Now are the days when everyone in the household is aquiver with secrets getting ready for Christmas, and all the mothers and fathers must carefully refrain from putting two and two together, or they will find out too much and spoil the surprises. When a little 10-year-old girl says virtuously an hour before bedtime. "I'll just kiss you good night down here and go up to my room alone and you don't need to come in to cover me up even if you see a light why don't bother." Any mother knows that some mystery is afoot about which she had better not inquire. And when a six-year-old boy suddenly burst into song "Up on the housetop quick quick quick", and then claps his hand so violently over his mouth that he almost upsets himself, a mother must quickly concentrat her attention elsewhere, and never once connect the song with the Christmas program at the school.
Fortunately, we are blessed with a number of cousins and aunts and uncles, so we can do a lot of planning together. In this way, the strain of secret-keeping is lessened a little. Ruth planned the wrapping this year and every bundle that goes out of our house is to be wrapped in pink tissue and plastered with Christmas seals. Evenings at playtime we usually wrap gifts nowadays, gathering in Ruth's room. She has a box for each family to whom we send gifts, and as fast as things are finished, wrapped, and labeled she drops them in the proper box. Daytimes none of us are allowed in that room, except under her chaperonage. Mother wraps, the boys stick-em-shut with seals, and Ruth labels.
Most Gifts Are Home-Made
Most of our our gifts are home-made, for whatever the children give they must give from their own pocketbook or their own skill. Their little hoards are not very big, but they have made them stretch remarkably. We have regular pink mountains of things already, and are nearly ready for the final packing. A fruitcake, some candy and nuts, and some Christmas tree decorations. Each package will supplement the gifts and make each box pretentious.
One of Sonny's original ideas was to send each family a package of bandages. Bandage rolling is one of his accomplishments, and as he reasoned "if the cousins are like us, their mothers will be glad to have some bandages already wrapped." So every box has a package of rolled bandages bandages tied with red ribbon. Brother in his first year of school is very proud that his penmanship grades even beat Ruth, and so he painstakingly made out some sheets of writing for the doting grandparents containing such choice sentiments as "Can you see me? I can run. Can you run?" and he has wrapped them as beautifully as if they were perfumes from Arabys. Ruth, having achieved the eminence of 30 cents a week allowance and having been properly frugal in spending all year, is luxuriating in buying she refers to as real gifts, although, as she quietly remarked "you can depend on it mother that most of my shopping was done in the 10 cent store."
You would be surprised at the remarkable things that can be done with spools and lacquer. Dolls, extraordinary creeping lizards, doll beds, tables and chairs. Assorted sizes from the big linen thread spools down to the tiny buttonhole twist ones, they afford a lot of fun for busy fingers. And the assortment of boxes that can be painted and used for something – oatmeal boxes, soap, boxes, and everything. All in all, we have evolved a pile of gifts out of which almost nothing at all of which none of us need to be ashamed. And what a lot of fun it has been – Hope.