It was December 1986; and after being apart for six months (John in Fort Bragg and me in Korea) it was our first Christmas together. Every thing was good! My boys (from a previous marriage), John and me, we had just bought our first home, but best of all; we were expecting our first child.

Because we were just starting, our financial situation did not allow us more than the bare essentials: 2 beds, 2 pots, 4 plates, 4 cups and 4 forks. The only thing that was missing was a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is to me, the main sign of this wonderful season, we MUST have one, I do not recall how we finally got one, but I do know that the good old faithful “Thrift Shop” was mention.

Not long after we moved into our new home, we found a gift wrapped packaged on our door step, it was from our realtor, the package felt a little warm, we figured it was from the sun, thought nothing of it an placed it under our beautiful non-themed Christmas tree. Throughout the month of December, it was the only thing we had there. As time went by, our situation did not improved much. I could tell John was concern about what to get for the boys, after all, it was the first Christmas with “Dad”, then, I discovered Big Lots, AHA! 2 nice and very good-looking hard plastic bikes. And so, John was introduced to the wonderful tradition of “some assembly required”.

Christmas day, 5 am. We were awaken by the screams of two happy boys announcing that “Santa ate all the cookies and drank the egg nog, and he believed our promises to be good from now on, because he left really nice bikes for us”, but now, we had to go and open our present, the solitary package that has been there all this time. “Of course” we said, and run to the living room behind this little people, eager to see what Mom and Dad got. We tore up the paper in excitement, and what we found, has been the “First Christmas Story” of our family ever since, you see, our realtor’s wife was a baker, and she had baked a special German bread for us, which by now was as hard as a rock. We laugh, until tears came out of our eyes, as we tried to explain to our kids what that strange looking rock was for.