Commercializing Christmas

My brothers and I were some of the original people to commercialize Christmas. Dad was trying to make ends meet one year, and he decided to sell Christmas candy in the suburbs of El Paso. I was about twelve, I think, and Tim was fourteen, Tom was eleven, Danny was nine, and Jon was almost eight. Our younger siblings waited in the station wagon.

I remember those colorful tin cans we carried from house to house. They had pictures on the outside of the candy on the inside. It was the hard candy that is good to suck but terrible to chew - sticks in your teeth and you have to rub it out with your tongue! I never could resist chewing that candy. It just melted too slow for me.

We thought we were on silver stocking lane in that subdivision. Looking back, I realize it was just an average middle class neighborhood, but I didn't have any idea about socioeconomic classes back then. I figured everybody wore hand me downs and took their lunches to school in grocery sacks.

The people in those houses were very nice to us. I suppose I would have been the same way, it being Christmas and us being young boys trying to make some money for a "needy family." That's what we told them if they asked we were raising money for a needy family. I think some of them guessed that the needy family was us!
So that's how we did our part to commercialize Christmas when I was a boy. I didn't know then that we could count the shopping days until Christmas. It would have helped us sell more candy. It's hard to communicate a sense of urgency about buying candy unless you have some kind of deadline to do it in.

Have a great holiday season, and don't let the pressure get to you. Remember that the time you spend together as a family is more important than what's in the boxes. Have your family in church for the Christmas concerts and the Christmas Eve Service. Sing the songs loudly enough so you can hear each other. Think about the words: "Silent night, holy night, all is calm."