By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

DES MOINES, Iowa, Dec. 24, 2024 – As seems to be happening with increasing frequency, my wife Mary Riche has saved me again.

As Christmas came on, I could not find the one decoration that means the most to me.

You see it pictured here – the “Merry Christmas stick” as I call it, made about 48 years ago by my step-daughter Janae Jaynes, who was about 7 when she carved and painted it. She’s 55 now, living in Omaha.

Not the kind of thing you’d want to lose. (Photo by Chuck Offenburger)

Chuck Offenburger and Janae Jaynes, earlier this month. (Photo by Chris Werner)

I was sure it was somewhere in our apartment in Jefferson. But I tossed and turned everything twice there, before I appealed to Mary to check around our house in Des Moines. One quick look later, she found it – tucked in a place of safe-keeping with our other special holiday decorations.

She’s got one that she treasures just as much

It’s the special “clothes-pin reindeer” that Sam Spade made at school 36 years ago for his parents then — Mary and Sam’s dad Steve Spade, and Sam’s mother Barb and her husband Jacques Bossaers. Sam is 45 now and living in Carmel, Indiana, on the north edge of the Indianapolis metro area.

The reindeer, now missing one eye. (Photo by Mary Riche)

Mary Riche and Sam Spade, last Sunday after Sam had sung with the choir at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis. (Photo by Chuck Offenburger)

So we RicheBurgers now have our special ornaments on display.

There’s another Christmas memento that I’ve actually given away – to my son Andrew Offenburger. It comes with a story.

When he was about 4 years old, Andrew was plenty talkative with us around home, even boisterous. But when he’d get in a crowd of people – even our extended family – his shyness would take over and we’d struggle to get a word out of him.

But as Christmas 1979 approached, his mother Jeffrie and I were both reading the classic children’s story “The Night Before Christmas” to him, probably daily. And when our big gathering happened on Christmas day at the home of Jeff’s parents in Essex, Iowa, Andrew decided he was ready to perform. He sat on his mom’s lap and, as she turned the pages, he read it, out-loud! The whole story!

A couple years ago, I decided it was time to hand-off that book to Andrew, and it’s now a prized possession for his family in their home in Oxford, Ohio.

Chuck Offenburger reading in 2008 to a granddaughter from the same old book her father loved so long ago. (Family photo)

Chuck and Andrew Offenburger last Saturday on a somewhat historic couch in the staff meeting room of the Department of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where Andrew is an associate professor. (Photo by Mary Riche)

Which brings me to one more favorite Christmas memory. It doesn’t really fit well with my opening stories here, but I’m going to tell it again anyway.

My nephew John Offenburger, now about 52 and living in our hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa, and I have long had a good-natured argument over which of us gave the worst Christmas gift to our respective sainted mothers.

When I was about 10 years old, in about 1957, I gave my mother Anna Offenburger a package of light bulbs for Christmas. Embarrassed as I am when I’ve thought about that later, I’m always hoping it was a package of at least six light bulbs. But I’m afraid it might have been a pack of just three of them.

When John was about 12, maybe 13, in the 1980s, he gave his mother Frances Offenburger an LP record album, “America’s Favorite Truck-Driving Songs.”

I’m pretty sure both our moms pretended they were pleased.

God bless their souls.

Actually, God bless us, every one!

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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.