Christmas is meant to be a happy time, but sometimes there is another side to the picture of joy and happiness. It comes with a question.

“What did you get for Christmas?”

I used to hate those words when I was in my early teen years at school, for I knew the question came from those wanting to brag about their “bounty.”

It always came from girls whose parents had a better income than mine, and where wrapped packages under their Christmas tree were so many more than mine and much more expensive, too.

I developed a way around these embarrassing moments by stretching the truth just a little.

“Oh,” I would gush, “I got lots of clothing, a wonderful book, a new doll…”

Then I’d pause with a little laugh and finish with, “So many things I can’t remember them all just now.”

By then my friends would interrupt, wanting to tell me about their gifts to be “ooed and awed” over, the real reason for the question in the first place.

I would always be properly impressed to make them feel good and then go on my way so they could do the same thing to the next victim.

It wasn’t that I felt badly about my presents being less expensive or less grand than theirs, but I didn’t want to feel degraded in their eyes if I had received less and they would then feel sorry for me.

I know they truly didn’t care, carried away as they were with more things than they could properly enjoy and appreciate, but pleased to brag as though the number of things represented love or their own worthiness.

I knew the difference and felt sorry for them.

I knew I was just as much loved with my gifts as they were with theirs and that I was pleased to think my parents had picked out just the things I would enjoy or needed the most.

Yes, there was clothing – under things, stockings badly needed rather than the latest fashion cashmere sweater; a girls’ mystery book by an unknown author rather than a Nancy Drew series; a doll for my age with hand-sewn clothes instead of a doll with a real-hair wig and a wardrobe of clothing in a travel trunk.

As for the “so much I couldn’t remember” items, it was true, for there were color books, paper doll books, candy, linen hankies, anklets – yes, all kinds of things from aunts and uncles.

There were also foods of every kind and family parties in which to enjoy cousins, sing Christmas carols, go sledding, pop popcorn and drink hot cocoa around the heating stove.

There was the excitement of putting up the fragrant Christmas tree of pine or fir fetched from the hill, making chains of paper or using popcorn interspersed by real cranberries so that they could be strung on bushes outside for birds and squirrels when the tree was removed from the house.

I loved everything about Christmas – the fun of decorating, seeing sparkling lights, hanging stockings in anticipation of Santa, studying the Montgomery Wards and J. C. Penney’s Christmas catalogs filled with toys, looking for the chocolate drop in the Elks Lodge stocking of goodies and going to the movie matinee at the Granada Theatre afterwards, attending church and school programs, picking out gifts for others, singing or listening to music, visiting, cooking aromas wafting from the kitchen – everything except the gift-counting afterwards.

At times it rather spoiled the afterglow of the Christmas festivities temporarily. Then I sat down to read my book or cut out paper dolls or put on a new pair of stockings and I knew how blessed I had been.

I knew the love that had gone into providing each of my items, the thought that had gone into their selection.

I had received just enough of the right things at the right time in my life.

When I left grade school at the end of the seventh grade, I received a bicycle from my folks; when I graduated from the eighth-grade junior high, it had been my first wristwatch; and when I graduated from high school it had been a cedar chest.

Once when I was watching a child opening birthday gifts, many beyond count, the honored one turned away, unable to enjoy any of the opened pile, and wailed.

“Can we stop now? I’m tired.”

I’m wondering now about this electronic age and the expense that has gone with it. Was one gift enough for Christmas or did there have to be more added to the charge card? At school will they still be asking each other, “How much did you get for Christmas?”

My thoughts now turn to my book “Children’s Story Book” with the inside leaf inscribed “To Dorothy with love from Mother and Dad, Christmas 1935.”

It is still a real treasure to me.

Fading away are the words, “What did you get for Christmas?”

I know the answer to that question.

When I was a child, I received love.

As an adult, I gave love.

What did I want for Christmas this year? I wanted only the assurance of continuing love.

What better gift could there be?