From the Relief Society Magazine, December 1964 –

The Christmas Gift

Kathryn E. Franks

“What would you like for Christmas more than anything else?” Danny, my five-year-old son asked, as he slid into a chair by the kitchen table on which I was busy cutting out a red Christmas apron.

He had just come in from kindergarten and I felt that to him it was a very important question. It had to do, I was certain, with something he was making at school.

“Oh,” I said, “I’d like a new automatic washer, a new dryer, a set of new dishes, a bright red Christmas dress, with a bit of sparkly trimming, a dishwasher, a sewing machine, a pancake turner, a waste paper basket. …”

Danny was no longer listening. He had suddenly dived under the table.

When I again started cutting, my small son sneaked back upon the chair and settled himself. He continued questioning.

“If you had a new washer in your bathroom, what color would you like it to be?”

“Pink!” I answered quickly, “to match the new walls.”

This brought such brightness to his face I thought the sunlight had burst through the kitchen window. He popped from his chair and simply cart-wheeled straight out of the kitchen.

Danny didn’t mention the subject again for several days, although it was continually on my mind. I was anxious to find out what in the world he could be making.

I gave up. There was no use guessing.

Then a clue came the evening before the school program. “I need some wrapping paper for my gift,” Danny reminded me at bedtime. ”Will you find a pretty piece and put it out with my school clothes? Don’t forget, please.”

I did as he asked. But the next morning he came in and informed me that one sheet wasn’t enough. “I need two or three sheets,” he announced proudly.

Good land, I thought, what could he be wrapping that would take all that paper!

He brought the gift home in his friend’s car. He ordered me to hide in the kitchen while he hid it under his bed. I promised not to peek, and a promise is a promise. Although the dust, shoes, and socks collected, I neither vacuumed nor swept under his bed.

The next day we brought the Christmas tree and placed it by the front window. Excitedly we decorated it, with my son hanging too many ornaments on one limb, making it hang down limp, and not enough on another so a vast emptiness showed in one spot. The branches, nevertheless, cast their fragrance of pine throughout the house, bringing the reverence of the season.

The gift from underneath the bed was the first one brought out and placed under the tree. It was big and round, all his arms could reach around. I held my breath, for it was so flimsily wrapped I felt the gift itself was going to peek out any minute. … If his hands didn’t stop rearranging it under the tree, it certainly would come apart. First he placed it in front, then he changed it to the back. This didn’t satisfy him, so he set it at an angle under an overhanging branch.

“It’s light,” I told my husband later that evening, “for anything the size and shape of an old butter crock.”

On Christmas morning as I hurried into the living room, Danny rushed to the tree and grabbed his gift for me and thrust it into my hands. My hands shook as I tore apart the paper and ribbons.

“Look,” I exclaimed, holding it up, “a beautiful pink finger-painted wastepaper basket.” My face, I’m sure showed my excitement. Surprisingly enough, it was a large ice-cream carton covered with his own hand-painted deer and other Christmas designs. I was childishly delighted.

“Do you like it?” my son asked, forgetting to look at his own gift under the tree.

“Like it,” I said, hugging him, “I love it.”

After the gifts were unwrapped he came over to me with a worried look, and said, “But, Mother, you didn’t get an automatic washer, a sewing machine, or a red dress. Why are you so happy?”

“I’m happy,” I answered, holding him from me where I could get a good look at the five-year-old size of him, “because I got a wastepaper basket, a pink, handpainted, decorated one, that exactly matches my bathroom walls.”

At that he simply cart-wheeled over the discarded Christmas wrappings right into the branches of the Christmas tree.