12 Pearls of Christmas: Christy Fitzwater

Welcome to the12 Pearls of Christmas blog series!

Merry Christmas from Pearl Girls™! We hope you enjoy these Christmas “Pearls of Wisdom” from the authors who were so kind to donate their time and talents! If you miss a few posts, you’ll be able go back through and read them on this blog throughout the next few days.

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An Inexpensive New Christmas Tradition
By: Christy Fitzwater

I was invited to play some Christmas carols on the piano for a senior-adult luncheon, but before I got up to play they had a time for the seniors to share what they remembered as their favorite Christmas gifts. 

There was talk of new bicycles, a pony, and a new dress.

Then one elderly man took the microphone and said, “An orange.” When he was young, an orange was a rare treat. As he spoke, he got choked up and had to stop talking to collect himself. He explained that his Sunday School was giving an orange for anyone who memorized a Bible verse. He tearfully described earning that delicious orange and slowly savoring every bite. When he was done eating the orange, he put the peel on the furnace so it would dry, and then he chewed on the peel.

He said with conviction, “We just don’t know how rich we are in this country.”

Christmas is usually the time when I feel broke. I tuck away money for gifts all year long, but money doesn’t go very far these days. My husband and I love to spoil our kids and try to scheme how to get them a big-ticket item. We’ve enjoyed the Christmas mornings when we’ve been able to enjoy watching our kids open such gifts as an electric guitar or an iPad.

I stopped to imagine how our whole family would feel if, on Christmas morning, the only gift under the tree was a small basket cradling an orange for each of us. I think we would feel disappointment and great loss. What would we do the rest of the morning if not consumed by opening gift after gift? Where would the focus be?

Our years of wealth make thankfulness for an orange seem ludicrous.

As I processed this man’s story, I decided what we lack at Christmas isn’t money to buy nice gifts—it’s gratitude to relish the simple treasures we enjoy every day.

This Christmas I am going to begin a new tradition for my family, and I would invite your family to do the same. I am going to place a small basket with four oranges under the tree, along with a printed copy of the man’s story of the orange. We’re going to pause at some point in the morning and each hold an orange while we read the story. And then we’re going to hold those oranges up to our noses and breathe in the fragrance God built into it, peel it slowly, and enjoy each juicy bite. And while we eat it, we’ll each speak thankfulness to the Lord for the grace He has poured into our lives.

In that moment, we’ll know how rich we are.

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Christy Fitzwater is a writer and pastor’s wife living in Kalispell, Montana. She is the mother of a daughter in college and a high-school boy. Read her personal blog at christyfitzwater.com.

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My dad, Wilburn Warren, age 8

Note from Crystal: My dad grew up during the Depression and he, too, talked about the oranges at Christmas. He made sure that my brother and I received an orange in our stockings each Christmas as homage to that memory. A simple orange brings a flood of memories. He has passed on, but we still remember. 

  

Anniversary Day

Bill and Lillian in the '50s

These are my parents back in the late '50s. My mother was ill with tuberculosis and was confined to a hospital specifically for the disease in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.(The hospital is in the background.) Until she died in 1997, she still kept in touch with at least one other patient at that hospital, a woman whose in-laws were Amish and who were keeping her little girl. Mom said that they used electricity and stayed in this woman's house because the "little English girl" was used to that. That's a story I would love to use sometime, don't you think?

 

Anyway, what makes me think of all this today is because my parents were married on December 22 at exactly 12 noon. (About 56 years ago--you do the math.) My dad was an owner-operator long haul trucker and wherever he was in the U.S. at exactly 12 noon on December 22, he would stop and call my mom up to wish her a happy anniversary. They both are dead now, but that is a nice memory that I have of my parents. This was back before cell phones and finding a phone was something he would have had to consciously pursue to make it happen!

 

 

Little Crissy in the same time frame, Christmas in Tennessee

While my mother was Indiana in the hospital, my dad was working hard and making money for his family in the Midwest, I was with his parents and siblings in Tennessee. This is a photo that my grandmother staged and sent to my mother in the hospital, oh, so far away. My mother had lost 5 babies prior to me. The last time her baby died, she refused for about a week after they told her, to go in to get a D&C because she desperately believed that the baby was "ok." They had to make her go before she became ill or got an infection.So, you see, I was a much wanted baby, and she had to give me up before she'd even had me very long.

Mom told me that when she got this photo, she just cried. She thought I looked so sad and then they had put a photo of her in the picture by the Christmas tree. I think Grandmother wanted my mom to know that they were telling me about her and that I knew who my mother was--if only as a picture. I still have the picture that is in this picture and there is a story about that picture, too.

But,also, I wrote all over the letters that my grandmother faithfully wrote to my mother to let her know what was going on and she would cry, looking at those scribbles. (Even back then I wanted to write.) I also wrote all over my 14-year-old aunt's yearbook and on other books she had. Probably the start to my editor/book doctoring career, don't you think? (Smile.)

 

So, three days before Christmas, every year, at noon, I think about these things. I also feel a bit melancholy on this day. When I pull out Amy Grant's version of Tender Tennessee Christmas, it is a complete plunge into the feelings of that time way back then. ("I'll Be Home for Christmas" will do it, too.)

On to more lighthearted fare:

I took a test to see what color my Christmas tree should be, since I've been really thinking about color lately. Here's mine. Check yours out!

You Should Have a Blue Christmas Tree

For you, the holidays represent a time of calm, understanding, and peace. You avoid family fights, and you don't get too stressed out - even when things are crazy! You like to make Christmas about making everyone's life a little bit better. You don't get caught up in greed or commercialism. You're too sincere for that. Your blue tree would look great with: Lots of silver tinsel You should spend Christmas Eve watching: It's a Wonderful Life What you should bake for Santa: Chocolate chip cookies

What Color Christmas Tree Should You Have?