Christmas Gift!

Ferroll Sams, author of the novel, Run with the Horses, has a new book in the stores entitled, Christmas Gift!, which details an old custom popular a half-century ago in my part of the world. Sams relates how his father conspired to beat everybody in his family in calling out "Christmas Gift!" each Christmas morning.

What happened to this custom? In my world, all of my friends and family greeted each other with "Christmas Gift!" It was a game of good cheer. Nobody was demanding a gift, but occasionally Granny or Mama would have some little gift for us children when we beat them to the greeting.

Dad usually was the winner. Dad crawled out of bed each morning at about 4:30, Christmas not excepted. He raked the ashes off the live coals, put on the smaller fore-logs, sprinkled twigs on the coals to start a warming fire in a room that served as both bedroom and living room. He warmed his backside, held one foot and then the other over the coals, then turned to warm his front before going into the cold kitchen to start a fire which would not serve as a cooking fire for more than hour but would warm the room for Mama when she started breakfast shortly after daybreak.

The Christmas season was not as prolonged then as it has come to be. Thanksgiving was not the beginning of the Christmas season. Rather, it was a distinctive holiday often observed by gathering corn or by stripping tobacco. It was not a day for loafing. Work on the farm continued, holiday or no holiday. We knew it was a holiday because the mail carrier had the day off and because Granny and Mama prepared a special meal. Furthermore, the work day was shortened, and we left the field or barn well before sunset.

There were pre-Christmas events. There was the school play with Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the Three Wise Men. One time I was a Wise Man, standing at the manger scene impressed with myself and with the bath towel wrapped around my head. Another time I got to say: "There is no room in the inn!" It came out: "There is no end in the room" and prompted the only laugh from the audience. Later, I tried to pretend I was playing for a laugh, but, in fact, I blew my line. We ended the program singing the carols, "It Came upon a Midnight Clear" and "Silent Night." And when the play was over and classes dismissed, we shouted to each other: "Christmas Gift!"

Then there was the Sunday preceding Christmas. We had decorated the one-room church with a Christmas tree trimmed with long strings of popcorn, silver ropes and fold-out red bells. During the Sunday before Christmas, we received a small present from our Sunday School teacher and a peppermint stick. This was a generous gesture by the church or by our teacher. It represented a sacrifice because there were few extra pennies in those years.

The Sunday before Christmas Eve also was special. That was the day Dad and I and sometimes the other boys went to the back field to cut a cedar tree. From a distance, most of the trees seemed to be suitable. When it came to selecting one, none seemed to measure up to our expectations. We had to compromise.

This event did not always occur on the Sunday before Christmas. If Christmas came five or six days later, Dad would defer to a day nearer the holiday. "Cedars dry out fast and are quick to catch on fire," he would warn. We would wait until one or two days before Christmas Eve to cut a tree. It did not remain in our living room after Christmas. Later in the day, we would remove the few artificial ornaments we owned, and take the tree to the gully Dad was trying to fill.

Tension intensified on Christmas Eve. That was the day Mama, who had already baked a coconut cake and a jam cake, decided she did not have enough cakes, so she made an angel food cake and another white cake with pink icing. We three boys scrambled to scrape the pan holding the pink icing residue. On Christmas Eve, Mama made more icing than she needed for the cake, so scraping the pan yielded extra treats.

Even in the post-Santa days, we usually awakened early on Christmas morning. I would rush into the living room to be greeted by Dad's booming "Christmas Gift!" I never got the drop on Dad. Usually Mama, who loved to sleep late, was among the last to awaken and to appear on the Christmas scene. We were prepared for her and lustily bellowed: "Christmas Gift!"

There were few presents to open, but Dad loved to remind us how much more we were getting that he got in the olden days. Often, I received a Zane Grey novel and spent the rest of the day reading unless Dad had something for us to do. When Christmas was over, it was over. If we had to saw a tree and cut firewood, we sawed a tree and cut firewood. The mules and cattle had to be fed, and the cows had to be milked. Farm life went on, and we children moved with the flow.

The years passed, and we grew up and moved away to have families of our own. Dad and Mama died and with them the Christmas greeting tradition in our family. But in my mind each Christmas Eve, I still scrape pink icing from Mama's cake pan. And on Christmas Day, Dad, warming his backside in front of an open fire, still booms: "Christmas Gift!"

Bonus Memory
In 1952, I was a reluctant tap dance student with an attention deficit problem. Mrs. Broom’s dance studio was scheduled to put on a Christmas recital in which I was to be humiliated in a toy soldier costume. It came time for the dress rehearsal. My eyes glazed over as the others performed their routines, until I was called on to do my tap-step, tap-step, back-step, shuffle-step, shuffle-step etc. Then there were even more dancers, some even more dreadful than I. Needless to say, this ADD young boy found something else to think about. I don’t remember much about the recital until the grand finale. We did our little chorus line routine and took a bow. I had somehow missed the final instructions to take three steps back and I found myself alone in front of the curtain desperately looking for the way behind it.

The trauma of the performance did not linger and over time family teasing turned that terrible moment into a smile, and the bicycle I received from Santa was just the tonic to aid in my recovery. That memory has faded to a funny family story, and I am left with only warm memories melted together like holiday fudge ingredients in a saucepan. For me, Christmas is time not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but also to remember how rich and blessed my life has been through family love.