it's the season for giving and receiving gifts. one of the best lessons from my mother is that old adage "it's better to give than to receive". and when the recipient of your charity are needy children, the giving feels much better.
the last few Christmases of my mother, she always had me buy a big bag of candies which she would give to the children carolers and to the neighbourhood children. she even initated a "kris kringle" gift exchange among us whereby the names of those participating are put in a hat and we each had to draw a name, and that's the person to whom we would give a gift. on Christmas eve, after supper, we would gather around in our living room. one by one we would sing and dance around and you have to finish the song in front of the person whose name you had drawn.
after my mother died, we continued the tradition, although most of the kids outside of our compound no longer came around and the tradition got limited to the children within our compound. oh, the younger ones were always wishing they'd draw my name, because i also give a gift to the one who drew my name. sometimes we needed to do a re-draw because anyone of the kids would be so excited he would reveal his kris kringle if it was me and then it would start a fight. as the children grew older, their needs were no longer for small toys or candies. in the end while we still carried that tradition, i would always prepare a gift for everyone just so there would be no jealousy.
those children now have their own grandchildren and even though we're all scattered around the globe, they had initiated the same tradition within their families. during times like this, they always recall how much we enjoyed those beautiful years and, of course, they would always mention the lovely gifts they received from me.
even when i moved away from the family house, we still continued our kris kringle tradition. the first Christmas that the first mr. summerfield witnessed this tradition, he was so moved, he went to get two big buckets of kentucky fried chicken, five big tubs of baskin robins ice cream, the bubble gum flavour was a hit, and gave each children money. there was one time when we brought all 15 kids to the fried chicken house and you can imagine the noise they made.
-o0o-
apparently, i have been a good girl this year. i have quite a few nice presents to open on sunday morning!
