My “other mother,” Estle, put a moratorium on Christmas gifts this year. I call her my “other mother” because she married my widowed father 25 years ago and saved his life. This notion of no gifts will take some getting used to. Shopping without an eye out for something special for Estle feels like something important is missing, like a thumb.

I didn’t envy Estle on her first Christmas as part of our large family. She had one grown child and married a man who had seven and twice as many again grandchildren. We all think it’s marvelous that she stayed around for a second, and then another and another. If we were subconsciously testing her ability to make Christmas as special as our mother always did, Estle showed us that old traditions can be respected as new ones are created. She made it safe for us to cherish the memory of Mom polishing the silver and washing the crystal and china in preparation for a big sit-down dinner, yet feel we were not betraying her memory if we appreciated the more carefree buffet meal and table service and flatware that were paper and plastic. That was a gift.

Santa no longer makes an after-Christmas Eve supper appearance, like he did that first Christmas, when believers and non-believers alike were asked to sit on his lap and laugh out loud, not smile, for the camera. That was a gift. During Mom’s long illness and the months after, laughter had retreated. My brothers and sisters and I all agreed when Dad died in 1994 that we’d have been gathered at the cemetery a lot sooner if not for Estle and her insistence on laughter. Instead, we got 15 more years with him. Another gift.

There have been so many gifts over the years that we’ve lost track of the ones that came in shiny boxes with big bows on top. They were all carefully chosen, reflecting what we needed or wanted at the time, and given with an abundance of love that made some of the pain of losing our first mother fade. That was the gift, not the trinkets themselves.

“No gifts,” Estle said on the phone not long ago. “I mean it.” Her Christmas card arrived in the mail the other day and she had written “no gifts” at the bottom and circled the words of emphasis. She does really mean it.

Estle grew up in a time when the etiquette of reciprocal hospitality was observed. My siblings and I could argue until we were hoarse that our joy is not in receiving gifts, but in giving them, and that thinking in reciprocal terms is outdated, but that wouldn’t take her guilt away. In placing the moratorium on gifts, she’s saying she doesn’t need the guilt, however self-imposed, of coming to a party empty-handed but leaving with the Mother Lode.

In her 80s now, she’s not likely to change her basic belief system. Some health problems have made shopping more difficult, and picking one item that may not be perfect, but is passable, from the zillion things out there is even more difficult.

The true gifts can’t be boxed or bagged or decorated with holiday spangles. Estle doesn’t really mean “no gifts.” What she means is “no more stuff.”

Fair enough.