Forgetting To Be A Family By Richard Rodriguez Summary

Forgetting to be a Family
Gaining wealth isn’t necessarily a good thing. It changes people, replacing the things that were once most important in their lives with an expensive outfit or fancy sport car. This is what happened with the family of Richard Rodriguez. As he and his siblings make history in their family by being the first to get a college education, their lives also change as the become successful in their fields of choice and come into money they never had growing up. Rodriguez shows through a passage about a typical Christmas morning with his family as a grown up how much his siblings, and even himself, have changed. Where once family was at the center of the Rodriguez’s live, the children are more concerned with what gifts the

give and receive now that they can afford the finer things in life.
Rodriguez is able to pinpoint the change in his siblings into materialists by showing how after the gifts have been exchanged and the stockings taken down, nothing else matters, and they all go to leave. Rodriguez writes that “By the time the last gift is unwrapped, everyone seems very tired. The room has become uncomfortably warm. The talk grows listless. (‘Does anyone want more coffee
or more cake?’ Somebody groans.) Children are falling asleep.

Someone gets up to leave, promoting others to leave. (‘We have to get up early tomorrow’) (14-19 Rodriguez). When the main event is over, the gift receiving done, suddenly being together doesn’t seem important anymore. They don’t know what to say to each other because they’ve drifted apart. The wealth they gained has made them lose something even more important: the relationship they hold with each other. They’ve forgotten their younger poor selves, and have truly enveloped themselves into a rich mindset where only things matter. Once the gifts have been unwrapped and the pretty bow destroyed, they don’t know how to carry themselves because what they’re comfortable with, the materialistic part of Christmas, is done. They have forgotten the most important part of Christmas, believing that the things are all that matters. They’ve forgotten how to be together and talk and laugh and have a good time and love one another and just be a

family.
Although the Rodriguez children don’t notice how much they’ve changed from their former self, their parents have, and it saddens them deeply.

This is the second way Rodriguez shows how wealth has changed him and his siblings, through showcasing the emotions of his parents. As everyone goes to leave, his mom just stands there sadly waving as her children and grandchildren hurry away without a glance back, leaving Rodriguez to wonder what is wrong, “How sad? Why? (Sad that we are all going home? Sad that it was not quite, can never be, the Christmas one remembers having had once?)” (32-35). With one sentence, Rodriguez is able to communicate to the reader that things are not what they once were, and that things have taken a turn for a worse. Christmas is not the same as before. Sure, they now have money to shower their wonderful mother in gifts, but the siblings have forgotten how to do what is most important their mom: be a family. As they drive away in their flashy foreign cars, running out the door in shiny fur coats, they forget to even tell their mom that they love her, or stop to say goodbye. The past Christmases of exchanging small gifts, yet being even more delighted because it’s the thought that counts; the past Christmases of just being together as a family, are

gone.
Money is powerful. It changes people who never thought they could be changed. It wires people into believing that it is things that matter most, leaving them to forget the people who love them the most. As with the Rodriguez siblings, why should they stay and talk after they’ve already given each other expensive gifts? Haven’t they shown their love enough? They don’t understand that the most important part of Christmas is simply being together, not the fancy gifts or what you wear. Wealth and success made the Rodriguez family forget the true meaning of Christmas.