As we celebrated Christmas throughout my childhood, I spent a lot of time with kinsmen who grew up poor during the depression. They “tsk- tsked” the relative orgy of gifts we received, while feeling compelled to tell us how rough they had it growing up. It became a competition to detail how poor they were and how we should pity their plight when they were my age. Stories abounded about their meager gifts and how glad they were to receive them. We were told we should be ashamed of ourselves for asking for specific gifts and we should be grateful for what we received. “Why, when I was your age, all I received for Christmas was a piece of hard candy and new shoelaces.” OK, that’s pretty rough…but when it did not receive the proper response after the 20th telling, it changed to, “Why, when I was your age, all I received was a strand of barbed wire to use as shoelaces in my work boots.”...