It’s the season for contemplating the right answer for the inevitable question, “What do you want for Christmas?”

Remember what your mom used to say? “Oh, I don’t want anything. I’ve already got everything I want.” That was a really sweet response, but it didn’t help when you had saved up a few dollars to spend on her and believed she’d be secretly disappointed if some little package from you didn’t show up under the tree on Christmas morning.

But then there comes that year when we, as grown adults, give the same answer: I don’t really want anything. And we mean it — not because we have everything there is to have, but because our list of what we want has evolved through experiences that teach us the truly important things in life aren’t rung up at a cash register. We replace store-bought things with much more meaningful, self-purchased gifts such as friends, family and faith.

Friends are a gift we sometimes don’t value as we should. Fortunately, I recently learned that can be remedied when literally out of nowhere, a long-ago friend reconnected with a simple request. She wanted to get together and catch up on the decades we’d missed. Overcoming the surprise (and a momentary concern that maybe she was selling something), I responded and we met. The years peeled away as we talked about our mutual memories of growing up together.

My greatest surprise was learning she had depended on our friendship as much as I had. Each of us viewed the other as the better half of that relationship. In hindsight, we apparently had a great friendship. The beauty of it is that we still can. And will. The experience was like finding a long-lost gem.

Family is possibly the greatest of all gifts we give ourselves. Those relationships can be the best — or the worst. Most of us experience both. But if we’re honest about it, being at peace with the people we were born and reared with fulfills a place in our souls that nothing else can.

Fully aware that the natural evolution of time slowly eliminates our older generation as new generations are born and take their place, it’s no coincidence that in this holiday season, most of us try to include a family gathering somewhere in the celebration. We recall family gatherings of the past that included the influence of treasured family members now gone. We hold tightly to the strength and comfort we felt then by repeating the traditions of those times. We know when we were little, doing so somehow made us content and filled us with a sense of belonging that nothing else can. Our family traditions endure so we, too, can endure.

Christmas is a holiday based on a faith-filled belief. It wraps around the world, celebrated in ways as diverse as earth’s people. It has the power to draw us together in ways no other day of the year does. As global as it is, the celebration of this day remains personal as we contemplate what it means to each of us and then celebrate accordingly.

The strength we draw from our personal beliefs expands when we share them with others and experience the congregational comfort that lets us learn how to give and receive through the blessings of mutual belief and service. And in our darkest times, the strength we draw from our faith sees us through when nothing else can.

So what do we want for Christmas? World peace aside, the more achievable goals include rekindling and maintaining friendships we value, preserving and strengthening family ties, and tending the embers of our faith.

These “gifts” would be a disappointment to any child asking what we want for Christmas. But for us, they’re the best gifts money can’t buy.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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