Christmas ain't no big time around our house. Except for it's a time a year when I can get work, which ain't so easy to come by.

I've been on my own since I was 15. No big deal. Mama needed me to work and I could. So I did.

I remember there was no big time at Christmas when I was growing up either. Mama worked pretty hard to just keep us in house and food. At Christmas if she was working, Mama would give us each a couple of those little oranges. I liked oranges okay, and that was the only time I had 'em, so Christmas was good from that standpoint.

The house was usually cold that time of year when I was growing up. I stuffed as many rags, papers and chunks of wood in the walls as I could find, but the wind always found a way in. It wasn't anybody's fault but it was always cold.

By the time I started working I never really thought about Christmas except to know that I could usually get work.

Now you might not believe this, but I got my first Christmas present when I was 32.

And I'm not kidding, either.

I remember that day.

I was home layed up because I took a fall at work a few weeks before, which was darned bad luck because I wasn't getting much of any kind of work this year and now it looked like it was going to be a hard old winter for us. I might have been fine at the moment I fell, but I broke a few ribs when I landed, and now it didn't matter that I wasn't supposed to work for awhile - I couldn't hardly get up.

About 9 o'clock on the morning before Christmas there was a knock at the door. My wife went to the door and came back to tell me there was a man there claiming to be my Daddy.

"If he is he ain't welcome, and if he isn't throw him out," I bellowed.

I had never seen my Daddy so I wouldn't have been able to answer the "is" or "isn't" question myself.

When I was little my aunt said that Mama cursed Daddy's name on the moment I was born, and never uttered his name again. I hadn't ever seen or heard from him so I never did know for myself what he looked like.

I raised myself up on one elbow just as a stranger walked into the room.

"Jimmy, I'm your Daddy," he said. "I've finally come to see you."

Now never having a Daddy I had imagined what they looked like, but this stranger sure didn't look like one. His hair was long and kinda straggly. His long old coat looked pretty well worn out even if it was thick. He had a long, hard face. And one eye was just the least bit a little independent of the other one.

He kept talking. "I've been looking for you for five years. Just as soon as I'd find one person who knew you, they didn't know where you were. Your mama never had many friends and besides, they barely remembered her," he said. "You look sick. You feeling okay?"

I wasn't feeling worth a damn but I also wasn't going to let no fool stranger know it. "Maybe I am and maybe I ain't," I said.

"Well I brought you a present, Jimmy, so I hope you're feeling good enough to take it."

For the next hour the stranger told me his story. How Mama and him had worked together in a leather factory for two years. How I was conceived on the day the war ended and how he had gone to prison the month before I was born.

I couldn't help but listen - it wasn't like I could get up and walk away or anything.

Once during the story I made a mistake and said "Daddy" out loud, softly. I wasn't really calling him, I just wanted to hear how it sounded. I remember one time when I was little I asked Mama about Daddy and she boxed my ears good. "Don't you ever say that word again, Jimmy. It'll just cause you pain," she said. And I never did say that word again until that day before Christmas.

But the word "Daddy" didn't sound painful. It didn't sound or feel like anything.

The stranger went on to tell me how he went to prison for some trouble at the factory. How a man had started a fight with him and it ended up with the man getting killed. The guy who started the fight was the boss. He went to a grave and Daddy went to prison for murder.

One day after Daddy had been in prison for 19 years a man asked to see him. Daddy didn't have any friends on the outside so he saw the man out of curiosity. The man was a preacher.

He told Daddy about Christmas. It was a story about a baby born on that day that was going to save the world. That baby was the son of God and God picked a special day to give him to every body.

Part way through the story it looked like Daddy's eyes must have been starting to itch a bit because he rubbed 'em.

He went on about the story and how God gave that little baby to every one of us because He loved us. The baby grew up and told everyone how to go with him to a special place called heaven by just believing in him.

I stopped him right there. "You can just keep your hogwash, Mister," I said. "You sound like someone trying to tell some fool little kids a story about Santa Claus."

An old neighbor woman one time tried to tell me a story like this when I was small but I didn't believe it. Oh, Mama used to read the Good Book from time to time and I think she kind of believed it, but her life was just plain hard. She worked all the time, and when she died eight years ago I thought the only reason there could be a heaven was for her, because she had already lived through hell.

Daddy didn't stop, "It's not a story, son, it's true. That baby born on Christmas day saved my life and for the last five years since I got out of prison I've been looking for you so he could save yours."

"By the time I got out of prison I was a changed man. The preacher came every week and read to me from the Good Book. I didn't have no Daddy, Jimmy. But I learned about being a man and about being a father from listening to that preacher. I knew you was born when I was in prison but I couldn't do nothing about it and by the time I got out your mama was dead and you was a grown man. So I come looking for you."

Well, I didn't trust him but I couldn't exactly kick him out. He said he brought me a present and since it was my first Christmas present I was sort of curious.

"What is it?" I blurted out.

"What is what?" he asked.

"The present?" I said.

He pushed his hand into a big pocket of that old coat and pulled out a big fist turned palm down. He motioned for me to put my hand under his and he dropped a small, warm object into it.

When I pulled back and opened my hand I could see it held a small metal locket. I opened it and there was a picture of some man that looked faintly familiar and he was smiling.

"That's me, Jimmy. Your mama took that picture the week after she and me conceived you. We was going to get married."

I cried out, "Why're you telling me this? Why didn't you just leave me alone?"

"Because I wanted to give you this so you would always know that no matter where you were or where I was, you was always my son and I love you. If things hadn't turned out the way they had, you would have growed up knowing me. But life changed for me and your mama and that was the way it was supposed to turn out. It took 32 years of waiting to give this to you."

I didn't know what was happening. It was strange. The room felt like it was spinning. I just lay back down with a kerplunk and felt my face twisting from the pain when my ribs hit the bed.

Daddy stayed for two weeks. On that next day, on Christmas day when I was 32, my Daddy helped me to find the baby born on Christmas. My ribs were still hurting but my heart got a taste of heaven.

Daddy died that next Spring early on a March morning before the buds had come out on the trees.

You know, I miss him and I miss the idea of a Daddy. But I'm glad he and mama are finally together again, for the first time since he went to prison.

It's a long life. Some of it's filled with day and some of it's filled with night.

But you have to know that there was a baby born on Christmas day. That was the baby that saved my life and my Daddy's life before me.

He can save yours, too.

Try hard to find that baby this Christmas.

Because my Daddy told me the only real Christmas present you can ever get or ever give is love.

And when you get it you have to give it to someone else.

It's also the only gift anyone ever needs.