Yes It’s True: OK, Denise, here’s my 1968 gift story

This week’s installment of Denise Dykstra’s perky and positive “Everyday Joys” column has inspired me to respond.

As is her custom, she ends her communication with an offer to readers to pass along their similar remembrances of what she has written about. This week, she wrote, “I would really love to hear some of your favorite memories. “Tell me in the comments a Christmas you will never forget!”

Ms. Dykstra’s weekly column has been a welcome addition this year to Townbroadcast, a refreshing antidote to an editor often accused of being, in the immortal alliterative words of the late Spiro Agnew, a “nattering nabob of negativism.”

So here’s my story:

It was 1968 when I came home to Wayland for Christmas from college, in a period that was tense with long-haired student protests against the War in Vietnam.

I was seeking a little levity during family chit-chat and I mercilessly teased by youngest sister Kelly (then 7 years old) by insisting she had been a naughty girl and Santa was bringing her only a can of Campbell’s chili beef soup. Kelly didn’t react to this news well.

Imagine my surprise on Christmas Eve while we opened presents and I received a package addressed to me that was oddly shaped like it held something like a fluorescent light. It was long and skinny.

When I cautiously tore off the wrapping paper and peered inside the lengthy hallway along the innards of the gift, I saw only one object rolling around at the bottom — a can of Campbell’s split pea with ham soup.

Someone should have snapped a photograph of the expression on my face. I was told it was awash in apoplectic astonishment.

Then my now dearly departed mother, who apparently had overheard my earlier teasing, shouted, “You deserve that!”

It was so memorable that I resurrected the story while making remarks at Mom’s funeral in 2014. At least I got a lot of laughs.

So there, Denise Dykstra. That’s my story. And I wish you, your family and mine and all Townbroadcast readers Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, whichever you prefer.