Christmas is when a child’s fantasies are rewarded for a few fleeting moments of one magic morning. It opens with that indescribable thrill of waking up and realizing it is THE DAY. And then the wonder and excitement to find in the living room that HE had indeed come.
My childhood Christmases were even more magical because of where we spent them. My father’s parents were deceased, and the “home place” of my mother’s parents was relatively close, though out in “the country” in Hickman County, Tennessee (over Duck River from Shady Grove, and just over the hills from Primm Springs). So, every December 24th, my mom and dad and us five young ’uns trekked to Jones Valley by Leatherwood Creek for Christmas with my grandma and grandpa. (Properly pronounced gra’ma and gra’pa in Southern vernacular.)
My grandparents’ home was huge to me then. It had existed from eternity past on the side of the grassy hill framed by two towering maple trees that spanned the chert drive. Holding back the edge of the yard was an ancient wall of stacked limestone running along the dusty country lane. The house was full of shelves, nooks, and closets with interesting artifacts like chamberpots and my grandfather’s army uniform.
It was homespun and worn compared to our suburban house in Nashville, yet more able to handle wear. Its painted brown floors, the kitchen linoleum, and colorful rugs accepted the scuffs of a farmer’s boots. On its walls hung simple pastoral framings that proved the home was loved. The pot-bellied stove in the main room, rusty yet black and surrounded by crumbs of inky-shiny coal and errant ashes, swallowed the muffled roar of burning carbon. A gentle warmth radiated throughout the room.
To the left of the stove in the corner, stood the faded white refrigerator with the round edges; old as Edison. Inside was the mason jar with the brass top that held the precious yellow-white nectar called boiled custard. To this day, it’s just not Christmas without boiled custard and coconut cake.
Grandma and Grandpa had cedar Christmas trees cut from the woods behind the house. Their tree was always tall and tubby with glass balls, tinsel, plastic icicles, and strings of those large colored light bulbs. Cedar doesn’t have the perfect cone shape and spreading boughs of the spruce trees in Christmas cards or on TV. Funny how I so wanted a “pretty” tree back then, but now I miss the cedar tree at Grandma’s.
The kids slept upstairs in creaky iron beds piled with homemade quilts. The sheets were ice cold when we first got in because the only heat upstairs was what leaked up from below. But soon the beds became a toasty womb. No rest this side of heaven matches the pleasant dreams of a child on a cold Christmas night tucked beneath Grandma’s quilts.
Grandma’s cooking filled the long heavy dining room table. Christmas Eve dinner combined a fresh fried hen from the chicken coop out back, dressing or potatoes (or both) with gravy, a half dozen vegetables and desserts, and cornbread sticks. Christmas morning breakfast included eggs scrambled with milk, sausage patties, and silver-dollar size biscuits perfect for grandma’s canned blackberry preserves from jars with paraffin on top. Grandma served “Donald Duck” brand orange juice that was so tart it left your lips pursed.
One Christmas after we opened presents, Dad asked if I heard something from the “front” room. There I found my K&B electric train humming along its circuit of track. Unquestionably, the best toy I ever received.
Only one ingredient could possibly increase a child’s Christmas joy: snow! But typically the snows of middle Tennessee didn’t coincide with Yuletide. However, one fantastic year it snowed on Christmas Eve! The surprise snowstorm forced Mom to stop at a gas station and have chains put on the tires before we even left Nashville. That particular year, Dad came separately in the company truck to bring a clothes dryer for Grandma.
The snowfall was heavy and deep. The view from the house was like a smooth white sheet spread down the front yard, over the stone wall, and across the road. It leaped over the dark rushing waters of Leatherwood Creek into the dry cornfields beyond. Nightfall came and Dad’s headlights illuminated the falling flakes in a swirling halo as he crossed the wooden bridge over the creek and pushed through the drifts up and into the yard. Now the Christmas story was complete!
Grandma’s house for Christmas–even now many decades later I close my eyes and see it, and almost catch a whiff of biscuits baking. Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa Boehms, for these rich memories from a lifetime ago. Enable me, Father God, to give my own grandchildren memories they will treasure throughout their days.
William Boehms Norton (author of Sojourn on the Veld, a memoir of South Africa)
