My Favorite Christmas Gift

A Favorite Childhood Christmas Gift & Women’s Empowerment

Earlier this week, or maybe it was last week…the days have mushed together…I was watching a TV show and the host was asking guests about their favorite childhood Christmas present. I remembered my favorite Christmas gift.

My parents didn’t believe in a lot of flash and we got mostly practical gifts. But one year I got a bride doll. She wasn’t a Barbie, or any “name” doll. She didn’t bend and only her arms moved. But she was beautiful in her white gown and high heel shoes. And she had boobs!

I never played with her. Instead, she decorated my bed (and was probably the reason I didn’t mind making my bed each day). I have pictures with that bride doll lying stiffly on a pink satin bedspread, her head resting gently on the pillow.

A Well Worn Toy, Leading to Spiritual Rebirth

Believe it or not, I still have her. The shoes are long gone, what’s left of the dress is in tatters and her hair could use a perm. She looks like she’s been around the block a few times. So have! But, unlike me, gravity hasn’t had an impact on her perky little boobs.

I can’t throw her out. Someday I’ll take her to a doll hospital (they still exist, don’t they?) and have her refreshed.

Interestingly enough, I had a neighbor who also had a doll that she loved. Hers too had fallen on hard times. In midlife, she decided to have the doll refurbished. Then she took it a step further.

Her Inspiring Story

One Christmas she spoke to her church group and likened the doll’s restoration to her own spiritual rebirth. She compared the different doll parts to areas of her life. As she explained how the doll doctor fixed this part or that, she described how the Christ fixed her heart, badly damaged in a difficult relationship, and her mind which had been weakened through anger and resentment. The Christ also strengthened her body after battling breast cancer. Her talk, and her very presence, provided the congregation with a very powerful demonstration of victory through Christ’s birth.

It was storyteller Garrison Keillor who said that it didn’t matter if you were a Christ child believer or not because, “Christmas is like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”

I think that’s true about life too. That’s what makes the Victorious Woman Project so powerful…we are all going through this thing together.
And I’m looking forward to doing it some more with you in the new year!