I’ve always envied people who keep a journal. What a marvel — to be able to look back, hear your own voice of years ago, and know what mattered most at the time. Then I discovered a treasure that I hadn’t known I’d accumulated: more than 40 years of Christmas lists.
Starting the year I was married, I’d kept a list of the people we’d need gifts for and filled it in with what we ended up giving each of them. First on the 1974 list was my niece Jessica, who got mittens and Goodnight Moon. Nephew Ritchie got mittens, too, and an audiobook of Great Expectations. That list, on four-by-eight-inch reporter’s notebook paper, is three pages long and covers both my husband’s family and mine — parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles — as well as friends and colleagues. An army to buy gifts for, and plenty to keep track of.
And that’s why, after the holidays, I stuck that list in a file folder marked “Christmas Christmas,” perhaps recognizing that my holiday duties had doubled, with two families and two sets of friends. Over the years I threw each Christmas list into the file, knowing it would be helpful to look back at the previous years’ lists to make sure that we didn’t give a scarf to Aunt Mary more than once.
Each list told a story, mostly through the names on it, but also of where we each were in our lives. Some years’ presents were more elaborate than others, when we had more time to devote to shopping, wrapping, and mailing. Some years’ gifts were more expensive. Even the paper the lists are on tells a story, as I progressed from various styles of reporter’s notebooks to plummy publishing stationery to red or green construction paper.
Most meaningful are the names. Our son was born, and the names of babysitters and teachers were added. Friends’ spouses and children appeared on the list. And some names disappeared. I remember sitting at my desk writing a new Christmas list by looking at the previous year’s tally. I came to “Sarah,” stared at it, then lay my head down on folded arms and stayed there for a long, long time. Our four-year-old niece Sarah had died suddenly that year.
Memories like that stopped me from looking at the lists and writing about them a couple of years ago. But I came back to them. So much there was intriguing. Who was “Elisabeth”? Oh, right. She was the illicit lover of a family member. I glanced ahead to see how many years that had lasted; just a few. And Eric? My middle brother’s lover. He died of AIDS.
Along with the painful memories is amusement at changing styles and technology. Audio cassettes and LP records morph to CDs. Soap on a rope — a bad idea in the first place — disappears. (It is gone, I hope.) There was a year when a police detective friend persuaded me to give pepper spray.
Over the years we made a game of looking for one great gift that would please most everyone on our list. There’s a parade of those one-size-fits-all items: maple butter from one Vermont store and wool scarves and mittens from another; glass jewelry from a Cape Cod artist one year and amber jewelry from Warsaw another; papier-mâché animals from France and strings of lights; water bottles and pedometers. One year it was collections of loose tea with tea tins, balls, and pots. One of my brothers came clean with his assessment of that gift: “I drink tea all the time, but I don’t like having to make a whole ceremony out of it.”
I like the ceremony, the creation of each year’s list with its promise of planting a token with each person named. I like the satisfaction of leaving the post office after a big mailing. And the joy of seeing a papier-mâché chicken in a young cousin’s living room and the decorative lights in her dining room. That’s the magic of the lists. They’re all about love and the one time each year I stop and say thank you for being part of my life.
Sharon Basco lives in Truro.
