Dad's Stories: A Meridian Christmas

A MERIDIAN CHRISTMAS (5/26/2004)

There are few things in a child’s life more exciting than Christmas! This was a special time for my family and I can’t think of a better place to celebrate this most joyous time of the season than in Meridian *and with Meridian*. First, let me say the winters in Meridian were not all that bad. We had cold weather, but it was interspersed with quite a few warm nice, pleasant days when the sun would be bright and warming. There were only four or five times while I lived in Meridian, when I remember having sufficient snow to play in. Our snowmen were ugly little things composed of “dirty” snow. We’d only have at most a couple of inches of the white stuff to work with. Snowball fights usually degenerated into ice ball fights and you certainly didn’t want pasted up beside the head with a hard, wet ice ball. Meridian certainly wasn’t what you would call, a winter wonderland.

There is more to Christmas than cold weather and snow. We’re led to believe that Christmas and snow go together because a lot of the country has to deal with the inconvenience of being snowed in all winter and so they attempt to make the best of it. A Gigantic beer wagon, pulled by humongous horses wasn’t part of my Christmas. As a matter of fact, neither was beer. Meridian is located in what is referred to as a “dry county.” That means alcoholic beverage of any kind is illegal. Every few years someone would get enough signatures to bring the issue of “wet” or “dry” before the voters and they would dutifully vote against alcohol. It seems voters in Bosque county were quick to get the vision of drunken drivers killing their kids and other innocent victims. The vagaries of “spirits” were not prevalent in Meridian, as they say.

On a certain day in November we would drive downtown and our eyes would be dazzled by a spectacle of giant candy canes, evergreen wreaths and multi-colored bright lights everywhere. Downtown Meridian was Bacchanalia time once again! Seasonal music could be heard in nearly every store. My most favorite time of the year was finally here.

For several years the city of Meridian would put up a huge plywood cutout of the Three Wisemen, riding their camels toward the star of Bethlehem.

Christmas was something my mother took very seriously. Somehow she could weave the secular side of the holiday and the religious side together and yet keep them separate and distinct. That way, we could enjoy both the greed of Santa Clause and the saving grace of our Savior, Jesus Christ. She was a master at pulling this off each year.


No one could rival this dear lady for Christmas celebration!

A high point of the season was putting the Christmas tree up. Often, we would go out and choose our “victim” in the woods surrounding Meridian. After all, we were part of the Hill Country of Texas. And cedar trees abounded, and still do. We had eight foot ceilings, so a good height for the Christmas tree would be around six or seven feet. Up would go the tree and on would go the ornaments. Not just any ornaments mind you, but some that were twenty or thirty years old. I recall feeling a tremendous amount of responsibility handling the “keepsake” ornaments and carefully hanging them on our tree.

The Christmas tree lights were altogether something else. We had the old style, of course, that was called “series” lights. This meant that if one went out… they would all go out. The problem was you never knew which light had burned out. I don’t know who designed Christmas tree lights connected in series, but he tested a lot of people’s patience. I’ve stood and watched while both of my heroes (granddaddy Smith and my daddy Bill), would be reduced to blithering idiots trying to determine which light was out, on a string of fifteen individual lights.

The only way you could execute this task successfully was to take a “good bulb” and replace each light in the string until you found the one that was burned out. One of the saddest spectacles I ever witnessed was my daddy slaving studiously for forty-five minutes to determine the bad light and finally discovered his “tester” light was also burned out.
When the lights were on and working, they stood out and screamed, “Look at me!” However, when the string went dark, the individual lights seem to hide between branches and clusters of cedar. It’s not a pleasant thing to observe a couple of adults frantically working for half an hour trying to find which light had burned out… while all the time arguing over which ones they’d tested and hadn’t tested.

Onlookers never offered encouragement, but freely {exposited} stabbing double entendres, stinging criticism, carefully phrased sarcasm and negative comments about ancestry… it was a tough room to work in. I must say the “light changer” usually gave as good as he got. Once the lights were back on and burning brightly, the “light changer” would inevitably swear that this was the last year he’d punish himself with stringing lights on the tree. This annual oath turned out to be an idle threat. Evidently every member in my family were, “Gluttons for punishment,” as my grandmother Smith was wont to say.

Mounting the ubiquitous “female” Angel on top of tree always bothered me a little. I took it personal and considered the sex of the angel was totally wrong! First, I didn’t know of any female angels in the Bible, especially blonde ones. Secondly, I would almost flinched when someone would “roto-root” the beautiful little angelic being on the top branch. I could almost hear her scream, “Oh no, not again!” I must admit, once she was ensconced on the tree top, she looked innocent, serene and beautiful! These tree-top angels came in all designs and sizes, with all sorts of gaudy decorations, like a circle of tinsel behind her head, small lights creating a spiritual aura and a white wire halo.

Finally, it would be time for the children to toss the foil icicles all over the tree. This act was done with such a great amount of alacrity and wild abandon, that it took only seconds before a supervising adult would holler, “Stop! That’s enough.” Every now and then we’d toss some “angel hair” (spun glass) on the tree, but it seems you either had too much of the stuff or not enough on the tree. Often we’d just forget this step in Christmas tree decorating. It was like salting food, once you put too much on, you couldn’t get it off. The stuff clung tenaciously and unremittingly to the tree branches.

Now came my fondest aspect of Christmas… watching the stack of presents grow daily right before my greedy little eyes. I had a professional eye for new arrivals to the ever growing pile of gifts. Sometimes, if the gift was mine, they would try to hide it among the others. I would sniff it out and nonchalantly stoop down and check the name on the new gift. If it had a name other than mine, my self-esteem took a hit. Recalling that only good little boys and girls get gifts from Santa, I figured I must have committed some egregious, albeit, unknown sin. Not sound logic or solid doctrine, but when your dealing with a ravenous appetite for gifts like I was, you worked with what you had. To my shame, I just couldn’t adjust to losing out to one of my siblings. I would also keep a close count of the other’s gift stack. In the end it would always balance out. Mom, was good at doing that!

I can finally confess, I was a notorious and unconscionable gift peeker! I was a professional, a virtuoso of the art of unwrapping and rewrapping presents. It was a well documented fact… if you wanted to surprise me with a gift, keep it out from under the Christmas tree. For those of you who have no special skill in this area, let me say that it is an acquired skill that you must work at constantly. Peeking at a gift, is not just picking it up and shaking it a little and then blurting out the first thought that comes in your mind. No sir, proper and professional gift peeking is something others are awed at and your proud of.

I was once asked by an novice peeker, “How do you get the scotch tape off without tearing the paper.” Very carefully! If it seems really stuck, breathe on it. Your warm breath will enable you to slowly pull the tape from the wrapping paper. Another important step is… make certain the original folds of the paper are not disturbed. When done properly, the giver will never realize you’ve peeked!

Here’s the most gratifying part of “gift guessing.” When people walk over to you with a package and say, “I’ll bet you don’t know what this is.” You can take the package, hold it up against the side of your head, Great Karnack style, and take a guess. Bingo! You got another one right and your notoriety spreads even further across the countryside. Other members of your family laugh nervously and act like it’s no big deal. But you can tell it baffles the heck out of them. Once a year you’re respected for your talent of “gift guessing” and you do it with the skill and aplomb of Blackstone the great!

Every year on Christmas eve, Billy and me, would watch from our upstairs bedroom window what came to be known as, “The march of the toys!” Our bedroom window was about thirty feet from my grandparents house. We would sit by the window and watch our folks transfer our “big gifts” from one house to the other. I can’t believe our folks were that naïve. Around midnight, here they’d come. Sneaking across giggling and all atwitter carrying our Christmas goods. “Look! A basketball.” “Hey! There’s your baseball glove you asked for.” “Yea, and here comes your banjo.” Man, we’re going to have a really neat Christmas. After the traffic slowed and the gifts were all transferred from my grandparents house to under our tree, we’d lay back down in our beds and try to sleep. Which was totally impossible!

On Christmas morning…We played a little game with mother called, “Oh, Look what Santa brought us!” These were items, not wrapped and usually our “big” gifts. (The ones we’d seen coming across the yard the night before). Admittedly, it felt a little awkward around the age of twelve, but it still paid off in spades. To tell the truth, I’d do it still if it produced largess like it did back then. After we got older, Santa would bring us things like banjos, mandolins, and pretty dresses for my sister. Heck, Santa didn’t have enough room in his sleigh for our booty… much less toys for all the kids in the world. To the best of my recollection, we dropped the “Santa” bit when we started getting things like .22 rifles, cameras and darkroom equipment.

Every child in the room had a bad case of the “bug eye” as we scanned the cornucopia of gifts. It looked like the Sears and Roebuck toy department. Billy told me once, that he glanced over at me and I had a glazed look in my eyes and the left one was twitching. I wouldn’t deny that for a single minute. Next, a couple of adults were chosen to distribute gifts from under the tree to the proper recipients. After all the gifts had been properly distributed, we commenced to unwrap our gifts. The air was soon filled with bits of colorful wrapping paper, ribbons and bows. It was a true feeding frenzy of tearing into gifts. Wadded up paper was piled two feet high under the Christmas tree. We’d gotten most of what we’d asked for and lots of extra stuff. Daddy Bill, had gotten his usual tie and shirt, along with a box of fruit flavored life-savers.

Following the trashing of the gifts, we’d eat breakfast and then go to our room and lovingly handle and explore our prized possessions. Maybe a short nap and then back up to play with our toys and things. Something that was also most exciting was to visit our friends around the neighborhood and see what they got.

Briefly, I want to touch on our Christmas dinners. I am totally convinced that my grandmother could have out cooked the chef at the Waldorf Astoria. My grandmother had a phrase she’d use quite frequently while working in the kitchen. At some point in her work she’d exclaim, “Good gormandizer! I can’t seem to get this lid off!” Or something to that effect. The first twenty-years of my life, I had no idea what she was talking about. Often when I was playing with my little chums outside… I would exclaim, “Good Gormandizer! That lid’s on there tight.” I believe they were actually afraid to ask me what that meant, which was good, because I didn’t know either back then.

For those few of you who might not know. The word “gormandizer” is just an alteration of the word “gourmandizer,” which means, to eat gluttonously! It’s a good word to banter about the kitchen while preparing a meal. “Good gormandizer! Are you just going to stand there and watch that corn burn?” See how neat it is?

A brief description of the beautiful dining room in the Smith home, is in order. I have no idea who designed and supervised the construction of the room, but it was quite lovely. Upon entering the front door of my grandparents home you would be in the living room. Well furnished with nice draperies and an upright piano.

There had once been a fireplace, but had been boarded up at some time in the past. At the northwest part of the room were double doors with small, clear panes of glass. The doors had glass doorknobs. You would open the doors and walk into the dining room. There was a huge oak table that could seat twelve to fifteen people. Just inside the door to the left was built-in wall cabinets with glass doors. These cabinets were filled with many interesting antique crystals and other brick-a-brac. On two sides of the room oak chairs lined the wall. The north side of the room had a window with decorative drapes that hung to the floor. The window looked out on granddaddy Smith’s orchard. On the end next to the kitchen was a beautiful buffet, with crystal bowls on top. In the buffet cabinet was a twelve piece set of china that Uncle Busby had shipped from Japan, while stationed over there. I’m not talking opulence here… I’m attempting to describe a very pretty and functional room with lots of personality.

There’s no way to describe the variety of food that the Smith, Walk, Busby, Dunlap and Odle ladies would prepare for our Christmas dinner. I’ve discussed this with my sister, Betty, and we can come up with some fifteen items that could be present on the large dining room table. It would almost be sacrilege to attempt a reproduction of the feat. Some of the items would take close to a week to prepare for consumption and enjoyment. If something didn’t taste exactly the way grandmother thought it should, out it went.

On Christmas morning, a dear, sweet black lady named Camille, would come over and help grandmother put the finishing touches on the Christmas meal and then help serve it. She was also charged with the task of keeping the bowls full on the table. Camille, would bring a couple of her children with her and they would eat the same food as we did, only in the kitchen.

I would stuff myself every Christmas. Eating so much food that my stomach hurt. My normal routine would be to stagger outside and lay down under one of the pecan trees and moan, while complaining that I ate too much. Join the crowd, right? These special holiday meals helped me to fully understand the term, “to founder.” (Eating excessively.)

Let me spend just a moment talking about holiday cakes, pies and candy. My grandmother could cook as well as any chef in the world. As any good gourmandizer knows, the secret is usually in proper seasoning. A week or so before Christmas, grandmother would start making all kinds of fantastic candies and confections that would make your taste buds march back and forth across your tongue screaming, “Yes, oh yes!” For me, it was the “burnt caramel” candy. Ohhhh, never before and never since have I tasted anything as good. Another favorite of mine was, light and fluffy divinity candy, filled with pecan halves. Finally, the coup de grace, a tub of pecan brittle.

Her specialty also included dainty little mints. These came in at least two flavors. Green for spearmint and pink for peppermint. These little mints would be spread in rows across a piece of wax paper and placed on a table in the dining room to cure. I would sneak into the dining room and scoop up two or three of those little beauties and then rearrange all the others so there would be equal space between them. No one would ever know, right? Wrong! Grandmother would check them daily and would finally corner me and say, “If you don’t quit eating those mints, there won’t be any for the others.” Now, if this was supposed to put a guilt trip on me, it didn’t work. My craving for the delectable little treats overwhelmed any guilt I might have had for removing a couple every other day or so. She was a very patient and loving person.

My grandmother told me a funny story about her preacher daddy and eggnog. It seems my grandmother’s mom had whipped up a large bowl of eggnog. At the behest of the young men in the family, she poured a little whiskey in the mixture. Unbeknownst, to his mother, one of the older boys sneaked in and doctored the eggnog with a little more whiskey. Wanting everyone to be happy, mama Dunlap added a wee bit more of the spirits to the mixture. Then, the second person, totally unaware that the eggnog was being doctored by his “sainted” mom, poured even more whiskey in the eggnog. Neither of them knew the other one was doctoring the eggnog.

Grandmother’s daddy, Lewis, was a Cumberland Presbyterian Preacher and a died in the wool teetotaler. As I’ve mentioned before, he pastored the local Presbyterian church. Just before noon one of the kids decided it was time to “come a wassailing” and brought out the eggnog. {Come late morning and someone brings out the eggnog.} The family gathers around the bowl and commences to quaff the brew. Pastor Lewis is throwing down cup after cup of the eggnog and declares to his loving wife, “Mother, I believe this is about the best eggnog you’ve ever made.” Christmas dinnertime comes around and they all have a hearty family meal. The food is great! Everyone eats too much. Everyone can taste too much whiskey, but don’t say anything.

Finally, someone told papa, he’s had enough eggnog. Pastor Lewis disagrees and throws down a couple more cupfuls. By now, he’s laughing and joking like never before. Papa’s got a buzz on. Everyone in the room knows it, but him. The problem now was, how do we get papa away from the eggnog. By this time, Pastor Lewis is feeling no pain and still bragging on his wife’s superb eggnog. Finally they whisk him to his bedroom and bed him down. He sleeps for two or three hours and wakes up with a bodacious hangover. No one every told him about the whiskey in the eggnog! Grandmother said everyone in the family felt bad about what happened, but not enough to confess the glitch to her daddy.

A Meridian Christmas was something to be truly enjoyed with family and friends and then thought about and talked about the rest of your life. There are many other things I remember about Christmas, but I think more than anything else it was the love and fellowship within our family. That is something to be recognized and treasured every day. I certainly am beholding to my family, past and present for exciting Christmases to remember.