Chapter 8

Christmas

Christmas was a wonderful season.  Getting ready for it and the anticipation and excitement in the air was sometimes just almost too much to bear.  The smell of cooking—stacks and stacks of half-moon pies, apple and peach pies, potato custards, gingerbread and sugar cookies, enough to last a whole week.

The children had to clean the yards of any litter and sweep them so Santa Claus wouldn’t stumble and fall down and break the toys.  The yards were usually clean, for everybody swept on Saturdays with a brush broom of dogwood branches tied together.  The very air bristled with expectation as dusk came on Christmas Eve and when it was dark, if the sky was clear, it seemed the stars came down close and shined brighter than any other time.  Beautiful, bright shining Christmas Eve!!

We hung out stockings by the chimney, got into bed early and lay listening, waiting and wondering how Santa could get down the chimney, and why he came that way, anyway.  Imagining we could hear him on the roof—then, everything is quiet and we are soon asleep.

Bright and early Christmas morning the house is all astir with loud shouts as we race for our stockings, then, “Oh” and “Ah” and sighs of gladness for things Santa put in them.

It was hard for Papa to make a living and do the things he felt necessary, but our stockings were always bulging on Christmas morning with oranges and apples, raisins, stick candy, and nuts.  I think Papa and Mama enjoyed it almost as much as we did.

We never had oranges except at Christmas and what a Christmasy smell as we peeled and at them, and peppermint candy and nuts.  Nobody ever wanted much breakfast on Christmas morning, but there was always one thing we had and that was cheese.  Papa always got that especially for Mama for she liked cheese better than anything.  We had cheese at other times, too, but it just wasn’t Christmas without cheese on the table.  We usually had a coconut at Christmas—the only time of year we did.  Papa would punch the eyes out and pour the milk and drink it.  He was the only one who liked it.  Then he would saw it in two pieces and get the meat out in chunks and it was so good.

Nobody said “Good morning” or “Merry Christmas” on Christmas day.  It was “Christmas gift”, everyone trying to say it first.  Whoever said it first was entitled to a gift from the other person.

There were no church services of any kind.  We don’t know what day Christ was born and nowhere in the scriptures are we told to keep his birthday, only his resurrection day, the first day of the week.  We observed his birthday all year long in songs of praise and adoration like “Joy to the World”, “O Come all ye Faithful”.  Christmas was celebrated only as a tradition.  (I think it’s good to worship and sing praises to Christ at Christmas and every day.  I enjoy Christmas carols.  Christmas is a special time.)  Christmas lasted from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day.  We didn’t work the whole week, but spent the time visiting, eating and having a good time.  We didn’t, but many people had a little toddy or egg-nog for Christmas.

The first Christmas I can remember, we spent Christmas Eve at Grandpa Elder’s.  Next morning, peeping out of my stocking was a little china doll with wavy black hair painted on and brown eyes, red lips and pink cheeks.  Elsie’s was like mine, except with blue eyes.  Uncle Wych Elder and Aunt Mary hadn’t been married long and they lived in the little log house between Grandpa’s house and the horse lot.  We were up and out there before daylight to show them our dolls.  Uncle Wych served us “sweetened whiskey”, water with a little whiskey and sugar, in tall goblets and we drank a toast to our dolls.

The next Christmas, Santa brought us some of the softest, prettiest white fascinators with fluffy pompoms on top trimmed with crystal beads.  When we got them on with the little blue coats Mama had made for us trimmed with gold braid, we were really dressed up.  Christmas afternoon we returned home from visiting and Elsie ran and jumped on our porch saying, “Christmas gift, I’m dressed up”, and that was our byword at Christmas for a long time.

One year Papa told us before Christmas that Santa was going to bring us dolls with white kid bodies and skin soft like babies.  We questioned him every day and he had to tell us over and over how those dolls would look.  He said he had seen some like that and left word for Santa to bring them.  He was to bring Chester an air rifle and fireworks.

Uncle Bill Joe Shaddix and family spent Christmas Eve night with us.  At three o’clock the next morning, Chester got up to kindle the fire and woke us.  He had his gun and some fire crackers, roman candles and sky rockets, but we couldn’t see them for those dolls looking at us over the tops of our stockings.  The most perfect dolls in all the world, beautiful curly hair and soft skin just as Papa had said.  Easter had a sweet baby doll.

Santa brought Vida and Cassie some story books and Carson a pretty drinking mug.  We all whooped and shouted and woke everyone up.  We had to hug Papa’s neck over and over for having Santa bring the dolls.

Papa showed us how and Chester let us help him shoot his roman candles and he enjoyed his gun as much as we enjoyed our dolls.  When he shot all his BB’s he made an arrow of a bicycle spike and it worked in the gun as well as shot.

The last Christmas Eve night we were in Alabama, Dock and Mexa Carter and little boys spent the night with us.  Just about bed-time it sounded like all the cattle in the valley started running around the house ringing their bells, with guns shooting.  We were being serenaded.  Chester grabbed his walking stick that shot caps that he had gotten the Christmas before, and got caps for this Christmas, and started running with them.  Every time he passed the kitchen chimney he hit it with a boom that almost shook the house down, louder than the guns.  When they stopped Papa asked them in and passed around a box of candy.

When Papa was young there were a lot of dances in the community, especially at Christmas.  Mama never went to them.  Grandpa never allowed his girls to attend dances.  Grandpa and Grandma Strickland took their children and Grandpa played the fiddle for dancing and Grandma danced.  When they obeyed the Gospel and became Christians, they stopped going.  Papa continued to go until he became a member of the Church of Christ, calling sets for the dances.  The square dance was the only one done.  Winter was good with Christmas, school and snow.

Sometimes in the fall and winter, Papa would take us out on dark nights and tell us about the stars.  He knew only what his father had told him.  Grandpa was a watcher of stars and could not be lost on a starlit night.  Papa didn’t know them by their astronomical names, but he told us about the Big Bear, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, the North Star and the Seven Stars.  Job’s Coffin, plain as day, was up there in the heavens, and Orion, the most beautiful constellation.  Orion, the fearless hunter who carries a club, a lion skin and sword.  Look to the east on any clear night in November and you will see him.  Three bright stars stud his belt.  He is at his best during the winter months.

When the moon was full we would look at it and talk about how big it was.  To me, it looked about the size of a dinner plate.  To Mama, Chester and Elsie it was the size of a washtub.  Easter was too little to think about it, but to Papa it looked like it was as big as Mitchell’s mill wheel, which was almost as high as a house.  He said maybe he could stand by the moon and reach the top of it by tiptoeing.

It was fun to play outside at night, so different from days.  Dew started falling at sundown.  Sounds carried farther, yet voices sounded muted and different as mountain breezes whispered through treetops, caressing us with the pine scented breath of the forest, fireflies flashed, whippoorwills called from hillsides and maybe an owl said, “Whoo-whoo”, filling us kids with shivers, which was fun.  Yes, sounds carried farther in this little valley.  The “Budger-rum, budger-rum” of the bullfrog could sometimes be heard for more than a mile.  Sometimes, one could holler and hear it echo against a hill on one side, then against a hill on the other side, back and forth, each echo a little fainter than the one before until it finally died away.

On dewy mornings, one could get out in the woods and holler loud and dewdrops would come showering down.  The men in the valley loved to holler, especially early in the morning.  It seems that some of them vied with each other to see who could get up and out first and wake the others with their loud whoops.  Many times a man would get up long before day, and as he went out to feed the stock, give a loud yell, only to hear an answering yell by someone half a mile or more away—and maybe another yell from a different direction.

It was not unusual, early in the morning, to hear men and boys whooping and hollering and singing at the top of their voices, or yodeling with the sheer joy of living.  They had a yodel different from anything I have ever heard.  Papa loved to yodel, and Harrison and Whit Carter were yodelers.

The women sang about their work and the children sang in their play.  People loved to laugh and some laughed loudly.

Unhurried, unworried people, living in this pine scented valley of towering trees and winding dirt roads, rich in nightingale and bluebird music, in apples and berries, figs and grapes, leisure and laughter, rich in our neighbors, so warm hearted and cheery spoken; this little land where “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy”.  This little valley with its strange sounding name—Shinbone, so many miles east of Birmingham.

For the traditions, values and obligations I have inherited from this valley, I am profoundly thankful.  Shinbone Valley, thank you.