In the midst of our plenty here in Canada, good friend Ermes Lena reminds me of the meagerness of Christmas past for some like his 95 year old father.
My dad recalls getting very little, a tangerine, if anything at all. Coming from a large and poor family in Northern Italy, there were several Christmases when the children got nothing. On those occasions, my grandmother would tell the kids that La Befana brought no gifts because they weren't good enough that year.
As far as my gifts, none especially stand out. I recall that one year, when we (my mom, sister and I) were living with my aunt in Milan, I got a small Meccano set. It had only a few pieces and I couldn’t build anything of significance but I enjoyed it for a while.
You have to understand that my childhood was always in flux because we moved around so much. Only when we had our own home in Canada in 1967 did things start to stabilize.
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