"A Christmas of Miracles"

Dad, Matt, Leanne, and Alisha -- Christmas 1988

A few weeks ago, we watched 8-Bit Christmas. A clear homage to both A Christmas Story and The Princess Bride, the movie features Neil Patrick Harris’s character recounting to his daughter the story of a Christmas in the late 1980s when all he wanted was a Nintendo Entertainment System.

Beyond the 80’s nostalgia, part of the fun of the movie was how close to home it hit. Ages ago, I wrote my own story about the Christmas I desperately wanted a Nintendo but was stymied by my parents. The similarities between those stories prodded me to revisit that old post, and my curiosity eventually led me to take a closer look at what was going on back then.

 

What I found surprised me.   

The Nintendo Entertainment System

 

First, there is the story that made up that initial post – though now with a bit less tongue-in-cheek hyperbole:

 

In December 1988, I was ten years old and in Mrs. Stefalano’s fifth grade class. I wanted a Nintendo Entertainment System more than anything else in this world. A few school friends I knew already had one, and I prized every opportunity to get my hands on one of those rectangular controllers.

 

I’m sure I had other interests back then, but mostly I just thought and talked about Super Mario, the Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punchout, and how much I wanted (needed, really) a Nintendo of my own.

 

By that point, I no longer believed in Santa (another story entirely), so I had no illusions that he could be of any help. And I knew my parents couldn’t afford one.

 

And yet, Nathan and I had our own modest source of revenue that winter in covering a newspaper route, and I had conscripted my younger brother into my determined plans to save up the $100 we needed to buy a Nintendo. I had never saved anything close to that much money before, but by early December, Nathan and I had collectively put together $40.

 

In the wild optimism of my youth, I figured we were only a few weeks away from saving the rest. So, by my calculations, it seemed quite possible (if not almost certain) that we would have our own Nintendo by Christmas!

 

That was the plan, at least, before Nathan and I snuck into Mom’s Christmas fudge.

The Christmas Fudge

 

Back then, Mom occasionally made fudge around Christmas time. And at least that year, she kept it in Mason jars, stored high up in the corner cupboard of our kitchen.

 

Mom probably thought the fudge was well-hidden, a mistake my parents made over and over (and over) again growing up.

 

Inevitably, my little hands found their way to those Mason jars. Several times. And unbeknownst to me, so had Nathan’s.

 

Back in the 80s, it was harder to deflect blame for missing food items – the rest of my siblings were still too young to be viable suspects. So when Mom discovered the fudge missing, she wasn’t so much sleuthing for confessions as presuming guilt. And at least in this instance, she wasn’t wrong.

 

What felt odd this time around (these sorts of eating indiscretions were routine, if not expected) was just how upset my parents were.

 

For some reason, they decided this offense warranted serious punishment. As we stood there in the kitchen, Mom and Dad angrily told us that Grandma Feickert (whose presents were always the most expensive) had purchased us a Nintendo for Christmas.

 

I can picture my eyes starting to widen at the prospect. . . before the hammer came down: our indulgence had left them no choice – they were telling Grandma to return the Nintendo.

 

They were also confiscating our $40 (though I believe they later let us spend the money on Christmas gifts).

 

And, for good measure, they declared we would never have video games in our home.

 

[My best guess now is that they’d been nervous about video games from outset – to the extent the movie has any basis in reality, 8-Bit Christmas seems to confirm the parental concern was widespread. Our eating indiscretion was simply the scapegoat justification for what they had wanted to do all along.]

 

As my parents pronounced sentence, I felt an odd mixture of wonder and despondency. The thought that I was so close to having my own Nintendo – without even having to save up for it! And then to lose it without even knowing what was at stake!

 

In the days after, I remember feeling that the punishment felt excessive (in fact, my best friend’s parents had privately told him the same, which felt validating). Maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but hold out hope that my parents’ threats had been idly made, and that the spirit of Christmas might still prevail.

 

Was it possible that a late burst of Christmas cheer might lead my parents to secretly tell Grandma to still go ahead and bring us the Nintendo? And if she did, what games might she get us to go with it?

 

As Bane would tell a crippled Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, “there can be no true despair without hope.”

Disappointment Assured

 

When Grandma and Grandpa arrived at our Ilion, NY home that Christmas Eve, I made a careful survey of their vehicle. I sized up every single one of their Christmas presents.  None, though, came close to the contours of that distinctive oblong box.

 

Still, that night and the next morning, I must have surveyed the presents three times. The Nintendo just wasn’t there.

 

A few days later, I referenced the disappointment in a rare journal entry:

 

“We just had Christmas a few days ago. I got two LCD video games. A Carrom game board a sweater and the game of life. [My best friend] got a Nintendo. I would’ve but I ate a bag of candy.”

The Rest of the Story

 

When I wrote that attempted humor piece sixteen years ago, Dad took the post in stride. He had, after all, been known to do a bit of playful writing himself [Dad would sometimes write up mock newspaper articles for friends and family, which gave supposedly serious treatment to inside jokes between family and friends – think of the Onion, but with a more endearing bent.] Over the years, “My Darkest Christmas Day” became a fond source of Christmas ribbing between the two of us. And even if my parents didn’t seem to remember the incident, Dad often feigned an overwrought apology for the supposed parenting fail.

 

For my part, what I hadn’t remembered until these last few weeks is that this was the Christmas just after the triplets were born.

 

That year, as late as August or early September, we all thought Mom was just carrying one child. Then the news came that there were twins. So exciting! And then, about two weeks later, we learned Mom was actually carrying triplets!

 

Hardly two weeks later, as we were still processing this new, impending reality, I woke up one October morning to find that our family of seven was now ten. The triplets had come six weeks early.

 

Nathan, Melissa, Bryan, and Sarah

Dad took two weeks of “vacation” to assist with the birth and transition. And then, in a twist that could have been written by Charles Dickens, he was fired from his job with The Evening Telegram (a local newspaper) on the day he returned to work.

 

As Christmas approached, Dad was still out of work – he wouldn’t find another job for nearly a year. Meanwhile, my new siblings seemed to each take turns with threatening health problems that required worrisome hospital visits.

 

My parents’ letters to my grandparents from that time give glimpses into the stress of our family circumstances. In one letter in late December 1988, Mom described Sarah’s latest ailments and wrote that “my heart is always in my mouth during these times, and I can hardly stop watching her.”

 

Mom wondered if she would ever be able to relax again.

 

Part of that was due to the myriad health concerns. But, of course, the other part was money. Money had apparently always been tight growing up, but that year things felt especially precarious. Even I could feel it.

“A Christmas of Miracles”

 

And yet, this was also the Christmas that Dad would later describe as the “Christmas of Miracles.” In another turn that blended the best of Frank Capra’s and Dickens’ stories, our young family was almost inundated by the generosity of others that season. As Dad would later write:  

 

Things began appearing on the doorsteps, coupons in the mail without evidence of their origin, and friends from near and far seemed to find out [about our family difficulties] and respond. In one case a group of church women from a former community where we had lived, drove 60 miles with bundles of food and the biggest turkey we had ever seen. [Dad couldn’t seem to help himself with his own allusion to Dickens here]

 

I remember one evening that December when an older couple, best known in town for playing Santa and Mrs. Claus, stopped by our home. I remember watching them visit with Dad in our dimly lit hallway and give him an unknown amount of cash. They seemed to anticipate Dad’s awkward response and heartily put off his meager protests. Even now, I can still see them standing there, and how happy and grateful they seemed to be helping us. 

 

When Christmas finally came that year, far from having nothing under the tree (which had apparently been my parents’ fear for a time), one corner of our living room was nearly overflowing with gifts. In fact, Mom and Dad had set up a playpen by the tree for the kindnesses left by others. By Christmas Eve, the playpen was full.

 

Nathan -- Christmas 1988

So, curiously, at the same time I remember feeling utter disappointment that my Nintendo dreams hadn’t come true (and ostensibly never would), I also remember now the feeling of wonder and awe that my family had been so kindly remembered by so many.

 

I can’t really explain all these years of disconnect. Somehow both threads of memory had occupied separate places in my mind – as though they hadn’t occurred simultaneously. And while the “loss” of a Nintendo that Christmas was as devastating as I’ve described, it's clearer to me now that the list of gifts I received that year left me anything but deprived.

 

With the benefit of hindsight, that does not feel like a small thing.

 

So my meager takeaway all these years later isn’t quite what I expected when I started in on this post: feelings of overwhelming gratitude – for my parents (especially), for my grandparents, and for everyone else who looked out for my family that Christmas. Sure, I didn’t get the Nintendo I had wanted more than anything, and that felt terribly unfair. But I can see a little better now how fortunate I was that I got to remain a little boy through it all. Despite the precarious circumstances of those times, I still *somehow* felt secure enough at home that a Nintendo could have outsized importance, and that losing out on that Nintendo could be my greatest worry. 

[Update 1/5/2022: I published this piece a few weeks ago. Since then, I've discovered that I actually got my years mixed up. Apparently misreading (or failing to read) some key clues, I attributed the Nintendo incident to Christmas 1988. But now, having looked further into things, I can say definitively that the Nintendo incident happened the following year -- during Christmas 1989. In fact, I even found a few lines from a letter Dad wrote to Grandma and Grandpa Clark on December 12, 1989: "Sunday some things happened with the two oldest boys that finally snapped the back of everything and we have decided to forgo Christmas this year in essence, and see if we can't find someone we can give what little we will share to them."

It certainly made for a much better story when I thought all of the events above happened in 1988, and I feel more than a little sheepish now about the error. That following Christmas (1989) Dad was only a few months into his new job as the managing editor for the Amsterdam Recorder, commuting an hour or so each way. The letter I referenced above indicates that the stresses from the year prior had only slightly abated. In fact, his writing suggests that he was deeply depressed (though I don't know that he was in a place to recognize it for what it was, or at least to not feel like that depression was a personal failing). So the sentiments I expressed above still seem applicable, the error notwithstanding.

Still, it's important to me to get these stories as right as I can, so what do I do about the mistake? I considered trying to rewrite the story, as well as just deleting it all together. Neither of those options have felt palatable, at least at this point. So for now, I've decided on this middle ground: keeping the story as is, though including this explanatory note about the error. In doing so, I feel at least some license from Dad, who offered this frequent (good natured) retort to any story that sounded somewhat unflattering or unbelievable: "Never let a few facts get in the way of a good story."]