Yes, I loved presents … but I loved seeing family on Christmas more

A Spirograph set, a Dancerina doll — i.e. a ballerina doll that could pirouette — and the big gets: a Barbie Camper and Dreamhouse.

Those are among the very few Christmas presents that I truly remember from my childhood, and I’ve been trying to remember for days in preparation for writing about the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.

Please don’t mistake this amnesia as a sign that I wasn’t a materialistic child. I loved presents!

I can’t speak for my younger sister but, for me, it was positively torturous — well, at least, a kid’s version of torturous — to have to abide by my parents’ rule of no opening gifts until after church. (They did compromise and allow us to unpack our stockings when we woke up. They weren’t monsters.)

But it’s funny what the intervening decades do to our perceptions.

Now that I’m 61 (yes, I’ve had a birthday since I wrote about the Fresh Air Fund), it’s not the “stuff” that comes to mind when I think of those long-ago Christmases, but the people.

Because our Dec. 25 was always full of people.

As I mentioned, there was morning mass, followed by presents at home in Etobicoke, and then we were off on a holiday marathon: we began with lunch at my Grandpa and Grandma Matthews’ apartment in Willowdale, which included my mom’s sister, Aunt Julia, then headed to what used to be called the Borough of York to visit her brother, my Uncle Jimmy, and our five Matthews cousins; finally, just a little further west, there was dinner at Grandpa and Grandma Yeo’s house on Vaughan Road and who knew how many people would show up.

Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Lina were a given, of course: Grandma bustling around the small kitchen at the back of the house; Grandpa in his favourite chair in the living room, savouring his pipe and his box of chocolate Rosebuds.

And it was a safe bet the Kellys would be there: Uncle Ed and Aunt Rose, cousins Wendy, Greg, Leanne and Kevin.

My father, Bob, had six brothers and sisters, five of them living in Canada, all of them with two to four children apiece. Even just a few of them and their offspring turning up on Christmas Day meant a living and dining room full of bodies and laughter and conversation.

What did we cousins talk about? Toys when we were younger; boys when we were older is a good bet, but the actual conversations are lost to the mists of time.

Certain idiosyncrasies stay in the mind: the fact my Matthews grandparents retained their Scottish accents decades after they immigrated to Canada; that in my Grandma Helen’s kitchen bread didn’t go mouldy — it went foosty.

That my Grandma Lina, who never spoke French that I knew of despite having been raised in a French Canadian home in Victoria Harbour, Ont., began many sentences with the exclamation “Say!” And that Grandpa Charlie, who was born in England, called the grandkids “little dukies.”

The Vaughan Road house was particularly interesting to me because, unlike our bungalow, it had a second storey. And since the only bathroom — with its knitted poodle toilet paper cover — was upstairs, it gave me an excuse to snoop around.

(As an aside, my grandparents, as single family homeowners, were solidly middle class, but it boggles my mind now that they raised seven kids with just one bathroom.)

With apologies to my long-departed grandparents, I could never resist a peek into their separate bedrooms where the main objects of interest were Grandpa’s enormous brass bed and framed print of the Shroud of Turin, and Grandma’s drawerful of rhinestone jewelry (some of which now resides in my own collection) and framed photos of her daughters as 1940s and ’50s-era brides.

See, like I said, definitely a materialistic child.

But, all kidding aside, the thing I remember the most about those hectic Christmas days — bless my dad for doing all that driving — is the sense of well-being, of being part of a loving extended family.

Humans are at their best, I think, when they’re part of a collective.

And here’s where you get to join a collective for the good of other people, by donating to the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.

You’ll be helping to provide boxes of gifts to some 50,000 underprivileged children and, along with the presents, a sense that they’re part of the human family, that other people give a damn.

So give what you can and give a child a Christmas to remember!

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

TO DATE: $262,745

How to donate

With your gift, you can help provide holiday gift boxes that inspire hope and joy to 50,000 underprivileged children.

Online: To donate by Visa, Mastercard or Amex, scan this QR code or use our secure form at thestar.com/santaclausfund

By cheque: Mail to The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund, One Yonge St., Toronto, ON M5E 1E6

By phone: Call 416-869-4847

The Star does not authorize anyone to solicit on its behalf. Tax receipts will be issued.

To volunteer: scfvolunteer@thestar.ca