The Year of the Socks “Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” You know the rest, and it’s a nice sentiment that we inescapably associate with Christmas. And yet for me it strikes a sour note. It’s that word “stockings.” Unlike other people I don’t connect “stockings” with Christmas cheer. Not that I didn’t get my share of good things in my Christmas stocking -- I did. But forevermore, it seems, I’m doomed to associate Christmas stockings with that bleak Christmas I remember as “The Year of the Socks.” My parents were practical people. There was a distinct difference in our home between things we wanted and things we needed. As gifts, we children tended to receive the latter. For example, one year my brother Mike got a snow shovel for Christmas, certainly not what he wanted but what he needed (in my father’s view) to do a better job of clearing the driveway. Lest you think that Christmas at our house was totally horrible, realize that my parents were thoughtful enough to mix the practical with the frivolous. It wasn’t unheard-of to receive, along with your new dictionary, a comic book or a Mister Potato Head – something slightly goofy. My memories of Christmas as a child are generally fond, but there certainly are exceptions… Take, for example, that sad Christmas morning when I rushed downstairs to begin tearing apart the wrapping on my gifts only to discover Jose, my parakeet, dead as last year’s catfish bait. I loved that bird, and the night before (Christmas Eve) to help him feel a part of the festivities I’d talked my parents into letting him spend a few minutes flying free throughout the house. These little paroles never turned out well. This time was no exception. During dinner he dive-bombed the dining-room table a time or two, dragging his luxuriant tail feathers through the contents of the gravy boat. Afterwards, as my father decorated the tree with tinfoil “icicles” (for some reason we never put up our tree until Christmas Eve) Jose joined in, plucking them off as fast as Dad could put them on and then scattering them throughout the house. We never conducted an autopsy to determine the precise cause of poor Jose’s death, but my father thought it might have been from eating too many tinfoil icicles. I’d eaten a few, and it never seemed to do me any particular harm, but it was a plausible theory. Later that day, in solemn procession, my sister Betsy and I bore Jose’s remains to the windbreak and buried him in a Spam can. Sad as it was, that Christmas was pretty tame compared to the following year when, in considerable contrast to established tradition, my parents bought me a dog, perhaps to help assuage my sad memories. It was a nice try, but the outcome wasn’t what they’d hoped-for. The dog was a full-grown beagle, a fine breed but one that’s known for its wanderlust. “Skamp” wasted no time in living up to his lineage. Before he’d been under our roof for an hour he shot out the back door and took off on a solo safari that for all I know could have covered the entire Midwest and most of central Canada. When he came back a year later he’d turned gray in the muzzle; it had apparently been quite a trip. And even then he only stayed long enough to eat a bowl of Friskies and take a nap. But the Christmas of them all, in terms of disaster, came a few years later. I was still on my animal kick and I’d been hinting broadly that what I wanted was a pony. Mom and Dad reverted to form, however; they were back to buying practical gifts. Because I didn’t actually ride with the Pony Express, they reasoned, a pony was merely something I wanted but that I didn’t need. And since Mom was intimately familiar with my wardrobe she knew that what I needed was socks. Accordingly, she spread the word to relatives and friends that I could use some. She succeeded beyond her wildest expectations. I wouldn’t know that, of course, until the ugly reality revealed itself, but I had a suspicion because in my usual pre-Christmas pokings and proddings I’d noticed a strange similarity in packages marked “To Martin.” They were all about the same size and weight… In no way, though, could I have prepared myself for the horror to come. No only was there no pony on the premises, every gift I opened was a pair of socks! I got red socks, green socks, white socks… There were socks with animals and birds on them, argyle socks, scratchy wool socks, socks with weird, squiggly designs that looked like they might have been copied from the walls of a Celtic tomb… One pair, from my uncle Clarence, was of that odd, semi-transparent, black, gauzy-like stuff that elderly gents often wore back then with their kangaroo leather high-top shoes. In memory I can still see myself surrounded by socks. And before long, of course, my older brothers and sisters began hooting, “There’s another pair!” At the first opportunity I retreated to my bedroom, vowing that should I ever become a parent I would never make my children endure such shame. In retrospect, the “Year of the Socks” made me a better father. At Christmas when my children were young, my wife and I tried to consider their wants as well as their needs. As gifts, we tended to view basic items of clothing with distaste because, after all, it was our duty to clothe our kids. But there was always another voice within me… “Got one in college? Pay his room and board – that’s plenty. And one with braces..? That costs a bundle; tell her she can keep on wearin’ ‘em ‘til her teeth straighten-out.” It was the spectral voice of my practical dad. But then I’d hear my own boyish voice reciting the epic:, “Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care…” and I’d remember it was Christmas, after all. That children only stay young for a very short time, and that parents have so few years to revel in their squeals and smiles as they open the gifts they’d been hoping-for... No more socks. Not this year, not ever. Joy and Peace to you all.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 14:18:01 +0000
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