Christmas Memories

Merry Christmas! 

This picture was taken either in 1949 or 1950—when I was four or five. I don't remember which. It sort of defines a picture perfect Christmas memory. But it's not exactly my memory of Christmas.

What I remember is that Mama wanted a Christmas picture of me, so she gathered up things I had gotten for a couple of Christmases and put them around the tree. That accounts for the two dolls—no kid I knew got more than one doll a year. I had almost outgrown my little green car by then, and I certainly wasn't allowed to pedal it on the floor.

The car was bought used (Mama once told me she paid a dollar for it), as was the wicker doll buggy that I'd had for some time. I still have the wicker buggy, as well as the two dolls and the doll high chair. I still have the sled and I think the little suitcase is somewhere in the attic. A cousin eventually inherited the metal doll house. I remember one wall in the doll house was put it upside down.

When the photographer (a relative of a neighbor) arrived in mid-afternoon, I had to put on my nightgown and pretend it was Christmas morning all over again. That's my memory.

But I do have a few real Christmas memories—mostly smells. Like the smell of the cedar Christmas trees we had when I was a kid. Our trees weren't fancy, but they made the house smell great. And all our greenery was real—like the running cedar that cascades down the mantle.

When I was older—10? teens?—we had bayberry candles that made the house smell good, too.

Also at Christmas Mama always baked a coconut cake and a raisin-nut cake—both labor intensive but heavenly smelling. I remember she always bought a coconut and grated it herself. I think she used the coconut milk in the cake, too. I remember she cracked the nuts for the raisin-nut cake. Sometimes she made a fruitcake, too.

Speaking of fruitcakes, my favorite short story is Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," in which the young narrator and his elderly relative Miss Sook bake fruitcakes for people they know and for people they don't know—like the Roosevelts. "A Christmas Memory" was in one of the literature books I used when I taught junior high. I always read it to my classes in December. A teacher friend at Stonewall Jackson Junior High, Linda Sampson, gave me a slip-cased copy as a Christmas present.

If you haven't read it, I recommend you get a copy. You can also read it online (if you don't mind intrusive ads) here. Or you can watch a portion of it on this video and hear Capote himself as the narrator (other parts of the story are also on YouTube):

My best Christmas present memories involve dogs. Twice I've received 6-week-old puppies for Christmas. I bought Maggie as a present for myself in 2005, and drove to Bedford to get her.  My husband bought me a Basset Hound in the early 80s. We drove from Roanoke to Fancy Gap one night to pick her out and back again to pick her up a few days before Christmas. She was orange and white—the same color as the terrier Queenie in "A Christmas Memory." 

Naturally, I named her Queenie.

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