Hillbilly Elegy

I assumed that rich people
celebrated Christmas just like us,
perhaps with fewer financial worries
and even cooler presents. Yet I noticed
after my cousin Bonnie was born that
Christmastime at Aunt Wee’s house had
a decidedly different flavor. Somehow
my aunt and uncle’s children ended up
with more pedestrian gifts than I had
come to expect as a child. There was no
obsession with meeting a two- or three-
hundred-dollar threshold for each child,
no worry that a kid would suffer in the
absence of the newest electronic gadget.
Usha often received books for
Christmas. My cousin Bonnie, at the age
of eleven, asked her parents to donate