Christmas’ Past

When I was still a youngster, I can remember my grandmother starting to fill all the ingredients for the menu of the family Christmas dinner. Right after Thanksgiving I’d here my grandmother start to mention when my uncles and aunts would be arriving for the Christmas holidays. Grandma would start making sure everything was in just the right place about a week before Christmas. The funny thing to me was that Grandma seemed so happy working so hard: washing, cleaning, dusting, and going to the market. When we’d ask her was she not tired yet, her response was always the same “Baby, a little hard work never hurt nobody”. I guess it didn’t my grandma was still catching chickens and chasing grandchildren up into her late seventies.

When she finally slowed down with her cleaning some, then things began to get real exciting. As children we began to try and imagine what Christmas day was going to be like. We hoped to open a few gifts Christmas morning,but Christmas was so enjoying with so much around then we were already thinking pass that morning. Was Uncle George going to show up a little drunk and have almost every adult there scolding him about not being sober atleast for a few hours while at Grandma’s house? Being the Christian lady she was, was Grandma going to come to his rescue again this Christmas. I can remember her saying to the other adults, ” y’all leave this child alone. just be glad he came by.” Grandma used to always say Uncle George could have been somewhere in a pine box. It took me a while to figure that out because I was so young.

While we were trying to imagine what Christmas day was going to be like, we’d begin to see out of town cars arrive at homes all over the neighborhood. As people would get out of them you would see families and loved all over the neighborhood hugging and some crying. Sometimes we’d laugh at how they were acting and even put on our own little stage shows acting like them.If we saw some children get out the car, all our laughing would seize. Eventually we’d make our way down the road to introduce ourselves. Couldn’t stay long that first day though. As Christmas neared closer, you’d begin to smell cakes and pies cooking all over the neighborhood. Before the week was out the neighborhood would smell like one big bakery. As Christmas got even closer you would start to smell everything cooking: collard  and turnip greens, black-eyed peas, chitterlings, old fashioned hams from the hog grandpa them killed a few weeks ago, turkeys like that we may have seen while we were down in the pasture feeding the cows and too many other things to take time to mention.