Every year around Christmas, the angel trees start appearing in stores, and every year I find myself telling my kids the same story whenever we pass one.
It’s a story that begins with me, a little girl, whose name had once been on one of those trees. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mom shared the truth with me years later, after she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I remember her sitting there, tears streaming down her face, as she tried to explain something she had carried quietly in her heart for so long.
She told me how sorry she was that she couldn’t provide the kind of Christmas she wanted for me those years. She shared a memory that had haunted her: one Christmas night, she had watched me open a pair of Princess Jasmine pajamas, my eyes lighting up with joy, and she knew the gift had come from a stranger—not her. She cried herself to sleep that night, grateful to the stranger who had made me happy, but wishing with all her heart that she could have been the one.
The truth is, I only remembered those gifts—and a few others she mentioned—because of the photos she had taken. Otherwise, I doubt I would have remembered them at all. She told me she felt like she had failed as a mother, apologizing again and again for the years my name didn’t get picked on the angel tree, and for the times I only received necessities instead of something special.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing because I had never remembered it that way. In my mind, Christmas had been full of warmth, joy, and magic. I remembered making Christmas cards with crayons and glitter for everyone in our apartment complex, bundling up in the snow to deliver them while singing a carol or two. I remembered Christmas nights at the nursing home where my mom worked, painting the nails of the ladies who didn’t have family to visit them. Those traditions, small and simple, are the ones I still hold closest to my heart.
Now, as a mother myself, I pass those same traditions on to my sons in memory of Nana. Every year, I tell them the story of how I was once an angel on the angel tree, and how my mom and I made cards and shared love with the nursing home residents. Without fail, their eyes light up, and they tell me how much they love the story.
My mom spent so many years believing she had failed as a mother at Christmas, but I never saw it that way. Those years, those moments, are some of my most cherished memories now as an adult. What my mom didn’t realize is that she gave me one of the greatest gifts imaginable—the kind of gift that can’t be wrapped in pretty paper or tied with a bow. She gave me the gift of giving to others. And that, I’ve learned, is the most important gift we can ever give our children.
