Christmas 1970

Christmas in 1970 was on a Friday, and many companies gave their employees Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, making that a four-day holiday to spend with family. That was true for the mortgage company I worked for; however, I had been promoted earlier in the year and was now overseeing the Data Processing Department. Year-end processing would begin one week later, requiring around-the-clock processing, including property tax payment processing, annual escrow analysis, and year-end statements with payment coupons for approximately 50,000 mortgages. Monthly, quarterly, and annual investor reporting would also have to be completed before January 15^th. My staff would be working a lot of overtime starting the next week; however, much of the processing back then involved punch cards that could cause some processing issues. I had developed some pre-audit processes that could identify balancing problems that could be traced down and fixed before the year-end processing began on the 1^st.

This was Eva’s and my seventh Christmas together, so she was used to me working during the holidays. It was our first with both Tammy and Jennifer, and Eva always did a lot of baking for Christmas. There I was about to walk out on Christmas Eve morning, and I asked Tammy (3yrs) if she wanted to go to work with me. I looked at Eva, and she was grinning and said, “You want to take both?” I told her no, but I would not be home late. She told me that she knew I would not be, if I was taking Tammy.

When we got to the office, June was working that morning, so she got Tammy set up on one of the Keypunch machines and showed her how to punch different things. She also showed her how to take old punch cards and make Christmas wreaths before she left. While I was running the jobs on the computer, Tammy was having fun with the keypunch and stapling cards to make wreaths. That was Tammy’s first time seeing a computer, its blinking lights, computer tapes spinning, and a high-speed printer. Sixteen years later, Tammy selected Computer Information Management for her degree program when she started college.

When we got home and walked in, the house smelled like Christmas. Eva had Christmas music playing, and Jennifer was down for a nap. Tammy started to tell her mom about what she had been doing with keypunching and about making wreaths. When Eva took some cookies out of the oven, Tammy asked if she could help decorate them. After the cookies cooled, we were eating cookies when she told her mom she wanted to show her how to make Christmas wreaths with punch cards. Eva pretended like she had never done that before.

The next morning, it was Jennifer’s first Christmas, so Tammy got to be a big sister and showed Jennifer how to tear the paper off her presents. In those days, it was Santa presents first, Christmas at my parents, Christmas at Eva’s parents, and then back home to open presents from us.

Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and His gift to us, and we are reminded of how precious our children are. They, too, are gifts from God, and we are to protect and lead them to Jesus Christ.