The big box...

One Christmas, when my brother was in the Air Force and stationed in Thailand, an enormous wooden crate arrived at our house about ten days before Christmas. It was not unlike the enormous wooden crate that the Father in A Christmas Story gets when he wins his "major prize" leg lamp. My Mom, being a stickler for tradition, had my Dad put the box right under the Christmas tree. I begged and begged to open that box. I reasoned that it was probably Christmas presents and he certainly would have individually wrapped each one so even if we opened the wooden box we would still have the surprise of opening the wrapped gifts on Christmas Eve. My Mom was unmoved. She had no way of knowing if anything was wrapped in there and she wasn't taking any chances.

So that thing sat there for the next ten days like some kind of mysterious rune in the living room. And there was no peeking inside this thing either because it was neatly nailed shut. It was torture. I mean, what did he send all the way from the strange, unknown land of Thailand!? All I knew about Thailand was that it was once called Siam and the only reason I knew that is because my Mom and I watched Deborah Kerr and Yul Brenner in "The King and I" on television once. It all seemed very exotic and odd and to a 11 year old girl it was almost too much to bear!

Now Christmas Eve at my Mom's house is a very time tested tradition. Certain activities are meant to happen at certain times of the evening and that schedule was not to be changed. As we began gathering together and my siblings arrived from their homes my Mother would already have appetizers out on the upstairs living room table. There would be cheese, sausage and crackers, crab dip and liver paté, there would be Chex Mix - the Yuletide standard of snacks. There was also punch. The punch bowl would hold the alcoholic version and there would be a pitcher of non-alcohol for us kids. On every end table there would be red and green M&M's, ribbon candy and Christmas cookies. There would also be bowls of nuts with a nut cracker by each bowl. I don't remember anyone but my Dad ever eating those nuts! We would all get our appetizers and settle in somewhere in the living room while my Mom would be down in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the real meal. Before Vatican II (for the Catholics reading this) our meal would never be eaten before Midnight Mass. It would consist of an egg dish, some kind of potatoes, kielbasa and kishka. After Vatican II, we would eat before Mass. The Christmas of the big box was after Vatican II. After we had just about eaten all the appetizers up, my Mom would finally emerge from the kitchen and tell us dinner was ready. Again, traditionalists as we were and still are, the meal was the same as in the early days - eggs, potatoes, kielbasa and kishka. We added Italian sausage soon after and with the addition of home made cinnamon rolls this meal has been unchanged for my entire life. We ate and ate until we could eat no more. Then the big fun started.

We would all find a comfy spot and the Christmas song books would be handed out. We would start at the beginning of that book and sing all of the carols right to the end. The only verse we ever skipped was the "nails, spear, shall pierce him through" verse of What Child Is This. My Mom couldn't stand to sing that verse on the even of celebrating Jesus' birth because it was all about his horrible death. So we skipped it, and happily so, because what we really wanted to get to was the opening of the presents. FINALLY - it was time. For most of my childhood, I played "Santa" which meant I had to crawl around under the tree and hand out gifts. This was no small feat for a family of our size and, honestly, it made me exhausted! There was a trick to handing out the gifts. I had to be sure to give one  gift out to each person so everyone had a gift to open at the same time. It was rude to have someone sitting there waiting for a gift while someone else in the room was opening two or three! My own gifts I would pile up out of the way and open them all at once when I was finished. I doled out the family gifts and was hoping that my Dad would now open the wooden box but my Mom had other ideas. You see, she was a second grade teacher and she would bring home a truck load of gifts from her students so before we could do anything else she decided to open each and every one of those gifts. IT TOOK FOREVER!!! She held them up for all to see and we, appropriately, oohed and ahhed over every scarf, box of candy and bottle of smelly bubble bath she received.

At last, it was time! My Dad got his hammer and opened the top of the wooden box. In it was a ton of excelsior - that stringy stuff used to cushion long distance packages. He dug through and, sure enough, there was a bevy of beautifully wrapped gifts - one for each of us! Except for me - he sent me THREE!! My parents got a set of intricately carved royal figurines and a tusk that sat behind them. This was in the days when ivory was still legal and I liked to believe it was real but it was soapstone. I opened my first box and there was a set of water colors and paint brushes in it! The second box had two canvases and a real easel! I was so excited I couldn't wait to open the third box! I eagerly tore off the Thai Christmas paper and opened the top of the box. I could see there was some kind of a statue in there but realized it was a bank! There was a slot on the top of it's head. I carefully pulled it up and out of the box and what did I see?

It was a large, pot bellied squirrel wearing a hat and it had enormous boobs and a penis!! I'm not kidding!! This is what my brother sent his 11 year old sister!! I just about died when I saw this thing. My parents laughed so hard they got tears in their eyes. Everyone passed this thing around in disbelief! What the heck could he have been thinking??

As it happens, he wasn't thinking at all. He came home a few months later on leave and I asked him why he had given me that strange thing. He said, innocently, "It's a bank!" Well, yes, it was. I went and got it from  my room and showed him and he just about fell off the chair. He never even realized it had boobs and a penis! He  just thought it was a cute bank that I would like! That's my brother...never really paying full attention to anything!

I kept that crazy thing for the longest time. It was just too weird to get rid of. I think it finally broke one day when my Mom was cleaning out my closet but it was quite the conversation piece, I tell ya!

When I think back on my Christmas memories, they all have some element of wonder and awe and the year of the huge wooden box sure had it. The anticipation of Christmas is a lot for a kid to manage so having a mysterious box arrive just put it right over the edge.