My tough childhood taught me the true meaning of Christmas | New York Post

My tough childhood taught me the true meaning of Christmas | New York Post
"My first real memory of Christmas was when I was 5 years old.
I had gotten a cheap little plastic Nativity scene with a tiny Baby Jesus which truly mesmerized me.
Just a few days later I would be clutching that Nativity scene to my chest in terror as I hid in a closet in our bedroom as the police came to forcibly evict my family onto the street yet again.
By the time I had reached the age of 17, myself, my older brother and younger sister had been evicted from 34 “homes,” many of them lacking heat, electricity, water or phone.
And yet, they were still “home.”
The dirty mattress the three of us slept upon on the floor was better than the cold and filthy cars we moved into in and around the Boston area.
My parents, while highly educated, were completely dysfunctional alcoholics who used every penny to feed their addictions while almost never feeding the three children they came to view as burdens to be ignored.
Because of that reality, we never had what would pass for even a bad Christmas.
“Bad” would have been a promotion.
But the Christmas that really put the exclamation point on those memories happened when I was 7 years old.
The only present each of us received that year was a two-foot tall inflatable Santa Claus my father had picked up for free at a gas station.
Even at that, we were still excited to believe that the real Santa Claus had just left them for us as we snuck downstairs to find them sitting next to a four-foot tall silver aluminum Christmas tree.
We brought the inflatable Santas back up to our room. 
A room — like the rest of the house — which was about 25 degrees Fahrenheit inside, as we had run out of heating oil about a week earlier.
Not wanting my “Santa” to be cold, I put him under my worn blanket that Christmas night as I laid down on the floor under my coat.
There were a number of low-points with regard to Christmas as a child and yet, as unbelievable as it may be to some, I never lost faith.
I did not lose faith in the Baby Jesus, and I did not lose faith in the true meaning of Christmas..."
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