Christmas day has always been special for me. Every Christmas day of my life has been so with the one exception of that Christmas I spent doing my duty for Uncle Sam. I remember Christmases.

I remember that Christmas after my Mother and Daddy got married. It was the year I came to fully appreciate the possibilities inherent in this man who’d just adopted me. We’d put up a tree weeks before. In my memory it was a humongous tree, all festooned with lights, ornaments, tinsel, and angel hair. All through the season presents began appearing under the tree until by Christmas Eve it was a couple of feet deep.

I don’t remember coming into the living room that Christmas morning. I don’t remember unwrapping presents. I don’t remember anything except that Lionel Electric Train whose tracks formed an oval about the tree. I remember Daddy showing me how to control the speed of the train with the switch on the transformer. And I remember those little white pellets. When I stuck one into the smoke stack of the train it actually did smoke as it puffed and puffed its way about the tree. I don’t remember ever leaving the living room that morning, but I guess I did.

There was the Christmas I didn’t get what I wanted. What I wanted was a bicycle. All of my juvenile deductive abilities led me to believe that bicycle would be resting on its kickstand. It wasn’t. I was disappointed for about sixteen seconds. Disappointment ended when I reasoned if that bike wasn’t by that tree it surely would be by the tree at my grandfather’s house. It was. That was the Christmas I fully understood the real function of grandparents.

The Christmas of my upcoming maturity hit me like a ton of bricks. Was I fourteen? Fifteen? Sixteen? I’m not sure, but that other people now saw me as a young “man” was evidenced by the fact every present under the tree at home and the one at my grandparent’s contained only clothing. Well, that’s not quite true; someone gave me a fruitcake.

And then came the Christmas when the joy came not from receiving but from giving, that Christmas when it was my child who sat wide-eyed before the tree amazed at the bountiful generosity of that man from the North Pole. That was the Christmas I also discovered that the existence of Tab A does not necessarily infer there is a correctly labeled Slot A.

The years passed until I finally celebrated the Christmas where the gift not found under the home tree was, most assuredly, to be found under mine. And the delight of children scampering about the Christmas decorations was a delight. It was a delight also in knowing that some of those packages grandchildren took home contained presents requiring their parents assemble the gift with Tab A and the Alleged Slot A. You might call it the payback Christmas.

And now I’m in the season of the Christmases of my senior years. The kids and grandkids are miles away. Christmas is a bit quieter now. The kids and grandkids will have celebrated with me earlier. This Christmas will be like the last few where my sweetheart and I spend time together. We’ll probably take a ride through the forest on roads devoid of traffic. There will be presents, as always. The best present these days is the gift of memory.