Soon, it will be Christmas. I think “you would have to live in a cave not to know.” As a matter of fact, the holiday hype has been going on since early October.

I believe I mention this unattractive focus on commercialism, of what should be one of the most revered holidays, in each November article I write. Still, it grows bigger and more ostentatious each year.

I react vehemently when I see Christmas trees before pumpkins; that’s the routine. With that said, toys and “things” were huge parts of my childhood Christmases. The Sears’s catalogue and television gave us all sorts of suggestions — Schwinn bikes, record players, Easy Bake Ovens, dolls that could talk; it was all there under the Douglas Fir each Christmas morning.

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I suppose my generation heralded in the hype. But before that, before TV and propaganda, there were Christmases with less focus on the “things;” those were my mother’s Christmases. I try hard to remember some of the little stories she would tell me about those times as a child during the Great Depression.

While I am not intending to glorify the Great Depression, for it was a time of immense anguish and hardship, it was also a time when the simplest things were cherished and that is something I would like to take from it.

I wonder what my mother might think of Christmas in 2009? I think she would be overwhelmed to see the level of consumerism we have risen to (or sunk to). I am not “going there,” however, I am not commenting on contemporary society. I am, instead, going to Ville Platte, Louisiana, in the middle of the Great Depression.

That is where my mother was one of five children living in a little white house on Beech Street. Although this little house was in town, there was a milk cow, a scattering of hens, a fig tree, a plum tree and a victory garden in the backyard.

Inside, there may not have always been a Christmas tree but there were always socks hung on the mantle filled with oranges on Christmas morning. There were red and green paper chains to decorate the tiny mantle and sweet potato pies and fig tarts in the oven and one Christmas there was a doll.

She remembered the exact Christmas; it was not a dull tousle of memories, one blending into the other; it was one special Christmas morning when she was nine and she remembered each detail. I think it was easy for her to recall because there was never a lot of stuff to clutter her memories and baffle her.

Perhaps there was more focus on the real Christmas, the one that causes reflection, good will and brings families together with warm hearts and love, not the one you buy with plastic.

I think of my own daughter and try to remember how many dolls and toys she has found under the Frazier Firs and realize I may have served her an injustice to mottle up Christmas with too much stuff. I hope however, amongst the heap of “hype”, there are memories we have made together as a family that will, ultimately define Christmas for her.

This Christmas season, I will remember my mother as a child in the 30s and think of how simple and therefore memorable it all was. It is difficult to combat the commercialism of Christmas, but, I believe, it is more difficult to surrender.

PAM SHENSKY is the mother of five and a teacher at New Iberia Senior High.