Most of us have at least some Christmas memories we cherish. For me there are about 62, although I don’t remember much about those first three or four, or maybe five. I do remember that in one of those first few years my mother won a big color television in the downtown Newton holiday drawing. It was our family’s first color television, and Mom always reminded me that I took it apart for her after Christmas and she never did find all the knobs! I’ve always been a tinkerer, I suppose.
In 1967 we had moved to a great big house, on Newton’s Church Street, that we were renting from family friends Ralph and Tula Standbrook who had moved to Washington, D.C. Ralph worked at the Pentagon.
We didn’t really need a house that big, nor did we have enough furniture for all the rooms. The front bedroom we used as kind of a playroom and the huge den/formal dining room — I’m not really sure what it was called back then — was fancy in my eyes. The wallpaper was kind of a gold swirly upraised design, and there was a white brick fireplace with gas logs.
Fancy indeed!
There was very little furniture adorning that room but the fresh cut cedar Christmas tree was put up in there and its blue balls and blue lights glowed brilliantly through the front windows for passersby to see. They did not know that we were not nearly as fancy as I thought we looked like we were through that window.
Mom had also draped a plastic chain of white bells and green holly leaves with little red berries over the fireplace mantel and I remember thinking that was the prettiest thing in our fancy digs. I even remember being kind of sad years later when that garland finally became brittle to the touch and fell apart.
My grandfather, my dad’s dad, died on Christmas Eve that year in the Newton Hospital, but I don’t remember us being blue at all. Somehow between hospital visits and working at the A&P, Santa still found time to put together an electric train set and place it beneath that blue tree. The way things look on old home movies — the kind made with those blinding bright lights shining from the camera — it appears we were having the time of our lives. Then we buried PawPaw the day after Christmas at Sulphur Springs Baptist Church. He was only 69.
That Christmas memory is one I cherish for some reason. I don’t really know why. Maybe it is that solid blue tree, or that big fancy room, or Mom’s garland, or perhaps the fact that what could have been a very sad holiday was not because my parents made certain their boys were taken care of.
Mom died in 2019 and Dad will be 91 next month. Last year, and again this year I put up a little tree with blue ornaments on it for him on a side table at our family home in Newton where he still lives. Just sort of a way to honor that memory, I guess, and to make sure his holiday is not too blue without Mom. They had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary just a few weeks before she unexpectedly died.
There were a lot of restless Christmas Eves in the years following 1967. We bought a house next to Newton High School, the same one Dad lives in, and there were so many times I would crawl out of bed in the middle of the night and slither to my parent’s room next door to ask if we could go ahead and get up. “No, go back to bed, he hasn’t come yet, and if he sees you are awake he won’t leave you anything” was always the answer and the night just got longer and longer. I still have that problem and can hardly wait until it is just late enough for me not to get in trouble with wife, Danny, if I wake up the house on Christmas morn.
We were married in August of 1981 and have celebrated Christmas in six different homes since then, and have made wonderful memories in each one.
But, absolutely without a doubt, it was the Christmas of 1995 when daughter, Rachel-Johanna, was not quite three years old that holds a very special place in my heart. We lived in a big turn-of-the-century (the last century) farmhouse in the north central Mississippi town of Carrollton and every inch of that place was decked out for the holidays. Christmas music blared throughout, and the 40-by-eight-foot main hallway was the place to be to get into the true spirit of the season.
A massive tree was erected at the back end, and what had to be thousands of white lights illuminated it from top to bottom. They were all meticulously strung on the individual branches the weekend after Thanksgiving and when illuminated the whole place glowed warmly.
Our big fluffy Old English Sheep Dog named Butterbean roamed around the picket-fenced yard and the sleigh bells around her neck constantly peaked the attention of our toddler, and anyone else in hearing distance for that matter.
My very favorite memory of all Christmas memories is from that year and of that little blond-haired girl dressed in a bright blue, victorian style, fur-lined coat, and matching hat, and muffler, with gifts in her arms running down the hall, out the front door, and down the steps as we headed out to deliver the packages to our friends.
I can see her clearly today standing at the front gate. She was just as cute as she could be, bright eyed, smiling widely, and totally engulfed in the magic of Christmas. Feliz Navidad was playing loudly from the speakers on the porch, Butterbean was jingling around the yard, and it was cold and crisp out. I can still hear José Feliciano singing “I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heart,” and a Merry Christmas it was.
Life was just about as perfect as it could possibly be that Christmas. Yes, just about as perfect as it could possibly be!
Fast forward 28 years to 2023. Rachel-Johanna and her big ole German Shorthaired Pointer dog, Lady, will be at home with us. We’ll go and visit Dad in Newton on Christmas Eve, and then we’ll come back home, and settle down for a cold (I hope) winter’s night in front of the fireplace. Bedtime will come, soon visions of sugar plums will be dancing in our heads, and then in no time at all I’ll be wide awake — just like all those Christmases that have come before — wondering quietly to myself it if is too early to get up. It never has been so I’m confident that moments later fireworks will awaken the neighborhood as they have for more than 30 years now.
Santa will have come and left his goodies downstairs. There will be stockings in the red leather chair for Lady and Rachel-Johanna and there will be one on each end of the couch for Danny and me. We’ll exchange gifts one by one while sipping on Honey Rum Coffee before a late breakfast of something delicious.
Soon after we’ll clean up the mess we made and start prepping for a Christmas dinner with close friends and family. The house will smell amazing, and while chopping something or the other on the butcher block I’ll look up and see my momma walking through the kitchen door in her pretty pink leather jacket. There will be packages in her and Dads arms and big smiles on their faces. “Merry Christmas,” Mom will cackle. “Ooowee, something sure smells good in here!” Then I’ll blink my misty eyes and she’ll be gone. I won’t be blue, though, for that is a beautiful Christmas memory I have of her. Before long the doorbell will ring, our guests will arrive, and the party will begin. Laughter and good cheer will flow freely, and many more wonderful memories will be made.
Before we meet again in this space, dear readers, Christmas 2023 will be relegated to the memory files like all the Christmases past. My hope for you and yours, and for me and mine, is that they will be memories that we will always fondly cherish.
Merry Christmas!
