Kirsten Anderberg/Poor Kids and Guilt at Christmas
Poor Kids and Guilt at Christmas
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)
It is interesting what we remember and do not remember about Christmas' past. One of the strangest and most pronounced memories I have of Christmas is one year when I was about 10 years old and we were dirt poor. I interacted with other poor kids, trying to somehow soothe my own discomfort. I dressed up as Santa and wrapped some of my toys which were still in good shape. I took them to the home of my babysitter, who was also dirt poor and had 3 kids younger than me. You might think my memory would be warm and fuzzy, that I was doing something kind for another in the Christmas spirit. But the feeling that lingers for me, is how awkward, how disenfranchised, the poor people, kids and adults, I knew and interacted with at Christmas felt.
When my parents got divorced, I became a two-income kid. Following the fault lines of institutionalized sexism, my mom was left on welfare in destitute poverty and my dad fought paying child support and was a well-to-do aerospace engineer bachelor. Due to my father's higher class level than mine and my mom's, the guilt was really horrible as a kid. For instance, my dad would not help me get a present for my mom. He did not want me giving anything to my mom, ever. He kept books and shoes and clothing at his house for me, and I literally shed my old self on the weekends for him. But since I always had to be sent home to destitute poverty and hunger at the end of every weekend, I always knew I had to put my "poor" clothes back on to go home, and I felt awkward at the places we went with the kids who lived in those worlds 24/7.
After the weekend with dad, I felt bad, as a child, bringing home leftovers from big food feasts to my mom's empty home and hungry belly. I felt icky bringing home nice presents my mom could never afford to get me as a kid, always coming from my dad. If he had paid his court-ordered child support, my mom, herself, could have bought me food and presents, but instead, all funneled through him, which made my mom very bitter. Christmas has always had huge guilt issues around class for me. I knew that getting nice things at Christmas had huge political overtones, even as a young child. If I loved a gift my dad gave me, my mom felt bad, as she could never afford those types of presents. So even if I got a present that was really cool, that I liked, I felt obliged to show no joy over it, so my mom would not be hurt. As a young child, this type of social monitoring for the adults involved is distressing and exhausting.
When I look back on Christmas' past, the only ones without weird guilt feelings are the ones spent with my mom when we were poor, but her family would send us a yearly cache of baked goods, homemade maple syrup, hand-knitted items, etc. Out of all the presents of all my childhood Christmas', the ones I seriously remember loving most were the Barbie clothes my grandma would knit me, oddly. Everything else seems to be a blur. I really did like a small electric organ I got one year, and I liked the Lite Brite too, but again, I associate a lot of dark, guilt feelings with those items as playing with them made my mom mad, reminding her of my dad.
People think you can buy kids off at Christmas with presents. I recently saw a Christmas episode of "Bewitched" where the people on Samantha's street were taking in the kids at a local orphanage for Christmas eve and day. Ms. Kravitz, and Sam and Darin took home kids as if this was so great for these kids. Do you know how freaking HUMILITATING this type of thing is for the kids involved? People with money take poor kids out for a day, treat them like kids people care about, then ship them back to the cold institutions with a new toy, whoopee. I, also, was in a state child protection institution at age 8, in Los Angeles, called MacLaren Hall. (MacLaren Hall is a notoriously rough and abusive asylum setting where unwanted kids were warehoused and abused by the state in the 1960's-2003). When we, the kids, were finally allowed out of there to be shipped off to foster homes, they gave us, the kid prisoners, basically, a big box of toys, as if somehow that made the previous weeks, months or years of torture go away.
When I left MacLaren Hall, and they gave me that big box of toys, I was in such shock and trauma by then, that toys were no different than dirt to me. Seriously. I remember sitting in the car as we drove away from MacLaren Hall, and not being able to hear the social worker's words in the car…I could only think about how the telephone poles were moving as we drove and I think it meant I was perhaps finally out of there. I was not excited about the box of new toys. I did not give one crap about them. I am sure some corporations donated those toys for charity brownie points and tax write offs, but they meant nothing to me. And I am not alone. As I have talked to adult survivors of MacLaren Hall, I have had more than one of them express ANGER at the box of toys they gave us when we left. One guy sent me an email about MacLaren Hall after reading an article I wrote about it, and the subject line was "F*ck MacLaren Hall's Teddy Bears!"
Myself, and other kids there did not find that box of toys comforting or endearing, it angered us in ways. It seemed as if those toys were supposed to somehow buy us off, to make us not talk about the horrors we just saw inside MacLaren Hall. Toys were so far down the list of what we needed…we needed safe parents, families, homes, food, clothing, school…Kids from MacLaren Hall had much more important things on their minds than toys. Even as an 8 year old, I smelled something funny about those toys. And why would I want to play with something from there, once out of that place of terror? It would only remind me of that hell! The MacLaren Hall box of toys had a creepy vibe to it. Although I am not comparing MacLaren Hall to a concentration camp, it is kind of like giving kids a box of toys when they leave a concentration camp. What good are those tainted toys?
So my toys from dad were filled with guilt from my mom. And my dad did not want my "poor" things from my mom in his world either. And toys from MacLaren Hall reminded me of the scariest place on earth. By about 8, I pretty much gave up on toys for comfort due to the adults around me and the political significance of the toys given to me.
When I was 10, as I said, I tried to help my neighbors' poor kids not feel what I had felt. I tried to wrap up my old toys, and to visit them, giving them maybe a little extra Christmas joy, as I knew their parents were struggling just for food money. But after that effort, I had an epiphany. I realized that little band-aids can actually emphasize what we do not have somehow. I realized how weird "charity" can be. I realized that it is not the presents that matter, honestly. It is the caring. And a token caring for a minute at Christmas, can actually echo as a reminder of how much people do not care the rest of the year. You do not see the kids I described in this article on those warm Christmas TV ads. I have talked about poor kids and unwanted, abandoned kids in this article. Although a toy may have a slight significance for an "underprivileged" kid, what they really want and need is stability, health, a home, reliable food, a loving support network, and an opportunity to get presents on their birthdays too, not just on Christmas. To be "included" for a token moment just doesn't cut it. Kids are smarter than that. Temporary charity is for the giver's benefit, honestly. That is what I learned, as a ten year old, one Christmas in 1970.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.