This being the season to celebrate Christmas I decided to write my Chistmas memories all this month.
My earlist memory of Christmas must have been when I was almost five years old. It had to be 1945. We had just moved into our new house here at Barnett Crossroads community during Thanksgiving weekend. Our house was not finished inside. Daddy called it "dried in", meaning we had a solid roof, walls all around and floors. The rooms were outlined with 2x4 studs. Everybody had bedrooms to share with views into every room inside. We could run from the bedoom right through the walls to the kitchen as long a we didn't slam into a, "stanchion" as Grandma Minnie Smith called the studs/2x4's.
We had the whole world outside and inside to be kids..free range kids.
Daddy and Mama had located a juniper or cedar to decorate for our Christmas tree. I remember it sat in the corner of what we called, the fireplace room. Livingrooms in others homes was for holding sofa's and chairs and coffee tables and lamp stands. We had none of those things. We had several cane bottom rocking chairs and ladder backs that we dragged to the fireplace room when we weren't using them to sit at the table at mealtime. The fireplace was always filled with hot burning wood like fat lighter'd and big oak logs. We hoverd those fireplaces that first winter. The heat passed by us to lay against the ceiling. Two fireplaces and a wood burning cook stove kept us warm enough and well fed. Piles of quilts kept us weighted down and frost free at night. The most loving feeling in the world was waking enough during the night to hear Daddy chunking a big old oak knot into those fireplaces and stoking the stove to keep it ready for him and Mama's 4:00 a.m. day start.
So our Christmas tree had crinkle tissue paper garlands and little plastic ornaments of several colors with strips. The tree held foil icicles that gave such beautiful reflections from the constant movement of air and the dancing of the flames in the fireplace.
Our tree had no twinkle lights because our community didn't have electricity until sometimes in 1946.
It was a magical time. I came to the understanding of Santa Claus and what he might do if we were well behaved.
We never behaved well enough, but Santa always brought us each a gift...........and candy and fruit.
Oh, the candy and fruit.......
I saw Santa Claus that Christmas morning and he looked nothing like the one in the red suit.
My sister and I shared a bed. I heard some paper rustling and sounds of whispering that brought me to the edge of awakening from the deep sleep of a child that hadn't been bothered enough by the pressures of life to come alert without prompting. I felt so warm and cozy all penned down under those old flannel lined quilts. I drifted in my haze until I heard a voice that sounded like Daddy say,
" Ho, Ho, Ho, little girls, get up Old Santa Claus is here".
I will remember that as long as time allows me.
I flung back the covers to see a man wearing long johns like my Daddy wore with a big old scraggly beard of navy blue knitting yarn covering his face.
Somehow I knew it was my Daddy, but the fantasy was worth it.
My memory of that fake beard is that it was played with by all of us into oblivion.
We all scrambled to the Christmas tree to find our toy.
Yes, I said toy.
We all got one toy each throughout all my childhood. We never expected anything more. When you grow up in shared poverty, you know what to expect. No disappointment, no resentment, just the joy from the one thing you got.
The best part was all the fruit and candy we got each Christmas.
Mama and Daddy always went Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve or no earlier than two days before.
Every single Christmas we got a wooden box of big shiny, tissue wrapped Washington Delicious apples and two large bags of oranges with Lake Wales, Florida stamped on those bags. The picture on that stamp is still vivid with rolling hills with rows of orange trees covered in citrus as they disappeared into the distance.
A beautiful scene of something as delicious as oranges imprinted on my little brain.
Christmas 1945 Washington Delicious apples hadn't been geneticaly modifide. They were so sweet and cracky sounding when we bit into them. The juice would run down our arms.
Those fruits don't exist today..............and that is very sad.
Also several coconuts, bags of mixed nuts, celophane wrapped vine tags of California raisins that had fine sand in the creases that was felt in our teeth when we chewed them. There was bags of orange slice candies, chocolate covered sugar mounds, gumdrops, a big stick of peppermint for each of us.
Christmas tradition at our house had all of us placing our shoes under the tree to have a place for Santa to put an apple and orange along with our present. We never owned or hung a Christmas stocking.
We played with our toys, we shared in hard negotation with each other and ate all the fruit and candy we could hold without restrictions from Mama and Daddy.
It was Christmas and Christmas was for being kids.
We sometimes paid for our gluttony with having sugar induced headaches and stomach ache diarrhea from fresh fruit overload.
I look back on that earliest Christmas memory as the sweetest one of my life.
" SILENT NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT, SLEEPING HEAVENLY PEACE "
