My Best Christmas Present Ever

Every year when the Christmas season approaches I start thinking about gifts.  I love buying gifts for people and anticipating how happy they will be to receive them.  And each gift-giving season I also find myself thinking about the best Christmas present I ever received.

It was tradition in my parents' home that gifts appeared under the tree some time during the night after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.  In the morning we six siblings would troop down the stairs when beckoned and join Mom and Dad in singing "Away in a Manger" or "Silent Night" in honour of Jesus' birth before we got to open our gifts.

One year when I was about 10 or 11 years old, there was a unique, very oddly shaped gift beside the tree.  Too large and awkwardly shaped to be wrapped, it stood with a blanket draped over it.  I knew instantly what it was and, while we sang, I couldn't take my eyes off it.  Oh, how I hoped it was for me ... but at the same time, I didn't dare believe it could be.  And, oh what joy when I realized that yes! It really was for me!

Here's a picture of my gift I found on an old sixties-era flyer posted on the Internet.

I had never seen anything like it before and never have since, but how I loved that desk.  It was made of light brown metal and the extension poles kept it upright.  I filled it with my notebooks and writing supplies, stacked my favourite books on the shelves, and spent hours and hours late at night writing stories when I should have been sleeping.  I did a lot of homework on it also, as it served me until I graduated from high school.

I don't know what happened to it after Mom and Dad built a new house shortly after I was married but it lives on in my memory as the best Christmas present I ever received.  It's probably the only one of many special gifts in my childhood that I remember so vividly.  I don't think I'll ever forget my first desk, my extension pole student desk.