A Stick-Shift Christmas

How a lavish, unexpected gift forced me to learn a skill -- and the holiday's true meaning.

The best Christmas present I ever received was, to my momentary bafflement, not under the tree that cold December morning more than half a century ago.

Indeed, there was nothing under the tree with my name on it. I watched as my three siblings, all younger than I, tore open gift after gift. My father, who grew up poor during the Depression, went wild at Christmas.

Rather than pout, however, I felt oddly grown-up. After all, I had just turned 16 and was starting to think of myself as an almost-adult rather than a gift-obsessed kid. Indeed, I had the proof: a brand-new driver’s license -- that ticket to freedom, respect, girls.

After the last present was opened, my dad told me to fetch a missing gift in a shed across the street that he used for storage. I told myself it was OK if this goodie was not for me.

When I opened the shed’s garage door, I almost fainted. There sat a gleaming 1956 Plymouth Fury, aqua with white trim, and tail fins that almost touched the sky. Also, a monster V-8 engine with a four-barrel carburetor, three-speed manual transmission and, I suspected, enough power to qualify for the Indy 500. Like most guys my age back then, I was very much into cars.

When I staggered home open-mouthed in wonder, my father suggested I take my new chariot for a spin. Just one problem: I had never driven a stick-shift car. Not to worry, he said. I’d figure it out, he said, and sent me on my way.

Somehow, I got the vehicle out of the garage, but within two blocks I killed the engine while trying to shift gears. I killed it quite a few more times before heading home in despair.

I eventually mastered the art of manual gear-shifting, though one day I mistakenly hit the gas and the clutch at the same time, thereby revving the engine so high that it threw a piston rod into the engine block. Bottom line: The Plymouth was totaled.

Since then, I’ve owned many manual transmission cars, including an ancient Saab 9-5 wagon I took the other day to get serviced at one of the last Saab specialists in the U.S. The Swedish company that produced Saabs changed hands and nationalities several times starting in 1989 and stopped making cars in 2014.

Sticks are more fun than automatics, I think. They keep drivers focused on driving and help forge a near-mystical oneness between the machine and its master, i.e. you.

Sadly, manual transmissions are a dying species. In 2000, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, they accounted for an estimated 15% of all cars, new and used, sold by the nationwide retailer CarMax. Two decades later, that number had dropped to 3%. This year, hardly any auto maker still offers a stick-shift option. Exceptions like Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are expected to end production shortly.

Consumers clearly prefer automatic transmissions, since manual alternatives are hard to find, learning to operate them is a chore, and many drivers consider them dangerously distracting. The reality, I would posit, is the opposite: When you have to shift gears manually, you are fully engaged with the task of driving.

That’s why the demise of the stick shift is especially tragic. Driving has become a boring, devalued chore, not a thing of accomplishment and pleasure. The rise of GPS, EVs and self-driving cars will diminish the importance of the act even more, while enhancing our increasingly oblivious dependence on technology. Shelves of dystopian science-fiction novels describe what might follow.

Something similar is happening to Christmas. Like many people this year, I did nearly all my gift shopping online. Took me less than an hour, and I still feel guilty about it. My father, by contrast, spent months tracking down my life-changing Plymouth, and that was just one of his many thoughtful gifts to many grateful people that year. I have never stopped loving him for his crazy generosity.

We tend, increasingly, to think that easier is better, higher-tech is sexier, the future is more engaging than the past. Sometimes they are. But not at Christmas.

This is a time when tradition should rule, when we must look back – not just on the year that’s ending (a job more suited to New Year’s Eve) but to that first Christmas, how it happened and why. God sent His son to redeem us, of course. Then the boy-turned-man took vast care and endured great suffering to accomplish the task. He didn’t order his gifts online.

The Christmas story is timeless. It’s about love, generosity, family and, especially, the effort that goes into delivering those precious gifts. That’s why the best stories and films about Christmas are marked by striving, sacrifice and redemption: Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Pearl S. Bucks’ “Christmas Time in the Morning,” O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” Willa Cather’s “A Burglar’s Christmas” and Frank Capra’s cinematic masterpiece “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Also, of course, the heretofore untold tale about a father’s heroic quest to find his teenage son the car of a lifetime. Which, through carelessness and inattention, the boy destroys – to his lasting regret.

I like to think that experience helped the lad grow up to be a better, more grateful, more generous person. The story, which haunts him every Christmas, is – mercifully – not over yet.