Richard Rodriguez                                                                                                                        December 10, 2002

            The separation between Richard Rodriguez and his family is almost bridged for the family at the annual Christmas gathering. Christmas, a holiday which brings family members together over gifts, serves to link the material-object oriented family together, ironic because the material objects are what tore the family apart in the first place. Rodriguez’s description of one Christmas is as simple and listless as his experiences with his family, showing his feeling of separation between his family, and himself, in his narration as an outsider.

            The success of the Rodriguez children is not that they are educated or living a life of happiness, but that they have the means “to buy [each other] presents, to drive “expensive foreign cars.” The most vivid descriptions of Rodriguez’s essay are not of the emotions bringing his family together, but the myriad of “red and green wrapping paper,” the expensive cars in the driveway, and his sister’s “shiny mink jacket.” Although the Rodriguez children have gained so many expensive possessions, they have lost each other, and the Christmas setting of this piece becomes a time to awkwardly exchange gifts instead of joyfully exchanging love. As they gain possessions, the lose words to say to each other, and all of their mother but her eyes.

            The point of view of the piece is very detached; Rodriguez sees his family largely through the eyes of his mother, the only part of her left uncovered by the gifts her “successful” children have given her. She watches her family lost for “another Christmas,” and sees what she had “predicted all along.” But because she expected this, knew it would happen, she was able to prepare, to ask her children to bring her gifts—to ensure they would always be brought together somehow.

            Just about all of the dialogue in this piece is presented in parentheses, pushed to the back burner to make space for the gifts. The only true dialogue in this piece is that of the past—the flashback to a much earlier Christmas with no gifts but with love—and unanswered attempts at care. The only statement that earns a response is “another Christmas”—another Christmas in the past that wasn’t “uncomfortably warm,” or a hope for one in the future that will not be either. They only concern shown between family members is the comment that it is too cold for Rodriguez’s father—that someone should get him a coat—just as the children once promised they would get their mother.

            The coats in this piece (the hypothetical one for the mother, the lavish one the sister already has, and the one to be gotten for the father) are symbols of wealth, and thus detachment. The mother’s coat covers all but her eyes; coats are gotten as people rise to leave; the coat Rodriguez gets his father hides him except to separate him further. The coats, used for leaving and not necessary when in a warm, loving environment, complete the distance between the members of Rodriguez’s family.

            Richard Rodriguez’s family comes together once a year for Christmas, bringing each other “[wreathes] of gifts,” yet no love. They hide themselves in coats, and only when he sees his parents bundled up in warm jackets does Rodriguez realize how “small” and thin they are—how old—and how many meaningless Christmases have passed. Rodriguez wants to be able to bring his family back to the “paradise” of the love of their youth, but he feels it is too late, that that hope is only a whisper on a wind too far blown away, and he accepts his mother’s coat and leaves his family.