A Christmas Story

Christmas was always really great at my house when my younger sister and I were kids, actually it is still really good now that we are both in our 30s. My father put up lights like Clark Griswald and filled our house with the sounds of his many soulful Christmas mixtapes. My mom filled our house with black Santa Clauses and since she taught at a mostly white school, her students would always hook her up with all kinds of Christmas baked goods and candy. She was also trying to raise good Christian children so there was always a really fly Nativity scene in the house with a black baby Jesus. I know this is all heart warming but I am about to write about the meanest thing I ever did at Christmas or ever for that matter.

It was Christmas 1986 and in my house we always asked for one big thing. That year, I asked for Metroplex a.k.a. Autobot City and my sister wanted a Rainbow Bright doll. These were pretty easy requests because they were popular toys that would be easy to find and relatively inexpensive. Well the price and availability was not the problem, at least with Metroplex. The problem was with Rainbow Bright. You see, every major toymaker that makes dolls makes an African American version of it's most popular dolls. Ironically Rainbow Bright was the exception so despite my sister's pleadings, that doll was not coming into our household. Now I know that seems a bit extreme, especially when it comes to a little girl's happiness at Christmas but before you new school parents flip out about it let me explain. Understand my sister and I were barely a generation removed from state sponsored segregation. My mother and father made that stand because they wanted to make sure that they were raising proud black children in the suburbs and if a toy company was not into acknowledging our culture they could not have any of my parent's hard earned money.

Well, Christmas morning rolls around and I am the first person in the house up. I see Metroplex all shiny and new under the tree. I pick him up and run into my sisters room and say "look Erin I got Metroplex and you got Rainbow Bright"! She ran up to the living room to look under the tree to see Rainbow Bright was nowhere to be found. I laughed like a little 9 year old douchebag for minute before I saw the dissapointment in my little sisters face and realized what I did was really foul. Some years passed and this became a story my sister and I could laugh at but the laughter never made it right.

A few of years ago my friend Jaime was cleaning out her basement and one of the things she was about to give away was a Rainbow Bright doll in almost perfect condition. I asked her if I could have it and she said "sure". Fast forward to Christmas day 2007, my family is taking turns opening gifts and my sister opens a gift that has a note on it that says "I hope this makes up for Christmas 1987". When my sister saw Rainbow Bright it elicited a jubilant reaction that I had never seen out of her during any other Christmas and when I saw her tear up a little over it, I knew that Rainbow Bright doll meant more to her than I could have ever understood. Now I am not usually in the business of going over my parent's heads, but my sister is a strong, proud, HBCU graduate who is making a good living for herself in Atlanta. I think they did their job well enough that having Rainbow Bright in the house was not going to undo any of this. I don't remember to much more about that Christmas but It was the best Christmas ever.

While I was writing this a random thought popped into my head. What did the parents of little Asian girls do?