December 21, 1966
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. Christmas is almost here, and I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait. I love Christmas. So many fun things happening, not to mention not having to go to school for almost two weeks! Since I had some time on my hand and I love Christmas, I asked Dad if I could interview him about what Christmas was like for him when he was a boy. He said okay. So I got my notebook and my pen and my little tape recorder and we sat down at the kitchen table to talk about his Christmases.
Me: “Tell me about Christmas when you were a kid.”
Dad: “Christmas was a pretty simple affair when I was a boy. We hung our stockings from the mantel. My mother and father hung stockings up too, although your grandmother always laughed that they were a little old to expect Santa to bring them anything. But Dad would always smile like he knew a secret and tell her nobody could get too old for the magic of Christmas. We didn’t have fancy store bought stockings that are made just for gift getting. We just had our regular socks that we wore on our feet. I always searched through my sock drawer to get the biggest sock I had. I wanted there to be room for an orange in the toe and plenty of candy on top. The week before Christmas, I would go out in the fields and chop down a cedar tree to decorate. We strung popcorn and I made paper chains for decorations. Mama crocheted little angels for the tree.
Me: We still have some of Mama Mae’s crochet angels. I love putting them on our tree the way I used to put them on her tree too before she died.
Dad: Your grandmother loved you and Tabitha helping her decorate her tree.
Me: What else do you remember?
Dad: How good the house smelled when she started cooking. Dad used to say she must be aiming to feed the whole neighborhood. And she did share some of her cookies. She made all kinds. My favorite were chocolate with white icing. Dad liked the oatmeal raisin ones best. Mama said she liked them all. Then, she made the best divinity candy in the world. We would crack the walnuts we picked up in the fall and pry the kernels out with a metal nutpicker. A chore, but those walnuts made that divinity even more delicious.
Me: Did you read the Christmas story?
Dad: I didn’t. That was Dad’s part. Every Christmas Eve, he read the Christmas story to us.
Me: And now you read it to us.
Dad: I do. It’s the greatest story ever.
Me: Did you get up early on Christmas morning?
Dad: You know I did. I’d pop out of bed at the first hint of daylight, but I never beat my parents up. Dad would already have the fire going and Mom would have cinnamon rolls in the oven. We’d open our presents which didn’t take long since we only had a couple. We always got a new jigsaw puzzle to work on that day. If it snowed, we might go for a walk, even Mama. Then we’d come in and have hot cocoa. My folks always made the day special.
Me: Do you remember any of your Christmas gifts?
Dad: I got a little hatchet once and couldn’t wait to go cut down some little cedar trees. Then Dad made me a sled one year. I prayed for snow for days after that Christmas. When my prayers were finally answered and snow fell, I felt like I was flying on that sled down the hill out behind our house. Another time I got a BB gun. But my best gift ever was the Bible my father gave me before I went into the service after the war started. That Bible meant the world to me. That Christmas was my last time with him. He had a heart attack and died a couple of months later while I was in training camp. I was so glad I hadn’t already been assigned to a submarine so that I could come home to be with my mother for his funeral.
Me: That’s sad. I wish I had been able to know him the way I did Mama Mae. But she did tell me about him.
Dad: People do live on in our memories and the memories we pass down to others.
Me: Do you have a best Christmas ever?
Dad: Two of those. The one after Tabitha was born and the one after you were born. I felt so blessed to have the gift of a child to love and hold in my heart.
My father is the greatest.
What about you? Have you ever asked your parents about their Christmases or told your children about your Christmas memories?
Comments 6
Jocie ( and you, Ann) write the most interesting stories. I love hearing about Holly Hill adventures.
Author
Jocie here. Oh, I’m so glad you enjoy my stories, Birdie. It makes writing them so much more fun when you think somebody is actually going to read them. But, you know, not that much happens in Hollyhill. Well, there was that one year when things went a little crazy from tornadoes to snow storms to crazy teachers to weddings. But things have settled down dull as ever again now in Hollyhill. I’ll have to borrow some of Wes’s Jupiter stories to tell.
It’s always fun to hear from Josie!
My mother used to make divinity candy, but I haven’t tried her recipe since she passed in March 2020. But I have tons of memory stories from her and my grandparents. I was particularly blessed to have a loving grandmother for nearly 53 years. She was a teacher, librarian and genealogist, so she valued the need to pass stories down. She left me several scrapbooks that she put together. She did one for each decade of her life through her early 90s. Each one is filled with photos and stories of her and the life she shared with my grandpa. They’re filled with her love, heartache and especially her faith in God. I’ll treasure them forever, and pass them on to the next generation.
Have a Merry Christmas and blessed New Year, Ann!
Author
(Jocie here) – Oh, how fun that your grandmother fixed scrapbooks for you. My Mama Mae didn’t do that but she used to tell me things about my dad when he was my age. Of course, I was only nine when Mama Mae went on up to heaven. I miss her so much. Aunt Love seemed to always be bothered by my questions, but then I did find out about her sad story in that book, Scent of Lilacs. And I did love hearing Dad tell about how he heard God telling him he should be a preacher when he was down under the ocean in a submarine. I used to get him to tell me that one all the time.
(Ann here) – Those scrapbooks are a treasure, Lavon. What a wonderful gift to give you. I do wish my family had passed down more stories. My sister knows more about my paternal grandmother than I do since I was only one when she passed away. I think she did a good job of spoiling my older sister though. I wish we had opportunity to tell more stories now, but I guess I don’t think I have that many interesting stories to tell about myself. Just those people I make up. I did used to tell them things their dad did. They always enjoyed that when they were younger. Maybe we should have a storytelling night and everybody share something about their life, even the young ones.
I love your stories about your dad’s Christmases. I pray that you’ll have a blessed Christmas this year!
Author
Thank you, Suzanne. And a very merry Christmas to you too.