Christmas in the Sticks

　　The year I moved to Alaska, I lived with my husband's family while he stayed in Montana and worked. I had never been around a huge family before, and he was the oldest of ten children, most of them married with kids of their own. They all lived within a forty-mile radius and used any excuse for a family gathering.

　　No one had any money. Kids were small; families were young and many of the parents worked more than one job just to pay the bills.

　　But that first year, the Christmas of 1981, they showed me what the giving-thing was all about.

　　I had only been there for about six months and was still in awe of the strength and power the love in a big family can generate. What they did that year was long-standing tradition for them, but I had never seen anything like it.