Christmas with Perdita Sweet from Along a Storied Trail

Merry Christmas. What a great time of the year when cheer and goodwill fill the air! If you’re like me, memories of Christmases past bring smiles. I like thinking about the times I’ve celebrated Christmas with my characters too. In Love Comes Home, Kate and Jay celebrate a first Christmas together after World War II by buying a scraggly tree to decorate with strings of popcorn. The tree turns out to be a great place for Jay to hide a ring box for Kate. Then I can go to Hollyhill where Jocie pauses and writes in her journal about the people gathered around her Christmas tree in Summer of Joy.  (You can check out some of what she writes on Jocie’s blog, Heart of Hollyhill) Francine has a different kind of Christmas adventure in These Healing Hills where snow and ice show up along with a baby ready to be born.

My upcoming release in June 2021, Along a Storied Trail, starts on the day after New Year’s so I just missed celebrating Christmas with these new characters. But I can imagine the Christmas they surely had. Perdita Sweet, who took center stage now and again in my story, has seen her share of mountain Christmases and now, in 1936, she’s sitting in her rocker in front of the fireplace with her Bible in her lap and Prissy at her feet ready to share some of those memories. So, come along and meet Aunt Perdie.

Aunt Perdie? I’m not anybody’s aunt. Leastways that I know the first thing about. Could be my brothers, what took off from the mountains years ago and never bothered to remember where they were from after that, could have some younguns with the right to call me aunt. Anyway, never mind. Call me what you want. I give up some time back trying to convince folks to stop naming me a wrong thing. But you didn’t come calling to hear about that. You’re wanting to know about Christmas up here in the hills.

Well, if you want to look at things straight on and that’s how I’ve always looked at things or nearly always, Christmas is the same up here in the hills as down there in the flatlands. We have Christmas because Jesus was born those many years ago. That’s plain and simple in the Bible.

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”

Right there is what makes Christmas–Mary riding a donkey to Bethlehem to have a baby when she hadn’t never been with a man. I’ve took the time to hunt up that verse and those talking about angels singing to shepherds and wise men following a star every Christmas day I can bring to mind and that’s been more than a few with me being over sixty last time I took a count of my years.

But I reckon you’re wanting to know about the side dressing of Christmas. Things like Santy Claus and stockings hung by the fireplace. Here in 1936, I figure that old gent in a red suit won’t be showing up in these here hills. Not here at my poor cabin anyhow. But it would be fine to have a sweet orange in the toe of a stocking. Course with how things has been going lately for me, it would fall through a hole in my sock and some critter would carry it off afore I got the first bite.

I reckon you can tell 1936 ain’t been the cheeriest year for this old woman. But ever’ Christmas hasn’t been so dark and lonely. Back before Joshua Calhoun took off for the flatlands to find work, he’d trek over this way to give me some of his wife’s sugar cookies and maybe a peppermint stick and one of them oranges if he’d made it to the store. I can almost taste the tang of a juicy orange jest thinkin’ on it.

Joshua, my grandmother’s brother’s son, is the only kin I have left up here. Along with his family, I reckon. The last couple of months that daughter of his, Tansy Calhoun, rides up this way to bring books around. Them books are near to a Christmas gift, but I ain’t telling her that. Best not to make her think she’s more important than she’s already thinking. She’s some proud of being a packhorse librarian. Besides, she never acts like she wants to claim kin. The young ones are like that sometimes. Always in a hurry to be on to somewhere else with no time for sitting in front of the fire with an old woman to share a few words.

Oh, I know you ain’t that way seeing as how you’re listening and waiting for my thoughts to quit meandering this way and that like a creek sliding around rocks and trees. Truth is, I can recall happy Christmas times. Back before the white plague carried off two of my brothers and the sweetest little sister a girl could ever have, we had a fine time popping up corn and stirring up candy. Ma could make the best taffy. I have her recipe but never could do half as good. We’d bring in some pine branches to make the cabin smell good and light up extra candles. We’d roast some chestnuts and eat them sittin’ by the fire while Pa read us the story of Jesus being born. Then on Christmas morning we might find a rag doll Ma had made or a slingshot Pa had fashioned out of some chestnut wood.

Thinking on them good times has me smiling. Once we even got a pup named Blue. That pup latched onto me and was my shadow from then on. His company helped carry me through the sad years to come. But even after losing all them we loved from burying some and seeing the backside of others leaving the mountains behind, me and Ma found ways to make Christmas special. Jest the two of us, but we were right companionable.

Ma read the Bible story after Pa passed. She did love her Bible. I still have it. Right here in my lap as I sit by the fire. I can run my hands down the pages and almost hear her sounding out the angel’s voice. “And lo, I bring you good tidings.”

Thinking about them angels singing in the sky gives me goose bumps. Don’t it you too? Then Hiram would usually come around back then. That was afore that slip of a girl that lived down by Red Bone Creek caught his eye. Ma hoped I’d catch his eye, but I didn’t never have the looks to catch any feller’s eye, I reckon. But Hiram was always a good friend to Ma and me. Helped me take the chestnuts to town to sell before the chestnut trees started dying. A grievous thing losing our chestnut trees. Seems to make this sorry time folks is naming the Depression even sorrier for us up here in the hills.

I reckon that’s about all I can tell you about Christmas up here. Others could tell you better, I know. I figure Tansy and her family will have some good times over at her house on Robins Ridge even with Joshua gone. Eugenia will have a fruit cake and they’ll break open some cider, I imagine. Thinking about it almost makes me wish I’d set out and walked the miles over that way. They’d have let me in to sit by their fire, being as how I’m family. But I don’t want to be the old relative nobody wants to see at their door.

Instead, I’ll just sit here by the fire and be thankful I’ve got wood enough to keep it burning. Felt like snow in the air when I went out to see if my old hens had laid an egg. ‘Twas a blessing to find one. It with a little cornmeal mush will make a fine Christmas supper. I might even use a smidgen of my last jar of sorghum to sweeten up the day. But it is some lonely. I do have Prissy. That’s my cat what’s nigh on as contrary as I am sometimes. She’s right here rubbing against my legs. Her black fur crackles when I stroke her head to tail and her purr rumbles under my hand.

But what’s that I’m hearing? Prissy jerks up to listen too. Somebody’s rapping on the door. And then I hear singing. “It came upon a midnight clear.” It ain’t good singing but it tickles my ears anyhow.

When I open the door, Hanley Scroggins grins at me and keeps singing. Hanley is one of those good men who shoulder the task of seeing to their neighbors, especially this old neighbor. He makes sure I have wood for the fire and at least some kind of fixings in my cupboard so’s I won’t have to sit here and starve. He and his littlest grandson what’s going on six are doing the best they can with the song. I can’t help but smile as I sing the chorus with them. Their old hound sets up a howl to join in or maybe to let us know we’re hurting his ears. Prissy scoots under the bed to get away from that.

They don’t come in. Got Christmas to do at their own place, but he gives me a measure of coffee, a bowl of chicken and dumplings and a piece of Christmas cake his missus made. I’m beholdin’ to him for climbing the hill to my cabin to bring Christmas, but I ain’t got nothing to give back to him ‘cepting a little tonic I made in the fall. Poor man has appeared to be short of breath lately so could be the tonic will do him good.

Maybe I should fetch in a pine bough to dress up the mantle. Then I’ll read the Christmas story by the light of the fire. Out loud even if Prissy is the onliest one to listen. I might even sing a verse of “Silent Night.” After all, it’s Christmas and you was good enough to pay some mind to my meandering memories.

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19 (KJV)

Merry Christmas from me and Perdita Sweet. May your Christmas be blessed with joy.