Here we are, almost Christmas Eve, and once again, I didn’t get everything done I meant to do this year. I finally got my tree and my house decorated, but I didn’t get any cookies and candy made. I had planned to make little treat boxes for my friends, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. I haven’t even taken the time to drive around and view Christmas lights, although that may still happen. I spent way too much time playing with the dogs, sold a puppy along the way, and managed to plan and implement our church Christmas program. Someone asked me why I bother will all the decorations when it’s just me. The fact that it’s just me is exactly why I bother. Over seventy years of memories is why I bother, not counting the memories from the years before I was even born. I said the other day that it’s obscene how many decorations I have, but then I thought about how long I have been accumulating, not to mention all the stuff my mom and grandmother and great-grandmother accumulated and it’s actually surprising that the house can hold all of it! And just about everything holds a memory.
There are the things my mom and I made when we were all into sewing and crafts – a braided fabric wreath and stuffed Christmas wreath and a stuffed bear my aunt made for me. There is my old Christmas stocking and a wooden sleigh from my childhood that may have also been my daddy’s.
There are the ornaments that my friends made for me, or gave me, and ornaments my family gave me. Some of the ornaments on my tree came from my great grandmother’s trees, and my grandparent’s trees, then the trees my parents decorated when I was just a baby, and the trees my husband and I decorated. There are some tarnished bells that I still use every year because, as discolored as they are, they remind me of those childhood Christmases with my Colley relatives, when they would drive down from Nashville and Franklin, calling out “Christmas Gift” as they walked in the door and bringing what I thought were exotic dishes like mincemeat pie and scalloped oysters and gifts from places like Castner Knott and Cain Sloan.
And books, always a new book, usually about horses. I have dozens of inscribed books, beginning with little Golden Books my family gave me all the way through my childhood to teenaged novels I received.
My family were all great readers. Growing up, there were shelves and shelves of books in our house with names of people I never even knew in person, but knew through the pages of the books they left. Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, the works of Charles Dickens, Black Beauty, Peter Pan – I was introduced to books like those, not in school, but during lazy summers in the porch swing. The first time I read A Christmas Carol was from a maroon covered set of Dickens that belonged to my great grandfather Tom Colley. The print was so small, it's a wonder I was able to do it!
I remember listening wide-eyed to stories of my grandmother and her sisters remembering Christmases when they were children in the big house their father built in town when he brought his new wife from Franklin to the wilds of small-town Centerville.
That house, with its window seats, wide front porch and gabled windows became a source of fascination to me. They made it sound like something from a book, with stories of church on Christmas Eve and Christmas mornings when their father would get up early to build a fire in the library fireplace so they could open their gifts under the tree. Sometimes I wish that house was still there, but then sometimes I think that it might be better that the house just lives on in my imagination. It would be disturbing if it had been altered and modernized, or worse still, fallen into disrepair and decay. And I have the piano, a dining room buffet and a bookcase that came from that house to remind me of that past, along with those little tarnished Christmas bells that I still love, not because of their beauty but because of the memories they hold.
More recent memories involve my mom and houseful of kids she “kept” after she retired from public work. I can still hear echoes of squeals of laughter as they opened the presents they exchanged in a sea of wrapping paper and ribbons. I can still see them all, sitting around the big dining room table, and arguing over the last piece of cornbread or that last spoonful of corn. They were family too, and I hope they hold good memories of those days. They read some of the same books I read, Little Golden books from my childhood and books like Little House on the Prairie that had been read by three generations of our family.
I have pictures of so many of the kids in my daddy’s lap with books, and I remember the days when I would visit and hear small voices begging “read to me.” I hope they read to their own children now and I hope they tell them about their memories of times on the farm when they were growing up. This house holds a lot of good memories and if there are ghosts, they are peaceful and mild-mannered ghosts. I feel them at my elbow sometimes as I sit by the fire with the dogs, watching the Christmas lights twinkle and holding fast to good memories. Those memories are the only Christmas gift I need.
Beautiful sentiments — wonderful house!
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