The Best Christmas Gift Ever!

It was Christmas 1935. Charles was five years old.

His family lived in Oklahoma City and like so many families during the Depression, they struggled to make ends meet.

But Oklahomans were also burdened by the dust storms raging through the state, destroying the economy.

Charles’s grandparents fought hard to save their small farm but ultimately were forced to move in with his family.

Yes, these were hard times — the hardest of hard times.

To understand the Christmas story of Oklahoma in 1935 I found an article that appeared in the Daily Oklahoman on Christmas Day.

The article paints a vivid picture of a Dust Bowl Christmas and how a gritty people made the best of poverty with simple joys like

• homemade treats,
• community spirit,
• wood stoves for warmth, and
• gifts of fruit and nuts in stockings,

demonstrating how joy and happiness can be found in the simplest of pleasures.

Here are few of the observations made in this article:

“Times Hard, Spirits Warm On Christmas During 1935”

Christmas finds the people of the dust bowl living in a world of swirling, biting dirt which seeped into their houses, ground itself into their clothes, and worked its way into the very lines of their faces.

Gifts are fewer, and of a more practical nature. Fruit, nuts, and candy are cherished luxuries.

In the midst of this bitterness, the warm spirit of Christmas persists. It is a spirit born of shared hardship and a stubborn hope.

Community programs to ensure “no child without a gift” took on a profound meaning, uniting towns in a common cause.

The Christmas tree might be a greasewood bush or a cedar dragged from a dry creek bed, but it was decorated with handmade ornaments and cherished just the same.

They will gather in churches, in schoolhouses, and in homes stripped of comfort by the dust, to sing the old carols. And for a little while, the wind will be forgotten.

The  article concludes;

“Not one of plenty, but of patience, not of glitter, but of gratitude for the simple, unburied things: family, community, and the hope that next year, the land will sleep again under a blanket of snow, not dust.”

So Charles awoke into this world where everyone was struggling on Christmas morning 1935.

He knew not to awaken Grandpa Will, with whom he shared his room, so he gently slipped out of bed and made a beeline for the door.

He ran down the hall, full of wonder and bursting with excitement of what awaited him under the Christmas tree.

And, wonder of wonders, there, under the tree, there lay a single gift.

Nothing more.

It was wrapped in a bright ribbon with a homemade card inscribed, “For Charles.”

He sat spellbound, gazing upon

• an amazing,
• stupendous,
• perfect

GIANT ORANGE

It filled him with joy.

It was

• the biggest orange he had ever seen,
• the brightest orange he’d ever held,
• the tastiest orange he could ever imagine.

And here’s the thing:

For Charles, that never changed.

For the rest of his life he said it was —

The best Christmas gift ever.

Never, when he told the story, was there any sense of disappointment in having gotten ONLY a single orange for Christmas. In fact, every time he told that story he once again became that five-year-old, jubilant little boy.

Charles always experienced Christmas 1935 as joy-filled —

• he was never was a child of want,
• he was always a child of plenty.

He showed me when your heart is filled to the brim —

— it’s filled.

I’ve often wondered how Charles, as a five-year-old, had come to find such joy in receiving that single large orange.

Charles’s family obviously had passed on to him the wonderful lesson of measuring the value of a gift by the spirit in which it is given.

The big orange became the perfect gift because it was given in the perfect spirit.

Merry Christmas,

Pat & Marsha