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Christmas, All Year Long
My maternal grandmother Eathel loved Christmas with all her heart and soul. I have often wondered what Christmas must have been like with her eight kids in the big old farmhouse near Vevay, IN, especially during the days of the Depression. Often a Christmas stocking would contain a precious orange and a small gift or toy, or some practical item like socks or a scarf. Christmas Day certainly would have included a special service at Long Run Baptist Church a few miles away. How did they all get to church stuffed into the “machine” — as my grandparents always called the family car?
I know my grandmother thought of Christmas all year round, for if she saw something any of us cousins would like at the Five-and-Dime during the year, she would get it and carefully hide it away to be wrapped up and delivered at Christmas.
She passed away in the summer of 1964, when I was 16, and it was a sad day for me to attend her modest funeral. No more chats about the doings of soap opera characters, no more huge family get-togethers at which my Uncle Dee would pass the bowl of pickled beets around once to be polite, and then proceed to eat the rest by himself. No more orange cakes baked in an ancient and curious stovetop oven and distributed among all the eager grandkids. No more warnings to us kids when staying over not to flush the toilet if we got up to pee in the middle of the night because it would start the pump running and wake everybody up.
The aunts and uncles had shaken their heads at the funeral for my grandfather a few months earlier and said “she won’t last long” — as had so often been true for elderly couples tied so closely through so many difficult years.
Imagine my surprise when a package arrived in the mail just before Christmas, addressed to me in my grandmother’s firm handwriting and with her peculiar spelling of my very common name. Aunt Nonie, my grandparents’ oldest daughter, had gotten the Christmas box from my grandmother’s home after she died and put all the packages aside to mail in December. My gift was a charm bracelet with a Chinese theme, and I treasure it still, but even more the memory of my grandmother’s delight and love of the holiday all year long.
Published in Group Writing
A very heartwarming post! The older generations were incredible. They held families together. Today we are all scattered all over the country. We don’t build families any longer; we build email and facebook links. You are blessed to have those memories of your grandmother. May she rest eternally under our Lord’s shining light. Thank you for sharing.
You’ve given me something nice to think about if I ever ride through Vevay (if they ever widen the state road a bit to make room for bicycles). When I was there in fall 2013 I rode cross country on a hilly route between Madison and Rising Sun, and we drove the road along the river. Very nice looking country all around. It’s good to know of these connections to people.
Somehow as I was reading this, I knew that was going to happen.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series, this month highlighting Holiday Traditions and Treats. If you’d like to share a memory, a story, or a recipe, you can sign up here.
What a lovely story and beautifully written!! So many sweet touches to it. And my husband’s father called the car “the machine” too! Thanks, Little My.
So does all of Russia.
Wonderful story, @littlemy!
The part about flushing the toilet in the middle of the night made me laugh and brought back memories. In my grammy’s house it was put the toilet paper in the wastebasket after you go #1 (which she emptied like clockwork) so it doesn’t clog up the septic tank.
Family threads weaving between generations….
That and a story book of life savers was my stocking as 1 of 9.
In our hard-earned adult prosperity, my sibs still continue the tradition, and add upgrades like Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, Pringles, a real full size candy bar, and other such treats. It is a blessing to have the simplest things bring a smile: we always consumed our stockings together, and shared around.
Who added the beautiful photo of the barn? Thanks very much.
More than likely Jon Gabriel, as he is preparing to (or is it already) demote it to the Main Feed.
Oh my, Little My . . .
Let me add my voice to those above that were enchanted and moved by this truly lovely account. And yes, the “don’t flush”admonition brought back memories of my grandparents’ home.
Thanks for the smiles.