew at a young age, via Charles Shultz, that Christmas was a commercial fiasco. It did little, however, to slow me wanting what I wanted. I used to look forward to watching Charley Brown Christmas all year. It was always a magical night when it came on, along with Frosty the Snowman. I have ‘em on DVD, and enjoyed showing them to the kids. A simpler time, before socialism, diversity, affirmative action, 100 million government parasites, Wal Mart and Chinese goods. This used to be a great, pretty good country and place to live.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
0
29th November 2012 at 12:43 pm
Dirty Billy says:
“A cartoon that references Jesus Christ in a positive manner and describes the true meaning of Christmas could never be introduced onto network TV today.”
A cartoon that says “all I want is my fair share” would never get on either.
Sally: “Snap cards!! Send me hundreds of Snap Cards!!”
Charlie Brown: “What’s a Snap Card?”
Sally: “My fair share.”
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
29th November 2012 at 1:07 pm
Davos says:
Jesus was likely born in October or September.
I’m sorry I ever lied to my kids about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Ferry and the rest of the bullshit that has been co-opted into materialism and consumerism.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
8 
0
29th November 2012 at 1:15 pm
Stucky says:
Celebrating the birth of a long dead Jew … by buying each other shit even though He himself despised materialism … and on a day that CLEARLY is NOT his supposed birthday … not to mention the fact that He was against man-made holidays ….. and with ‘traditions’ that are 100% pagan in origin …. by a population 95% of whom don’t really know jack-shit about Him and couldn’t even name what He said were the ‘two greatest commandments’ ……….. well, that’s just pure insanity.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
14 
0
29th November 2012 at 1:50 pm
KaD says:
I look forward to having a little to give. Some to charity, some to my SO, some to my disabled Vet friend, and some to my Mom. That and I’ll probably be getting my very own .38 as a present.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:04 pm
Celtic Tiger says:
For classic Christmas TV, add “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” with Burl Ives.
My family is far-flung, so Christmas is far more about getting together than it isw about gifts, which have been scaled way back in recent years. Heck, we are all trying to get rid of stuff!
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:08 pm
Stucky says:
Christmas died when Christ was replaced with “X”, as in X-Mas.
Some people would like you to believe that “X” represents Christ’s name in Greek where the first letter is the Greek ‘chi’, pronounced ‘Kristos’.
This is pure bullshit, considering the fact that 99.99% of the population has no friggin clue about this Greek rendering. The merchants and sellers of shit killed Christ a second time when they replaced Him with ‘X’. They can go fuck themselves.
You want to give you kids a real Christmas present? Take them to a soup kitchen and feed the hungry. Or, go to a hospital and put on a skit for the sick and dying. You’ll be doing God’s work. You want to give your wife a real Christmas present? Write her an original poem from your heart telling her how much you love her. (That’s what I’m giving Ms Freud this year.) But, beware, she’ll probably have a heart attack (then your kids can do a skit for her!).
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
8 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:10 pm
Wyoming Mike says:
We will spend Christmas morning as a family cooking and feeding the less fortunate in our town.
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:14 pm
Administrator says:
Wyoming Mike
When did you turn into such a do-gooder?
Have you been following the Eagles soap opera?
You’ll love this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z447qc4ZRRA
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:19 pm
Administrator says:
Stuck
You might want to run the poem by us TBPers before giving to her.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
8 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:21 pm
Stucky says:
I have a favorite Christmas story; written by O. Henry in 1906. Amazing that back then he used words like imputation, parsimony, and mendicancy. Imagine that … a trillion dollars in edumacation monies later, and we’re stupider!
Anyway, it’s a beautiful story and I’m pasting the whole thing here … all 2,078 words of it. Why? Because I can. And because flash does it.
=================================
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.
Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’
Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:35 pm
Stucky says:
Admin
Here it is;
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your ass is bigger
Than a B-52.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
12 
2
29th November 2012 at 2:37 pm
Administrator says:
Stuck
I think she’ll love it. Give it to her early and let us know how it goes.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:38 pm
Eddie says:
Consider plagiarizing a little Shakespeare, Stucky. Trust me on this. Maybe one of the sonnets.
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
29th November 2012 at 2:43 pm
AWD says:
I’m sure that poem will go over real well. B-52′a have a rather svelte ass
http://www.wingweb.co.uk/wingweb/img/450-Boeing_B-52_tail_turret_assemblies.jpg
No wonder black dudes love that obese white ass, they’ve seen big ass since birth
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
13 
3
29th November 2012 at 3:11 pm
Wyoming Mike says:
Always been. Just not that habitat for humanity crap. Sends a bad message.
The Eagles are driving for that #1 or 2 pick. Waiting for a late season 3 game winning streak to screw it all up.
Like or Dislike:
2 
1
29th November 2012 at 4:40 pm
a cruel accountant says:
Admin
May you be blessed with grandkids then you can start all over again.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
29th November 2012 at 12:39 am
flash says:
All I want is my fair share. It seems that 1965 was the beginning of this mantra. Is it a coincidence that LBJ’s War on Poverty programs began this very same year? The secularization and commercialization of America began in the mid 1960s. The credit card was introduced in 1969 and we were off to the races. Everyone in this country wants what is coming to them. They just don’t want to pay for it. Our society is driven by greed, materialism, debt, and an attitude that they deserve something for nothing.
Easy and instant credit and welfare for all , the Greatest generation’s gift that keeps on giving.
Like or Dislike:
2 
1
29th November 2012 at 7:09 am
flash says:
Stuck, I remember reading that story in grammar school, thanks for the reminder.
PS…don’t follow my lead….nothing good will come of it. I know because I’ve been following it for decades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx4PsxUvMqY
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
29th November 2012 at 7:15 am
flash says:
@ Stuck…very good, but alas, you’re no Shakesbear.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
29th November 2012 at 7:21 am
Judy says:
We love Christmas Eve at the Quinn house!! My favorite family tradition!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
29th November 2012 at 9:25 am
suzie says:
Dear writer of this article
thank you for your perspective I agree with you.
I have never watched Charlie Brown all the way
through. I just watched it for the first time. yes the my fair share stuck out as a
Sore spot for me. God bless you and Merry Christmas
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
29th November 2012 at 4:10 pm
Stucky says:
“Dear writer of this article thank you for your perspective.” —- suzie
That would be ME, and you are most welcome. Please stop by and praise me as often as you’d like.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
29th November 2012 at 5:16 pm
yeah says:
roses are red
violets are blue
suck long enuff
and there will be goo
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
29th November 2012 at 5:53 pm