What do you want for Christmas?
Every year I ask my children and husband the same question. One child always shoots for a single large gift, while the other gives me a precise list in mid-November, a collection of tiny items with size, color, and store of origin neatly annotated. Anything from the Harley-Davidson store makes my husband happy. Christmas shopping is relatively stress-free in our tiny family.
What do you want for Christmas?
I rarely ask my students that question. While many of them will wish for video games or game systems, smart phones, laptops, books, or sports equipment, some of them wish for blankets, enough food to last them all of Christmas vacation, or a consistent place to live. Some wish for parents to stop drinking, neighbors to stop fighting, grades to stop slipping. Asking what they want for Christmas draws too much attention to the enormous chasm between those who have and those who don’t. It also brings up the sticky question of Santa Claus, about whom many 5th graders are still undecided. We learn Christmas songs or poems, make sticky colorful crafts for parents, use coordinate pairs to graph pictures of Christmas trees, but I have learned to never, ever ask children what they want.
What do you want for Christmas?
Every once in a while someone will ask me that. When my children were younger, I would answer, “Write me a poem or draw me a picture.” I miss the days when I could coerce them into making homemade gifts featuring copious amounts of glitter, stickers, and painted handprints. Now that they both have jobs, I ask for tiny things, just enough to make them feel as though they have given something of value without leaving them staring at a bleak January devoid of lunch money. I’m not picky; perfume, books, socks, or film for my camera stuck into a shoe box repurposed as a gift box, covered with lumpy wrapping paper and covered with crooked bows makes me happy.
What do you want for Christmas?
The truth is that most of what I want sounds like cheesy answers given by a nervous beauty pageant contestant. I want world peace, an end to childhood hunger, universal healthcare, and equal rights for all. I dream of a government that is trustworthy, a school system that works for all children, and a neighborhood free of crime.
I want young people who are temporarily sheltered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) to be able to stay in the US permanently as long as they are productive members of society. I wish for families separated by our southern border to be able to hug one another instead of giving tiny “pinkie kisses” through the tightly woven chain link fence.
I’d love a year with sufficient rain for drought-stricken California, a wildfire season in which no lives or homes are lost, a hiatus on hurricanes wreaking havoc on impoverished island countries. The icing on the cake would be an end to internet trolls, to keyboard jockeys who are emboldened by anonymity to say things they would never say to a person’s face. My vision of a bright sparkly world would make a great Christmas present, but I know it only exists in little glass snow globes or brightly lit porcelain Christmas villages that sit on the mantle each December.
What do you want for Christmas?
I have some selfish wishes as well. I’d love a larger house, with an extra bedroom that serves as an office and a garage to hide my husband’s tools. I wouldn’t mind a person to come each week and clean that house, especially if she’d take over scouring bathtubs and washing windows. I dearly wish for the ability to eat unlimited amounts of cheese and not gain weight, or the discipline to hit the gym every time I ate said cheese. I wish for a green thumb, a light touch in the kitchen and the ability to be a morning person. A cupboard that has matching plates and cups instead of our tutti-frutti rainbow of randomly acquired dishes would be lovely.
What do you want for Christmas?
I wish some things for you as well. I hope that your homes are full of peace, blessed by health, and touched by prosperity. I dream that you can move through the world tranquilly each day, doing your best and seeing the best in others. I hope you are filled with creativity and energy. Above all, I wish for you this season a sense of humor, an appreciation of tiny gifts wrapped lumpily and topped with crooked bows, giant plates heaped with steaming tamales, and good friends with whom to share them.
What do you want for Christmas?
