Christmases Past

I'm not sure how an excess of cookies and candies became associated with Christmas unless it's the fact that mothers and grandmothers everywhere decided to make special treats for this special occasion and the tradition just grew.

Although there were very few presents under our tree on Christmas morning, certain treats were never missing. My grandma made chocolate covered cherries well in advance because they had to sit for a while in order for the centers to liquefy. My dad made peanut butter fudge and sea foam (divinity). We could hardly wait until we were allowed to sample these goodies we had only once a year.

Grandma's fruit salad was another treat served only on Christmas day. She started with a can of Delmonte fruit salad from Buxton's store and added canned peaches and pears from our cellar. Then came a small can of pineapple chunks, a small jar of maraschino cherries, and fresh oranges - the only time of year we had fresh oranges. Before we had electricity, our fruit salad was chilled in the smoke house overnight and brought in at the last minute. Sliced bananas were added just before serving. It was wonderful.

Great-Uncle Howard arrived on Christmas mornings carrying a bag of black walnuts he had gathered. After sitting in the kitchen patiently cracking the shells and digging out the nuts, he made a black walnut cake – his gift to our family. Now that I think of it, the only ingredient he provided was the black walnuts. If anyone noticed it at the time, no one mentioned it. Uncle Howard lived alone on a houseboat tied up on 13 Mile Creek in Leon. His gift was a gift from the heart and it was very much appreciated.

Above you see a photograph taken the year I was married. There are my Grandma, my Mom, and my two youngest brothers, H.A. and Johnny. I am proudly wearing the necklace Carl gave me. My little brother, Johnny, is wearing the cowboy outfit we gave him and H.A. has a new shirt. Carl took the picture with his new Argus 33mm camera – the first camera he'd ever owned.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my friends and family. I wish you the kinds of memories that help make this time of year so very special.

Christmas Villages

Ceramic Christmas villages are highly collectible. There are so many villages available that it's hard to decide exactly which one to buy. And most of them are beautiful. Should it be the Norman Rockwell Village? Christmas in the City? The Nightmare Before Christmas Village? The New England Village? The Alpine Village? The North Pole Village? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The ever-present ultimate salesman masquerading as an artist, Thomas Kinkade, has so many Christmas villages for sale that one can hardly count them all.

But my favorite Christmas village didn't come from a store. My Christmas village offers a whole lot more. My family and I can stroll through our village and remember what took place in each and every house we've lived in.

There is the snug, low-roofed home where Carl grew up near Buffalo, West Virginia. It was built by his dad. And there is the white Dutch-roofed home where I spent my childhood in Leon, West Virginia – my father's dream come true. Next is our little story-and-a-half house that Carl and I bought for $14,800 in Worthington, Ohio. It contains all of Scott's childhood memories.

And how many people can say they really built their home? We look at our village and see the house we built from top to bottom with our own hands in Marengo, Ohio. We must have been nuts. It was a two-story, 3,500 square foot home with three fire places and a five car garage on twenty acres. It took us several years with a little help from our friends and before we got it fully furnished, IBM offered me one of those opportunities you just can't refuse. Leaving it was especially painful because we left Scott behind too. But only for a little while.

The Raleigh, NC, house in our village was a compromise. Carl loved it. I didn't. But it gave us our first taste of Southern living and a screened porch that just couldn't be beat. When we stroll through our village, we remember things like trying to understand a strange new language – Southern – and trying to be tactful when we were quizzed about our kin. Yankee was not a desirable heritage.

And, last but not least, we come to our current home in Lilburn, Georgia. We have been here for fourteen years and we've learned that, although big cities do offer certain advantages, those advantages come at a high price: Heavy traffic, crime, and more nationalities than one could ever imagine, many of whom have no interest whatsoever in becoming Americanized. It takes us an hour and fifteen minutes each way to go to our eye doctor – if we're lucky. It once took us 4 hours to get through Atlanta on Thanksgiving eve, a distance of 35 miles. Nevertheless, this home contains many happy memories too. We have irreplaceable friends and neighbors here and this is the home where we've built memories with Greg since he was five years old.

So take a peek at my Christmas village. It represents my life. It's the first decoration to go up every year and the last to come down. Seeing the glow from those little windows brings back every room in every house and all of the memories created there. It is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving every year, lovingly created by my husband.

Deck The Halls

Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Falalalala, lalalala!

Living in the South brings great rewards to replace that wonder of wonders, snow, which we cannot even begin to hope for. Atlanta, Georgia, hasn't had many, if any, white Christmases but nature has blessed us with wonderful natural elements with which to decorate our homes.

Those who know me well know that I decorate with fresh greenery. No plastic garlands or fake flowers and berries for Sarah Anne Atkins (except for our fake tree that you've already heard about). Christmas decorations must include pine and cedar as far as I'm concerned. For the past couple of years I've decorated our Christmas tree with dried flowers. Some came from my back yard and others came from St. Stephen where I paint every Friday with Southern Colours artists. That is the day the altar guild disposes of the old flowers and brings in the new. They leave the old arrangements for us. It's the ultimate recycling of nature's bounty.

Living in the suburbs offers special challenges, though. I used to visit an empty lot behind our local supermarket where I could find fresh pine. It's now another strip mall so I take my black plastic garbage bag and head for the power lines that adjoin our neighborhood. There I can usually find little pine tree seedlings. I take only the side branches, hoping the trees will survive until next year.

Meanwhile, I have planted Burford hollies and nandina bushes that do not grow in the frozen North. A trip to the back yard gives me all of the beautiful red berries that one could ever hope for. They reward both the birds and me every year. I am also blessed to have access to my friend, Sally Arnold's, north Georgia mountain retreat where the climate and the terrain are as close to my West Virginia childhood as I can get these days. I lovingly cherish the white pine cones I find there and feature them every year in the decorations I put together for our family to enjoy. It's like a little piece of home.

My past few days have been greenery days. I have made wreaths and centerpieces galore after decorating our Christmas tree. Above you see some of the results of my labors. Now it's time to bake the cookies. A woman's work is never done – especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. To us falls the task of preserving memories of Christmases past and creating memories of Christmases present for future generations of our families. It's something we do with love every year.

Speaking of love, Carl made the cobweb ornaments for me when we were a young married couple and I had the bright idea that I would decorate our tree based on a story I read about birds, spiders, and other animals of the forest decorating a tree. They have been on our Christmas tree every year since then and, if you look closely, you'll see bird nests too.

Choosing A Christmas Tree

Carl and I began decorating our Christmas tree today.

This year we did not uphold our family tradition of picking out a live tree while arguing about the fact that I like tall and skinny trees and he likes short and fat. We did not pay an exorbitant amount for it, drag it home in the trunk of the car, bemoan the fact that the trunk was too big to go into the stand, wrestle it in the front door or become upset that it was crooked and it wasn't as fresh as it had looked.

After all of the above happened last year and we ended up with what I thought was the ugliest tree in the world while Carl, once again, declared that I could go pick it out by myself next year, I decided it was time to remove this annual stress forever. Off I went to our local garden store to look for an artificial tree without telling Carl where I was going. Keep in mind that I have frequently said that I would NEVER have an artificial Christmas tree.

An amazing array of choices met my eyes but the only trees that were close to acceptable cost a fortune that I was not about to pay. I finally chose the only tree that I thought I could hold my nose and live with. Wouldn't you know? They didn't have it in stock. The manager was called just to make sure. He offered to dismantle the display and I said no because I had already been there for more than an hour.

I explained that I hate artificial trees and was only there because I was tired of starting our Christmas season in a bad mood every year. I told him my story about our annual tree battles and then I apologized for being difficult and said, "Thanks but no, thanks."

A miracle occurred. "What about that tree?" he asked, pointing at the biggest, the best, the prettiest artificial tree of all that weighed in at about 9 feet tall with zillions of pre-installed lights and a cost of about $700. After I explained that, although it was beautiful, I was not about to pay $700 for an artificial tree, he said, "What if I let you have it for the same price as the one we don't have in stock? It will be my Christmas present to you."

Well. It took three helpers to get it in the car. I had to open the box while it was still in the car and get each section out separately. I carried them upstairs without saying a word. Carl took one look and disappeared but his curiosity finally got the best of him. Before I knew it, we were putting the tree together……together……...marveling at how easy it was.

We marveled again today and agreed that my annual trek to gather fresh greenery for the mantel, wreaths and centerpieces will make up for having a tree with no scent. After all, pine and fir boughs smell the same whether they're on a tree or on the mantel. Best of all, both of us were in a good mood.

Above is a picture of our first Christmas tree as a married couple. Notice how beautiful it was. Notice the loads of fancy ornaments. Notice the large number of gifts. Are we happier today than we were then? Nope. But we sure do have a fancier Christmas tree. It doesn't smell as good but Lily Pearl enjoys sleeping under it just the same.