Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Christmas built on memories

by Julie Carter

Christmas memories of long ago dictate what we find in the season today. Those memories, as varied as they are in location, extravagance or lack of it, belong to us. They reach a depth of emotion within that no other holiday comes close to touching.

I grew up knowing the Christmas holiday was about the celebration of family beginning with the family who started it all --Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.

Our celebrating began with the cutting of the Christmas tree. It was a family event including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. It always entailed a few snow ball fights and body rolling down snow covered hills.

Mom only had a few strings of lights and they all went on the tree.  In sharing my Christmas memories with my youngest when he was 10, I realized the huge gap in Christmas then and Christmas today. Already thinking I was ancient, I will share that this is the son who asked if I wrote on rocks when I was in school. Presumably he meant like the Flintstones or Moses. 

He questioned the existence of electricity back then but did ask what we used for lights on the tree. I assured him we plugged our lights in but told him that in my grandmother’s day they had used candles on the tree. He shrugged and said as he walked away, “I bet they burned down a lot of trees.”

The Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog was the center of pre-holiday anticipation at home on the ranch. The pages were worn out by the time all four of us kids got our lists made for Santa. We had no shopping malls to entice, confuse, or commercialize us.

I remember my mother working tirelessly to create the perfect 10-foot Christmas tree, the exact same number of packages under the tree for all four children and make at least 15 different kinds of cookies and as many kinds of candy.

For my Dad, once the tree was cut and standing in the bay window on a stand he’d made, he was pretty much out of the Christmas preparation picture. He knew when to make himself scarce. He did spend a designated amount of time every year teasing us about scaring Santa off with a shot gun and our stockings being left empty. It could have psychologically scarred us if we had known that it could.

Midnight mass, participating in the church program wearing a bed sheet for shepherd’s clothing, setting up the nativity and always knowing it was Jesus’ birthday that we were celebrating -- all part of forever memories.

I watched my own kids overflow with excitement and anticipation for Christmas as they grew up. They too wanted lots of family around, the tree decorated, as many lights as possible everywhere, and some homemade cookies and candy to graze on over the weeks.

They would shake and squeeze packages and hold tight to the image of Santa. They understood that the season was about Jesus, not Santa Claus, but Santa was pretty nice too. 

In honor of my rural upbringing, I continued to make their Christmas memories include Christ in Christmas and not accept “Winter Festival” for a holiday name. They learned that the gifts are a symbol for the gift we received with the birth of Jesus and that saying “thank you” for both is essential, not optional.

What each generation teaches the next about Christmas is critical to Christmas itself.  If we let them take away the Christ in Christmas, the “one nation under God” becomes no nation under God.

May your Christmas be merry and blessed.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com

Photo provided by Julie Carter