Believe it or not, although inundated with work, I had every intention of writing a special blog in time for Christmas. In fact, weeks before December 25, I started thinking about what I might say. The problem, however, was that I couldn’t decide upon an approach, which is why I’m sitting here in front of my computer in the wee hours of December 27 writing about a holiday that is now officially over. If you doubt it’s over, just look around in your neighborhood stores, where employees are busily stocking shelves for Valentine’s Day.

In fact, in witnessing this quite “premature” preparation today at Wal-Mart, I was reminded that, when originally pondering a Christmas blog, I had considered writing about how the real meaning of Christmas has been lost, at least for most people, in the rampant materialism that is so much a part of America’s “gotta-have-it-all-even-if-I-gotta-go-in-debt” society and how Christmas is but the ultimate excuse for people to spend even more money they don’t have and accumulate even more possessions they don’t need.

Nixing that idea, however, mainly because our consumer-driven mentality is something everyone already knows about yet chooses to ignore, I then considered writing about how gloomy the coming holiday season was going to be for the many unemployed and underemployed Americans, as well as those who had lost or were in danger of losing their homes and/or retirement accounts because of the lack of government oversight in the banking and investment industries. Too depressing, I concluded, and also abandoned that brainchild.

My next brilliant notion, which probably sprang from the preceding albeit nixed notion, was to take a different approach to the topic of Christmas and write a poem. Yes, that’s right, a poem, one in which I would borrow the rhythm and rhyme of that great classic “ The Night Before Christmas” and lampoon Dub-ya’s last holiday season in the White House. It would begin like this: 

Twas the night before Christmas,

And all through the House,

Only Dub-ya was stirring

And lurking about.

Barney was nestled,

All snug in his bed,

While visions of gnawed fingers

Danced in his head.

Quickly deciding that my poem stunk, to say the least, although I still thought the underlying motif salvageable, I next contemplated writing about Christmases past, most specifically those of my childhood, back when my brother, sister, and I were still young enough to believe in Santa Claus and miracles.

I thought I could begin my Christmases-past blog by recounting how, for my siblings and me, the holiday season unofficially began with the pre-Thanksgiving arrival of the Sears & Roebuck Christmas Catalog (Mama called it “the Wish-book”), a veritable cornucopia of wonders and delight that we would pour over each day after school right up until Christmas Eve. Of course, by then, that wish-book was pretty ragged looking from all the wear and tear, but turning its dog-eared pages still managed to leave us in wide-eyed awe. Not that we dared hope for certain items that wish-book offered, for example, elaborate and expensive dolls dressed in velvet coats trimmed with “real” mink or electric-train sets complete with towns, bridges, and farms for Bud. Those things were for richer children, like the banker’s daughter and the doctor’s son. Still, dreaming on a smaller scale was allowable, so dream we did, on past Thanksgiving and into December when the countdown of days until Christmas slowed down to an agonizing crawl. But at least the teachers at school were getting into the holiday spirit by then, which helped pass the time; and we got to sing Christmas songs (Yes, we even sang the religious ones back then); participate in the Christmas play (It was always a reenactment of the Nativity, complete bales of hay, a makeshift manager, and a doll swaddled in a baby blanket); and decorate the classroom tree with silver-and-gold-painted sweet-gum balls, chains made from colored construction paper and held together with flour-and-water paste; and strings of burnt popcorn and squashed cranberries.

As for our family tree, well, although we kids didn’t figure this out until we were older, Daddy usually had one already picked out, given he traversed the woods and fields year round (hunting rabbits in the fall and winter, strawberries in the spring, and blackberries in the summer); and during his ramblings he’d make a “mental note” whenever he’d glimpse a particularly bushy and well-shaped cedar. Then, usually about two weeks before Christmas, he’d tell us kids to “go bundle up” (Georgia winters were quite chilly back before global warming), because it was time for us to go find the “perfect” Christmas tree. And off we would go, the four of us, traipsing through the Georgia woods, with the bare tree limbs rattling overhead, the wind nipping at our noses, and the family dogs, excited over the outing, scampering ahead over the carpet of dried leaves and pine needles and boldly leading us on our quest.

Once our tree was located and downed (Bud, being the boy, usually had the honor of wielding the hatchet), we would drag it home, where Daddy would fashion a stand out of lumber, nail the stand to the tree’s base then the living room floor (Yes, that’s how it was done in the old days, at least for us poor folks); and we kids would proceed to decorate the tree with strings of blue, red, green, and orange lights (the big, old-fashioned kind of bulbs); glass ornaments (most were older than we and looked it); silver and gold garlands; and as many handfuls of icicles as we could manage to drape neatly over the lowest limbs and fling haphazardly over the highest limbs. Of course, some years, if Daddy could afford it, we also had fake snow. It came in a can, and you sprayed it on the tree, making quite a mess in the process; but it sure looked pretty, at least to us kids, although I don’t think Mama much cared for it.

When Christmas Eve finally arrived, like children everywhere, my siblings and I had a difficult time sleeping since our stomachs were aflutter with butterflies of anticipation, and when we finally did doze off, our heads were filled with visions of—what else but sugarplums. Then, at the crack of dawn, the linoleum floor icy beneath our bare feet, since Mama had just kindled a fire in the coal heater and it hadn’t yet had time to warm the house, the three of us would go dashing into the living room, slide under the tree, and squeal in delight over our presents, as well as three of Daddy’s old socks, each filled with an orange, a tangerine, an apple, assorted nuts, peppermint sticks, and cream-filled chocolate drops (We didn’t have a fireplace or a mantle, so we laid our “stockings” under the tree—Bud always got the middle spot, Vicki the left, and me the right, although don’t ask me why; that’s just the way we did it).

Daddy always made breakfast on Christmas mornings. The meal was a tradition: his ”world-famous” waffles with sorghum syrup; fried ham (He raised the hog himself); scrambled eggs (He also raised the chickens that laid the eggs); and fresh milk (Yes, Daddy had a milk cow as well, although he eventually starting buying milk from Mr. Jones’s Dairy, not that I can recall why, although it probably had something to do with the latest findings on a process called pasteurization). And do you know something? Although I have dined in some fancy high-priced restaurants over the years since then, I can still vividly recall not only the aroma but also the taste of Daddy’s Christmas breakfast while those “gourmet” meals have long ago been forgotten.

But that blog never materialized. Perhaps because my daddy died in December of 1997, and the more I thought about those Christmases long past, the more depressed I became. I missed my daddy. Moreover, try as I might, I could not think of one Christmas during my adulthood that could even remotely compare to those of my childhood, at least in terms of holiday spirit and joy. Yet, I wondered why this was the case. After all, my family had been poor, “dirt-poor” to be exact, so my brother, sister, and I had known not to dream “too big,” even at Christmas. Yet, being children, we had dreamed; and our daddy, being the man he was, had done everything within his power to make his children’s dreams come true and their Christmases memorable.

And maybe, just maybe, the point I’m trying to make tonight is that Christmas—or any other day of the year for that matter—should never be about how much we can get but how much we can give to those whom love. My daddy was a poor man, at least in terms of money and material goods, but he gave his children unconditional love. He also gave them precious memories. So, this—my belated Christmas blog—is in memory of my daddy. Thank you, Daddy, for everything.