The Dollar Store SANTA

November/December 2008 Issue | Posted by Susie Lloyd in Back Porch

It was all there in a plastic, pastel paradise at the discount store, my one-stop Christmas shop. A Belle head with accessories for hairdressing, a set of Disney Princesses Mega Bloks, and a mystery pet that hatches from an egg. None of it was over 10 bucks.

So what was stopping me? In a word — yuck. Every year I gobble this stuff up and every year the kids love it. Yet every year I rack my brain wondering if there is a better way.

This year I resisted temptation and went home empty-handed. Then I got online to see if someone out there had great ideas for affordable, unique gifts. Some of the ritzier suggestions were:

• Grow a plant from a cutting;

• Buy a used VHS of a favorite movie;

• Write an IOU for services rendered.

So I threw the word “Christian” into the Googlemix. Up popped an electronic Bible — the gimmick I guess is that you can buzz it instead of thump it. I thumped my forehead instead and plugged in “Catholic” — hoping some equally hapless mother had a blog or something with original ideas. Nope.

Only several dozen online book and gift shops. The JP II X-treme Papa T-shirts were very cool — which is why I bought them last year.

That $9.99 rainbow of plastic was looking better and better. On the bright side, come July it will probably have gone to pieces. Then I can toss it little by little into a landfill. In the meantime it will rescue me from being a scrooge.

Yes, Commercialmas will descend on the deserving Lloyd ladies coincidental-ly on Christ’s birthday. No doubt our toddler will again suffer an attack of gift shock — which last year was nearly fatal. She’d rip one present open and cast it aside, then another, then another. Soon she was stumbling all over the presents. When she started tearing open everybody else’s stuff, we put her to bed where she sup-supped for the next two days.

While I once again barter my soul for a colossus of junk, I ponder, is this what the kids really want?

My perennial post-Thanksgiving humbug leads me to think about what I loved most about Christmases of my youth. Not the stationery with my name on it, nor the new toothbrush in my stocking. Certainly not the furry lavender sweater that I felt so guilt-ridden about returning.

But there was that flying saucer sled that I had so much fun on, sailing down the hill with our Labrador retriever. Those pink and blue glittery angels I did thoroughly enjoy positioning around the Nativity set. To this day, I still have the imported wool sweater that screamed “expensive.”

Even those, however, pale before the real tangibles of Christmas:

Those short exciting weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas when my siblings would again return.

Being all together again at midnight Mass, and staying to sing all the verses of “Joy to the World” in harmony.

Being surprised by a New York state snowfall on the way home from Mass one year in the wee hours of night. Like the shepherds, we seemed the only witnesses. The snowflakes were like so many pure drops of grace heralding the divine coming.

In years following, sitting around the Christmas tree after Mom and Pop went to bed, drinking wine, swapping stories, and feeling all grown up.

I’ll give my girls their plastic junk as usual. It’ll be okay. Christmas itself will give them what remains:

Being home together among their own, and at ease.

The comfort of prayer, in this liturgical season when God struggles humbly to ask for our love.

The conviction that when all seems to be crowds and competition, glitz and greed, Divine love pierces through.

God comes to redeem our plastic paradise from itself. Yes, even in the midst of Commercialmas, he comes. C

Susie Lloyd makes merry in

Whitehall, Pennsylvania.

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