When I was a small child, Christmas for my family was a big event. Mom and Dad were mill workers who did not make a lot of money. I had three brothers, so there were six of us living in a four-room house on a mill village. The mill had sold the village houses to the workers so the house belonged to us but I don’t ever remember Daddy considering building another room on the house. My baby brother slept in the bedroom with Mom and Dad and the other three boys slept in the second bedroom.

We had a kitchen with a table in the middle of the room and barely enough room to walk around it to prepare the meals. Cooking was done on a four-burner kerosene stove, and the house was heated by the fireplace that opened only in the living room. There was no heat in the other rooms but they would be warm if the doors were left open.

We had an inside bathroom and Daddy had installed a kerosene water heater that we had to light and give it time to heat the water before we took our weekly bath. Before the water heater was installed, Mom used to heat water on the kitchen stove and pour it into the bathtub. More than one person would use the bath water before it was drained from the tub.

There was not a lot of room in the living room but at Christmas we would always go into the woods and find a six-foot cedar tree to put up. We had the very breakable glass ornaments to hang on it and each year we would get new silver foil icicles to go all over the outside of it.

The churches would give out fruit bags on the Sunday Morning before Christmas to everyone that attended. It would have two apples, two oranges, two tangerines, and sometimes two pears. It would also have a small box of raisins, some hard candy, pecans, English walnuts, and Brazil nuts. During the year we sometimes had apples and oranges but we had the rest of the bagged goodies only at Christmas.

The Sunday Night before Christmas the church would have a Christmas Play with all of the actors being from the church congregation. It was always a lot of fun because we did not go to the movies so the drama was exciting. After the play, each family would bring one gift for each of the family members and they would be given out to all of the church. When they called your name, you raised your hand and someone would bring your gift.

On Christmas morning we would usually have one special present and then maybe some socks or underwear. My special gift when I was very small was a set of cap pistols. Later I got a Daisy air rifle. One year in the late 1940s Dad had an operation right at Christmas time and was out of work. This meant that he had no money coming in to buy the presents. He knew that I had picked out a bicycle at the Western Auto that I wanted but he could not afford it. I had been selling Grit newspapers for a couple of years and had saved my money so I told him that I would buy my Christmas present that year. It was a Schwinn bicycle with a horn, a light, a chain guard and a luggage rack. It was painted shades of red and I was very excited about it. It cost about $58. I was still riding that bike when I started to high school in 1951.

We knew about Santa but in our family, Baby Jesus was more important. I learned to quote the Christmas story from the book of Luke and can still remember it today. Merry Christmas is the only greeting that we have ever used for this season. I remember when some folks tried to use Merry Xmas and that finally died. Some of the businesses have used Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays but in Calhoun this year there are not many that are not using Merry Christmas as their greeting.

My Christian beliefs are very important to me and I want this season to honor the birth of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords — Jesus Christ. Without Him and His blessings our country and our lives would be very different. There would be no season to celebrate and no gifts to give and receive.

I hope that all of my readers have a very Merry Christmas.