Until I was 15, most of the significant decisions in my life were decided by my parents, the pastor and Sunday school teachers, the Boy Scout troop leaders, or the sports team's coaches. But none of them could answer my most perplexing question — who put the "Mary" in Christmas? Not Merry - But Mary!

Few girls in my neighborhood were named Mary — almost none answered to the name Mary by itself. We had a Mary Ann, a couple of Mary Junes, and a few Mary Janes. We were never really sure how many "Virgin Mary's" we had in the Hood, but that's beside the point. Regardless of the names, it was the introduction of GENDER into the picture that impacted "Merry Christmas" in the Hood.

This came when we hit high school, and had our first serious girlfriend. What makes a serious girlfriend? Really simple, one that you wanted to keep after the holiday season. Tradition in the 1950s dictated that you give your girl a respectable Christmas gift.

Between the ages of 15 and 17, we didn't have to worry too much about Christmas gifts for girls. First, we didn't have any money and second, most girls weren't allowed to accept gifts from boys.

That went out the window by sophomore year when the male hormones started kicking in. Girls had moved way up the food chain, and if you had a girlfriend, you would be judged on how good or bad you treated her.

Believe me, in the two or three days after Christmas, whatever you gave your girl for Christmas would be on the neighborhood "Hotline" before you could empty the garbage. This was the 1950s, before the internet or cell phone. Your business was in the streets.

Not only did every kid on the block know what you had gotten her, they knew where you got it and how much you paid for it. Your reputation as a standup kind of a guy was severely tested during that period — with the prime test coming the day school reopened.

Many a promising high school romance never made it through that stormy week between Christmas and New Year. The matter of quality gifts for girlfriends, did not carry over into the gifts for boyfriends. Ties, socks and handkerchief sets were still acceptable for that. This lead to a popular "Counter-measure" in the hood (and possibly world-wide) called the "Pre-emptive Strike."

You would simply start an argument with your girlfriend the day after Thanksgiving, she would get pissed and tell you to never darken her door again — or more colorful words to that effect. While this approach was effective in saving holiday cost, it did come with a potentially detrimental downside — future dating of the opposite sex in the neighborhood was put at considerable risk. Therefore, you just might be attending the prom with a female cousin.

Those were the non-violent possibilities facing you. Other reactions depended largely on the emotional depth of the lady in question. She might not be satisfied with a verbal disengagement — especially if other members of her family had been involved — potentially an invitation to an "ass-whipping" but I'll leave that for another day.

~ Harvey Dority