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Maureen Grover
Professor Joyce Kinkead
English 4400
2 December 2012
Ah, the Power of Cheese
Remember the old National Dairy Council commercial where the kids leave Santa cubes
of cheddar cheese under the tree Christmas Eve and the next morning they wake up to a room
stacked to the ceiling with gifts and toys? Ya, well that was my family Christmas of 1998. My
oldest boy, who had just turned four and who obviously watched way too much television, was
brainwashed by that ad into thinking that if he left Santa cheese instead of the traditional cookies
and milk that he would wake-up Christmas morning to a room full of toys.
But cheese and the Dairy Council were the furthest things from my mind as I strolled
through Toys-R-Us, spending countless hours shopping for my three little boys that holiday
season. Instead of the power of cheddar and Swiss, I imagined the joy a freestanding chalkboard
easel would bring Grant, the four-year-old, and how much Kaden, who had just turned two,
would delight in seeing a “real-live choo-choo” train set-up around the Christmas tree, and how
brand-new-baby Collin would spend hours and hours smiling and giggling in his new baby
swing. Soon my cart was full, so my husband grabbed another to fill with Pokemon cards, a
plastic Sesame Street train, a Mickey Mouse watch, walkie-talkies, stuffed animals, bows and
arrows, Hot Wheels cars, and Star Wars Legos.
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When the two oldest boys walked downstairs that Christmas morning, they discovered
the family room brimming with overflowing stockings and colorfully wrapped gifts spread from
one end of the room to the next; it was a scene right out of “Hoarders: A Christmas Special.”
Grant, the 4-year-old, jumped with joy and proclaimed, “Santa sure did like that cheese!”
Unfortunately my husband and I didn’t have the same feeling of elation as my son. Ours
was more a feeling of nausea. I knew immediately we had overdone it. It was overkill. We were
greedy people whose children had more than they needed or even wanted, and now we were just
adding to it. (I’m pretty sure my husband’s nausea was brought on by the thoughts of the credit
card bills that would start arriving the next week.)
I vowed then and there that our Christmas gift-giving tradition would change drastically.
The next Christmas we put into place a new gift-giving tradition. Santa would bring one
gift to the children, and would fill their stockings with a few small candies or toys, but mostly
more practical and educational items such as math flash cards and battery-powered toothbrushes.
Also, rather than everyone in the family buying a gift for every family member, we would have
the children draw names and give just one gift to one sibling.
But the most drastic change in our gift-giving tradition was what the children received
from Rick and me. Rather than buying them everything on their list that they didn’t receive from
Santa, a sibling, or grandparents, we gave them the “Three Wisemen Gifts”—a book, a
Christmas tree ornament that symbolized something that happened the past year, and a musicrelated item, like a CD.
The “Three Wisemen Gifts” idea is the single best tradition I have adopted in the last 18
years of parenthood, not only because we no longer wake-up Christmas morning to a gluttony of
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excess, but because of how these gifts have shaped my children. Two of my three boys have
never been avid readers, so the literacy gift gives me the opportunity to expose them to a book I
think might spark an interest in reading. Such was the case two years ago when Santa surprised
Grant with gear for slacklining, a balance sport similar to tightrope walking; Grant’s first
“Wisemen Gift” that year was a non-fiction “how-to-slackline” paperback that he read cover-tocover. The second “Wisemen Gift,” the Christmas tree ornament, may not be the most riveting
on Christmas morning, but it makes for a ton of fun every Thanksgiving night as we assemble
and decorate our artificial Christmas tree; the boys laugh, share and reminisce about the story
behind each ornament in “their box” as they put it on the tree. Thirteen years ago when we
started this tradition, I chose the third “Wiseman Gift” to be music-related because I wanted my
boys to gain an appreciation for music and provide a little culture in their lives. But the classical
CDs of the first few years were soon replaced under the tree with guitars, drum sets, bongos, and
I-Tunes cards. I’m okay with that. At least the tradition has instilled in them a love and
appreciation for music.
My boys are grown now, and the younger two don’t even remember Christmas before the
“Three Wisemen Gifts.” But every once in a while Grant reminds them of the year Santa went
overboard and the power of cheese.