Wilson: Worst, best Christmas? Same year

A question I ask, and get asked, every year seems to be, “What was the best Christmas you remember?”

We never ask, “What’s your worst Christmas?”

My best Christmas and worst Christmas are pretty easy memories, because they happened in the same year.

Kevin Wilson

First off, a defense of my family, and myself. Of the things I inherited from my father, one of them was gift-destroying self-reliance. If I see something I need, and I need it more than the money in my bank account, I’m taking it home. If I know I won’t use it, I don’t want other people’s money going toward buying it.

This meant I would receive gift cards and money. During our family’s 1999 Christmas, we were staying in Billings, Montana, 200 miles from home, with my grandmother.

Because nobody knew good gifts for me, my Christmas morning was a stack of bills and cards. They’re great, but everybody else had stuff. We couldn’t shop in Billings, one of the state’s two biggest cities, for after-Christmas sales, because my dad worked with the state transportation department and would be on call that day ... so we immediately had to leave for home. That was the worst Christmas I had.

The next day, we were driving home and were a few miles outside of Bozeman, an hour from home. My dad said, “My supervisor is OK with me being an hour from the office while I’m on call. You want to try to spend some of those gift cards in Bozeman?”

I had already itemized things I planned to buy, and I figured Bozeman probably had them. So we took the exit to the mall.

Midway through the trip, I walked into a JCPenney and became the Clearance Whisperer. I found a Texas Rangers MLB authentic dugout jacket. In my size. These things are normally $180. Jump if it’s half off, I told myself.

Hmm, no price tag. I brought it to the clerk who had clearly scanned this item more than once, for dozens of customers who decided they didn’t want it.

“This coat is $30, sir,” she said.

And there it was, the best Christmas. I would have jumped at half off. But it was half off, and then two-thirds off of that half.

The clerk continued ... “Do you want me to put it back where you ...”

“Is cash OK?”

That was one of my favorite jackets. And I only found it at a random store in Bozeman, Montana, where it had been passed upon so often it was marked down 85 percent and clerks still expected customers to say, “No, thanks.” And I could only afford it because my family thought enough to give me cash instead of stuff I wouldn’t use.

To this day, I’m convinced the coat was there for me all that time; I’m just not sure what force was at work.

So that’s how, in a 24-hour span, I went from worst Christmas to best one. I hope you have the former, dear readers.

Kevin Wilson is a columnist for Clovis Media Inc. He can be contacted at 575-763-5541, or by email:

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