I could have been arrested. Or else fired.

I can talk about it now since enough time has passed. I’m no lawyer, but the seven-year statute of limitations for theft has long expired. And I no longer work for the city’s public schools.

In 1980, when I was teaching high school English and struggling to pay the bills for a house and family of four, the school board went broke and stopped issuing paychecks in the weeks before Christmas.

With zero savings, we would not be able to pay the mortgage or our car loan.  And gasoline was a worry. I had a 1974 Impala that got 11 miles to the gallon, which was the approximate distance I had to drive to school.  We could still eat, however, since Dominick’s was the first of the chains to allow purchasing groceries with a charge card.

But luxuries were out of the question, and that included Christmas gifts. We were just going to have to tell Mike and Jackie that Santa’s sleigh couldn’t make the trip this year. That things were lean even up at the North Pole, so that the elves could only put a comic book and maybe a candy bar in their stockings.

My high school was a sprawling campus with multiple wings built before World War II. Room 102, my classroom, was at the end of one wing, which also housed the carpentry, woodworking, cabinetry and print shops.

Next door was an empty room used to store old school furniture, and in the middle of which was a commercial-grade wood planer the shop teachers occasionally used.

One morning during my preparation period, I heard the planer click on next door, a sound like a low-pitched buzz saw. I strolled over and chatted with Mr. Ritter, the woodworking teacher, who was using a stick to push a slab of distressed wood through the machine. I watched it come out on the other side looking like a brand new sheet from the lumber yard.

I looked around the room at all the 50-year-old school desks, tables, and doors, many broken and stacked head high, all made out of oak hardwood. Varnished, stained, scratched, chipped oak.  And I had an idea.

During my lunch period the rest of that week, I disassembled student desks, tables and chairs, and fed them into the planer. Out came pristine looking planks of oak, with gracefully flowing wood grain in gorgeous, chocolaty hues.

I smuggled my treasure out the side door at the end of the day, and into the trunk of my Impala.

Then every night leading up to Christmas, I used my drill and Black & Decker saw to make a rocker for my godson, a Barbie house for my daughter and an oaken desk for my son. With the cut-offs, I made an end table for Marianne, and fishing plugs for my brothers and brothers-in-law.

I rationalized the theft, theorizing that the furniture was likely destined for a landfill. Or even if the school board planned to recycle or sell it to help replenish their coffers, that they were already getting plenty back from me in labor which lately was not being compensated.

Yeah, I had a ready defense. But deep inside, I knew it was wrong.

All these years later, Christmas remains a magical time, especially for children.

And for adults, it’s a banquet of nostalgia, when the smell of snow or pine needles evoke childhood memories, stirring feelings of love and longing for parents and relatives no longer with us.

For me, it’s a little different. The scents recalled: old varnish and wood shavings. The feelings evoked: flashes of guilt from when I hustled to my car in the enveloping darkness.

But then my heart swells when I remember my daughter’s firefly eyes as she tore the wrapping off her doll house.

For the glow of a child’s countenance on Christmas Day reminds us that despite myriad hardships, both then and especially in the past  2 years, our lives are still a gift and a miracle.

Joy and love, tinged with regret, is the honest meaning of Christmas. I’m grateful to embrace it in this tumultuous year — and every year thereafter.

Port Charlotte's David McGrath is an English instructor at Florida Southwestern State College and is author of SOUTH SIDERS. Email him at profmcgrath2004@yahoo.com.