(Strip Number 7055, Original Publication Date, 28 December 1986)
Panel 1: As Lizzie plays with her new dollhouse and Mike with his new spacefighter toy, we find him looking at something that looks out of place under the tree: a battered old hard hat.
Panel 2: Since he thinks that this object is beneath him, he kicks it aside in contempt.
Panel 3: The strip proper begins with Mike setting himself up for a maudlin lecture by questioning Grandpa Will's logic in sending him said dumb old hard hat for Christmas in front of John.
Panel 4: John asks him if he'd bothered reading the card Will sent with it; that's because if he had, he'd have known it was something special he'd wanted Mike to have.
Panel 5: John explains that Will worked in the collieries of FLin Flon for thirty years.
Panel 6: He worked hard and risked his life sometimes to put food on the table and John and his siblings through school.
Panel 7: The hard hat is part of who Will Patterson is because he wore it every day.
Panel 8: Mike should treasure it because it'll remind him of the man when he passes on.
Panel 9: A few minutes later, we find Mike outside. Gord and Brian ask him if he got something neat for Christmas.
Panel 10: When he states that yeah, he got a neat battered hard hat, they look perplexed.
Summary: While a lot of people wish something like this would actually happen, Mike would probably not really be that impressed by the sacrifice of someone who's a distant presence in his life doing something that happened before he was born. This would be a present for the Mike graduating high school.