I grew up in Dallas and I remember the year that animations became popular. We would drive all the way into downtown to look in the Neiman Marcus window at the lifesize Santa Claus sitting in the rocking chair rocking! We thought it was amazing! It was a huge deal at that time. People came from far away to view it! We never had much when I was a child. My daddy was very sick and in the hospital a lot. It never seemed to matter though because we always had gifts of some sort.
Our preparation for the great day began way in advance and had an almost ritualistic quality to it. Nothing about christmas was ever just thrown together in a hurry!
I remember my Mother making fruit cakes, cutting up the sticky fruits and shelling pecans. I can still see her cutting marshmallows in fourths for her 'Heavenly Hash', hard-boiling eggs for the giblet gravy, trying to make the perfect baked (not dried out) turkey, making mince pies (that only she ate!), savory sage dressing (that always looked sort of green to me ) and sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. By the time Christmas Eve came, all was in readiness for the arrival of the magic!!
I remember one year we had a tree with all fragile glass ornaments, strings of colored lights and the famous "silver icicles"! We were told to hang them up individually, not in clumps. We would stand back and meticulously place a single strand so it would "hang natural" when it was placed. I remember with a smile when my Mother wasn't looking, my Daddy would secretely sling a handful at the top of the tree while we all screamed in horror that Mother might see it and think we did it! I still remember my Daddy laughing at that!
I'll never forget the year we had our first aluminum tree. It had no decoration because it had a four-color revolving light underneath that when shown on the tree, turned it different colors: red (which always looked pink to me), green, blue and yellow. That was the most beautiful tree I thought I'd ever seen! I always hated it when it had to come down.
One year my Daddy and next-door neighbor, Shorty Wilson, decided to make holly wreaths in order to earn some extra money that year. They ordered an entire pickup load of real, freshly cut holly. Daddy stayed up late making a wreath with a coat-hanger wire. The next day his fingers were sore from the holly thorns but he sent us kids out door-to-door to take orders. I only remember getting one order but by the time we got it to the recipient, the holly had all shriveled up! So much for entreprenurship!
I will always feel my Mother's hand on every Christmas. The rituals she had then had a lasting impression on me because I still think of Christmas as a magical time of year and I still hold true to her traditions and menus.
My favorite childhood memory of Christmas is on Christmas Eve. Mother would have all three of us kids put on our pajamas and we would beg endlessly to open one gift before bedtime. She always 'gave in' and let us open 'just one'. It usually ended up being something like pajamas to sleep in because they saved the really good gifts for Christmas morning. I still recall the excitement of going to bed on Christmas Eve. My Brother and I would call out to one another from our bedrooms the memorized "Night Before Christmas" and sing choruses of "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer" until Daddy would yell at us to "get to sleep or Santa Claus won't be coming at all this year!"
One year I vowed to stay awake because I secretely suspected that my parents were really "Santa". I remember seeing my Mother scatter quickly down the hall toward the tree with packages in hand. That's the year I knew "for sure". It never really made sense to me how Santa could be all over the world in one single evening!
Every Christmas morning, my Brother would wake up the entire household at 6:00 a.m. hollering, "Hurry, get up! Santa Claus came last night!" You've never seen 3 kids get up so quickly! It was such fun on Christmas morning at our house!
The word, "Christmas" itself shows great expectation and excitement because of the Christ Child. It's all about the love of a Savior.
So, I can still hardly wait for the magic of that day. It's the day we have been looking forward to all year. Remember to tell your kids and grandkids the real meaning of that night. Keep the magic in Christmas but remember that Jesus is the Reason.
