As the love and excitement of another Christmas season begins to come to a close, I am taken back once more to the Christmas mornings of my childhood when I awoke to the freezing cold of an old house on the edge of town which was filled with love and excitement. This was my grandmother’s old house where my two brothers and I lived with my mother and grandmother. Although some of the details would change over those years of my youth, many of the traditions of Christmas remained the same. Cherished year after year.
I had a brother 15 months older and another two and a half years younger than I. We were close enough in age that our childhoods were spent not only anticipating Christmas together, but also sharing in the customs that for us were Christmas.
Our Christmas tree was delivered by an uncle who cut us one from his country property. Either a fir or a cedar, placed in our living room and decorated each year with the same lights and ornaments, silver foil icicles, garland, and homemade paper chains. Before Christmas morning there were a few presents under the tree, gifts either mailed or delivered by relatives, but for the most part, whatever we as children might receive, would come during the night and be delivered by Santa himself.
Every year our stockings would be one of my mother’s old nylon stockings, saved with its runners and torn edges, to stretch into infinite lengths with oranges, apples, and nuts of various kinds. On Christmas eve we children would each lay our stocking on one of the chairs or the sofa, completely confident that Santa would know which chair belonged to each of us. And of course, Santa knew.
We would wake early, and listen as mother and grandmother began to light the gas space heaters in each of the rooms in an effort to warm the house before we children piled out of bed. The house wasn’t easy to heat, for the ceilings were twelve feet high. The double fireplace was walled up, for the chimney had been removed many years before. and yet Santa managed to magically find his way in. As I think back on those years, and know now how very poor we were, I marvel at my mother and grandmother’s ability to save money for the magic of Christmas morning to come to our home.
Santa never wrapped his presents in wrapping paper. Rather each of our chairs would be filled with the things that Santa brought. Always there were clothes, mainly underwear, books, games, and toys.
Cason Monk’s toy department had a red tractor tricycle for a young child to ride, which my younger brother yearned for Santa to bring. My mother never forgot her disappointment that she never had the money to buy that for him. However, for us children, Christmas was filled with wonder.
Every year when we would ask what mother wanted for Christmas, she would say, “A new pair of nylon stockings.” My grandmother would tell us to just get her a new package of hair pins. That was it, year after year, just a trip to the five and dime store. On refection of those years, I feel that the belief in Santa Claus eliminated all guilt that our parents were sacrificing to give us presents, for almost everything received came from that magical man in the red suit. The man far away at the North Pole. The one I called to through the window of the old brick silo in the backyard. A silo I hoped was a telephone directly to Santa. I remember all the sparrows hopping among the leaves, my talking to them in the days before Christmas, for my mother had told me that some of the small birds were Santa’s elves, watching our behavior and reporting back to Santa himself. I remember my grandmother’s old piano and the singing of Christmas carols. I remember the brown teddy bear that I named “Cocoa” and the magic for me of the Christmas morning he appeared after I had yearned so deeply for him. Cocoa still lives today - a reminder that some things are sacred.
It takes very little for me to be transported back to a freezing cold old house that was filled with childhood magic and the deep love of a grandmother and a mother who found a way beyond the poverty of the times, to give hope and joy to three little children.
Judy Davis
Written Christmas 2018
