We all have memories of our childhood Christmas’. Being at the age I am well past senior I can still remember Christmas morning as if it was yesterday. My mother had a very unique way of making our Christmas very special. We grew up in a part of the country that was not prosperous so Christmas did not mean gifts for us. Christmas, for us, was what my mother made it, a time of delight and love in abundance.

My mother would do her preparing for Christmas in secret. We all knew that Christmas would arrive but being very small we had no sense of time. On Christmas Eve mom would cook a special supper as the seven of the children, my dad and my mom sat down to share the feast. Well, maybe it wasn’t a feast but to us back then it was. We would be told after supper that Santa would be coming that night and we had better scurry to bed and make sure we were asleep before he arrived. There was no hesitation with any of us. We were washed and in pajamas and in the bed before you could count to ten. Now going to bed wasn’t the problem getting to sleep was! We would lay there and talk about Santa and how he would get into the house and a dozen other different things, but I can’t ever remember talking about what he would bring. I think all of us knew it would be good whatever it was. Finally sleep would come; I think mostly out of fear that Santa would catch us awake and leave again.

Christmas morning we would wake up to mom singing in the kitchen, a few of us slept in the one room so as soon as the first one was awake we were all awake. There would be a mad rush to the kitchen door and when we opened it there stood Christmas for us. A beautiful tree that was dressed in garland of different colors, tiny bulbs that danced in the light and tree lights sparkling and  wrapped all around this wonderful tree. How glorious this was when the kitchen we left the night before was just an ordinary kitchen and the kitchen we walked into the next morning was dressed up better than anything we had ever seen. Of course Santa had done all of this in our minds and that added to the mystery of it.
I can’t remember many gifts under the tree, there may have been a pair of knitted mitts, a hat, exercise books, pencils or socks but it wasn’t important to us, what was important was the stockings belonging to our father, we had hung the night before and they were always bulging to the brim. We would run and take the ones that held our name and sit down to see what Santa had left. There would be candy of all kinds, grapes, bananas, peppermint candy, and at the bottom would be an apple and an orange. Of course with this booty breakfast was out of the question as we ate heartily from the goodies that we had.