Christmas Gifts With Lasting Value are Priceless

Some local business and community leaders reflected on their favorite Christmas gifts this week.

For each of them, the value of a special present has nothing to do with money. Here is what they had to say.

Mark Glidden, a partner in Stone+Glidden of Doylestown said the best Christmas present he ever received was a bike he didn’t want.

He was 13 or 14 years old, he said, and he had asked his parents for a Schwinn Continental. On Christmas Day, what he found under the tree instead was an old bike with balloon tires.

“It was pretty much the opposite of what I’d asked for. I was really upset,” he said. “I was really disappointed, and I probably didn’t handle it well.”

What Glidden learned about six months later was that his father, Gene, had been out of work for six months by Christmas and a year in total. Although his parents were struggling financially, they didn’t want him to know that.

“My mom told me they didn’t want our lives to be affected by my dad being out of work. I think that’s when I saw the big picture. That’s when the lesson was imparted,” he said.

“That gift taught me I needed to think about others before thinking about myself.”

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“A present that stands out in my mind was given to me by my Aunt Hazel…who was a pretty good gift giver,” said Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler.

The gift from his father’s sister was a collection of stories for boys authored by Rudyard Kipling. “I still have it,” he said, of the book about the adventures of three British soldiers. “They were some pretty vivid characters.

“She introduced me to the works of Kipling,” he said of the aunt he describes as the beauty of the family. “It helped me develop an appetite for literature.”

Heckler said he isn’t sure exactly how old he was when he received the gift, but he believes he was in elementary school, likely between the ages of 8 and 10.

Another of Heckler’s favorite gifts, and one he keeps on his desk, is from the same aunt – a magnifying glass from a downtown department store. He said he sometimes used it to examine evidence when he served as a judge on the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.

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As part of a family of 15 children, Doylestown tile artist Katia McGuirk and her siblings were required by their parents to make their Christmas presents.

Each of the children drew the name of their recipient in a “pick-draw” or Pollyanna, she said, and often they procrastinated so long that they would make their gifts on Christmas Eve in the family’s wood shop.

“So we made lots of bird houses for each other,” she said with a laugh. “Then one year I got the really good" gift, one crafted by her brother Derek, a furniture maker.

He made McGuirk a Windsor-style wooden youth chair and painted it to match her living room: She was pregnant with the first of her two daughters, now ages 19 and 21.

“He knew I was anti-plastic,” she said, adding she didn’t want a traditional high chair.

McGuirk said the chair, suitable for children up to age four, served her family well. She passed it down to her younger brother, Ian, for his children, and she expects it to remain in the family for generations to come.

“It’ll be around for 100 years,” she said.

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For Dottie Rimmer, coordinator of the New Britain Baptist Church Food Larder, the best Christmas gift is not a tangible one.

“I just love when my husband and I and our three children and all of their families get together on Christmas Day,” she said. “We’re very fortunate. We know we have to share because they all have in-laws. It just seems to work out; we always get Christmas Day.”

The parents of two sons and one daughter, Rimmer and her husband, Byron, who also volunteers at the larder, have 10 grandchildren between the ages of 8 and 17.

Mrs. Rimmer said their two sons and their wives, their daughter and her partner, and all of the children gather at 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. They enjoy hors d’oeuvres, the children take turns opening their gifts, they all have dinner, and then the adults take turns opening their presents.

They celebrate at a different house each year, but they are always together, she said. “I can’t ask for anything better.”

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John Stachel, broker/owner of Class-Harlan Real Estate in Doylestown said he has received many nice gifts for his hobbies of fishing, camping, backpacking and gardening.

Though he appreciates them all, they can’t compete with his favorite Christmas present: a calendar with family photos on it for every month.

“I think this is the best gift I’ve ever gotten,” he said as he sat in his office conference room paging through last year’s bound and printed calendar, delighting in photos of his four grandchildren.

Stachel said his two children, their spouses and grandchildren, ages 4 to 9, began giving him the calendars for Christmas several years ago. He’s kept each of the calendars, which list family birthdays, in pristine condition. He’s never written anything in any of them.

“I expect them now. It’s a repeating gift,” he said. “It’s a repeating gift that’s different every year.”

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“The best present I ever got was from Lou when he proposed marriage and gave me a ring at Christmastime,” said Doylestown Mayor Libby White. “That was the beginning of so many wonderful things.”

The Whites became engaged 50 years ago on Christmas Eve. They were married the following August and look forward to celebrating their 50th anniversary next year. They are the parents of two grown sons.

Although the couple had discussed marriage, Mayor White said the Christmas Eve proposal was a surprise. She said both of their families were “very happy that Lou and I had found each other.”

“The last 25 years have gone even faster than the first. We appreciate each other more all the time, and I’m very glad he proposed,” she said.

“So am I,” said her husband, a longtime borough councilman who recently marked his final council meeting.

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Kyle Evans, of Buckingham, the former director of Youth and Children’s Ministry at Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury, grew up in a family in which Christmas, she said, wasn’t all that special.

For her, there was something missing until she became part of her husband Eric’s family. His family traditions made the holiday special, she said.

Her favorite “present,” she said, was when their church began holding an annual community event and her husband dressed, not as Santa Claus, but as St. Nicholas.

Evans, who has three grown sons with her husband, was serving then as the youth leader. She said she appreciated that he got to know the children, both from the church and the community, and was able to surprise them with his knowledge of them.

“What my husband symbolized in Christmas by being that St. Nicholas,” she said, “brought spirit and joy" to the holiday.