by Jeannie Travis
My earliest Christmas memories are from when we lived at the Jones place in a big old log house with a dog trot hall down the middle. Robert and Jerry slept across the hall in an unheated room and the rest of us slept in beds in the room with the big fireplace. The Christmases all roll into one about that time and I can’t separate them out.
One Christmas Eve I remember waking up and seeing Mama and Daddy sitting in front of the fireplace talking quietly .I sat up in bed and asked ” Is it Christmas yet ? ” Mama said ” No , go back to sleep .” We knew we had to be asleep or Santa wouldn’t come, might not even leave us anything if we weren’t sound asleep . Mom had told us of Uncle Louis struggling to stay awake on Christmas Eve so he could see Santa Claus. He felt a hand brush down across his face in the dark…Santa, seeing if his eyes were closed ! Best I remember he didn’t get a gift that year.
We had a big orchard there at the Jones place, and one late Fall day Daddy wrapped apples in pages torn from the Sears and Roebucks catalog and laid them carefully in a big wooden box to save till Christmas. We’d never heard of anyone doing that and of course he made a big production out of it…him being a storyteller.We just couldn’t hardly wait till Christmas that year to see if the apples had stayed good. The box was placed in the boys room to stay cool, but it never occurred to us to sneak in there and eat one.- They kept pretty good.When we got up on Christmas morning Daddy had a big fire in the fireplace and we quickly opened our gift and began eating the candy from our stocking. I can remember seeing the flickers of lights the fire made to add to the soft halo of light from the coal oil lamp setting on the dresser. Most special of all though, older brother Robert had bought me a gift ! We never exchanged gifts as some families do. He had rolled up a comic book and wrapped it up as a gift for me. I can see us now, I’m sitting off to the side of the fireplace in a straight back chair, he’s bending over the back of it helping me roll the comic ‘the other way’ so it would lay flat and pointing out things in it. It seemed we were in our own little world and the happy voices of the other kids enjoying their Christmas morning seemed very far away. I don’t think I’ll ever get a gift that means more to me..
One Christmas while we lived in that big log house Christmas was a little different. When we got up our folks weren’t in the living room. Having breakfast in the big lean to kitchen maybe ? We rushed up to the fireplace to see what Santa had brought us and doggone if there wasn’t a big bundle of switches standing there! Uh oh! We’d been weaned on tales of how bad boys and girls didn’t get nothing from Santa but a bundle of switches. What if our parents found out we’d been bad ? We came up with a wonderful idea – just grabbed that bundle of switches and threw them as far as we could out into the yard, scattering them around so’s they’d blend in. Went back in giggling to each other. Now Mama and Daddy wouldn’t know we’d been bad! They didn’t see a thing, and Christmas went on as usual.
We didn’t hear Santa when he came, but Daddy said he heard the sleigh up on the roof. Couldn’t understand why Mama didn’t get a present, but she showed us a pretty little milk glass jar of deodorant cream, hidden on top of the cabinet, that Santa had left her. Daddy used to fill his shoes with fruit and candy when he filled our stockings, and had more fun than any of us.
As I think back over the long years of my life I’m reminded of one time when my sister Joyce went to great lengths to find out what we were getting for Christmas. I was about 12, she was 19 months older. Sis knew Mom had hid something in the boys closet, but couldn’t figure out how to get back there in their room without Mama seeing her. She finally crawled over the partition in our closet into their closet. Unfortunately she stepped on the gifts getting down! Mama had got us two big girls a nice wall picture each. On Christmas morning, Joyce very generously volunteered to take the one with the cracked glass. Said Mama sure looked at her strangely. She never did tell her the truth, but years later she told me. Seems like a strange gift, but it WAS something we would keep and if we’d been careful it would have been a lifetime gift.
Looks like Mama would have handmade a lot of stuff for us while we were gone to school during the year. She was a very crafty person, but can’t remember anything homemade but youngest sister Jan getting a doll bed with covers made from material left over from a dress Mom had made for her. With all those children she had to do a lot of sewing. Sometimes we would come home from school and one of us girls would have a brand new dress. Mom would get the Sears and Roebuck catalog and find a style of dress that appealed to her and cut it out using one of the dresses that fit us as a pattern. She would use scraps of other fabric to make collars and cuffs, piping on a pocket, etc. to make it special. I think one reason she didn’t make things for us is because she just wasn’t
‘into’ Christmas, and Dad was so she missed him more at that time of year, maybe…
Yes, we were definitely ‘pore folks’ and only got a token gift from Santa, but we had special foods fine enough to grace the Squire’s table. Every single Christmas we had a freshly baked coconut cake (Remember how ladies used to save out the coconut milk and drizzle it on the cake layers?) and maybe one of Mamas special chocolate cakes, standing high on the cut glass cake stand she got for selling Lee salve door to door when she was a girl AND we had boiled custard, fresh fruit salad, and a Stack Pie In case you never heard of that it is about 5 pies stacked up with a meringue pie on top. Pie crusts are made a little thicker, and dark and light fillings are alternated as you remove the pies from their crusts and stack them on a serving plate. It is cut like a layer cake. And we had nuts, candy and some fruit bought with a miserly sum sent us by her ‘rich’ sister Clyde. She USED to send us 10 dollars a year, and Mama could buy a bushel of apples and a bushel
of oranges, then she started sending 5 dollars after the oldest of us 9 kids got up pretty good sized. Somehow they thought we could earn money. Where, in the middle of the winter out in the country amongst other pore folks ??? I griped about it one time and Mama said with a smile ” She doesn’t have to send us anything ” People amused her, I guess her sister wasn’t as bad as her husband Iven. Strangely enough he didn’t manage to take it with him when he died…I’m sure he thought he could.
Oh yes…We had a few fireworks to set off EARLY on Christmas morning! The oldest boys would set off the precious fireworks out in the front yard while the rest of us watched from the window if it was very cold… Those Roman candles shot the beautifully colored balls of fire into the cold dark skies with the bright stars as a backdrop and we thought it was wonderful…not ever having seen real fireworks. I’m sure we looked forward to our meager celebration much more than the jaded children of today. I figure Mama did fine for a ‘widder’ woman left with 8 youngens and one on the way …..Jeannie Travis…Awash in memories….