I Wasn't Really into Politics

A Very Important Tree

 

We used to celebrate Mama’s birthday every year by putting up our Christmas tree. December 16 to be exact. Friends came to help and there were goodies to eat. My Uncle Willie always sent a check for $10 for us to buy our tree as his gift to the family. That was the start of Christmas at our house.

The first Christmas tree I remember was Papa Tom’s Christmas tree. It was big and stood in the front hall. Mama’s homeplace is known now as The Latham House and is a historic landmark in my hometown, Plymouth, North Carolina. Papa Tom got the tree from a farmer-friend’s woods. It was a cedar and was prickly, even more so as it dried out. It was decorated with beautiful glass ornaments. Some were clear with multicolored stripes, some round and some teardrop shaped and shiny and bright. The lights were glass and shaped like little flames. The color was painted on. I know that because old ones’ paint flaked off leaving them clear.

I remember one day, after the tree was down and Christmas was over, being on the back porch of Papa Tom’s house. Uncle Tom was packing up the tree lights. I couldn’t have been but a toddler. The bulbs with the flaked off paint apparently looked to me to have water inside. I asked Uncle Tom if they did and how could we get the water out? For some reason he chuckled and said, “Why don’t you bite it and see?” And I did! Panic ensued with Uncle Tom calling my mother out of the house. Thankfully, I was no worse for wear. When asked why I did such a thing as bite a Christmas light bulb I told the truth, “Uncle Tom said I could.” Then the question “why” was passed to him. His answer, “I didn’t think she’d do it!” was not satisfactory to my mother and aunt. Uncle Tom shooed me off to play in the yard.

My strongest memory of taking the tree down was at my Aunt Myrtle’s house in Sayre, Pa. She was Daddy’s sister. We spent many Christmases at her house visiting Daddy’s folks which included Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Nelson, my cousins David and Jo Ann, and my grandparents who I called Gaga and Pom Pom. Aunt Myrtle added real candy canes to her tree decorations. The rule was no one could eat them until New Years Day, the day the tree was taken down. I think that was a wise way she’d invented to make the end of Christmas a little less sad, and also to get help in taking down the tree. You would think with all the goodies consumed over the week-long holiday a candy cane wouldn’t be a big deal. But, oh my, it was so yummy!

After my children grew up, Christmas Day had become complicated with my girls having new families and trying to organize who goes to whose house for what meals. We started to celebrate Old Christmas at Memaw’s house (that’s me). We played loose with the date, making it the first Saturday of January. We exchange gifts and have an oyster roast in the backyard. That also let me keep my tree up an extra week!

This year has been different. No gathering of the whole family because of the Covid restrictions. My daughters came to visit on separate .days. With masks donned and keeping our 6-feet distance apart we celebrated in small groups. And it was good, but not the same. And no Old Christmas gathering happened. So, my tree is still up. Darn it, I don’t want it to come down. I have even entertained the idea of leaving it up until I can fill my living room with my daughters, grandchildren and great-grands all at once again. But who knows when that will be?