Winter
Christmas
Sometimes it seemed that winter had hardly started, when Christmas
came. Daddy had been home since sometime in November and, except
for rare days when he could work outside, he would be home January,
February and maybe March. Unless he went to Roanoke to work, which
he sometimes did. He could always work there, Mama thought, that
is until the depression came and there was no work, not even there.
Before
the depression, Mama and Daddy eased in and out of Christmas.
There were toys under the tree and new clothes to wear. Many of
the toys were store bought; some, like my doll's cradle and her
bed, were made by Daddy. Aunt Merica made extra doll clothes.
The tree was decorated with long ropes of popcorn and cranberries,
which we helped Aunt Merica string. Joe and I made chains of colored
paper. There was a red tissue paper bell which folded up flat
for storage, but revealed its scalloped fineness when opened and
fastened back to back to hang in the window. Decorating, however,
took a back seat to food preparation. Maybe that was why, during
the depths of the Depression, Christmas was only partly different.
Mama, Daddy and Aunt Merica said nothing to explain the fact that
one Christmas morning my gift under the tree was a pair of thin
cotton gloves and a dime novel. Unspoken, we children understood.
In the warm kitchen, our usual big Christmas dinner simmered away.
We heard that in the cities, people had neither gifts nor food.
Here,
in our house, all the week preceding Christmas Sunday and Christmas
Day, Mama and Aunt Merica make applesauce
cake, jam cakes, and mounds of tea cakes. Peeping over the
edge of the table I watched the pile grow. Daddy went to the garden
hole and to the cellar and brought down sack after sack of potatoes,
apples and root vegetables. He went to the smoke house and got
some meat. Mama and Aunt Merica packed the sweets. These were
gifts for Daddy's dead brother's family, the brother who had been
killed at the flour mill.
As
the depression lengthened, the Church Christmas treat became more
important. At first it was just a poke of candy and an orange,
given to each of us by Santa Claus who stomped (we didn't say
stamped) in from the back of the church just after Uncle Charlie
with a long stick tipped with fire, had lighted all the tiny white
candles clipped to the big green tree. But, later, the bag became
the important supply of Christmas candy and was second only to
the two big boxes that John and Elizabeth, Mama's cousins, sent
from Baltimore. It was John and Elizabeth's gifts that gave me
my fine toys, my water color set, my escape from most of the depression's
cruel Christmas blows and somewhat eased my Mother's worries.
1|
2 | 3
| 4 | 5
| 6 | 7
