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Christmas just not the same without fresh cut cedar tree
The Christmas season is once again upon us, and has been since some time around Labor Day when "Big Box Store" started replacing their garden section with Christmas items in direct competition with all of the Halloween stuff. Can anyone tell me whatever happened to Columbus Day and Veterans Day? And do you remember when Thanksgiving used to signal the beginning of the Christmas season? I guess there's not enough money to be made to make those three holidays important anymore except that Thanksgiving does sell a few groceries. Since this is the Christmas season, I suppose a little ruminating about it might be in order. Each year about this time the memories of Christmases past come to mind and it's interesting to recall how things were before the season became so commercialized. Some wag was recently promoting the idea that Christmas should be made a religious holiday. Imagine that! What a novel concept! He must have been somebody from California who was born about 1965. Doesn't he realize that if it weren't for Christmas there wouldn't even be a holiday? What does he think the day celebrates anyway? The Winter Solstice at Stonehenge? Regardless of how much Christmas may have changed over the years; it is still a time, which focuses on the children. The expectations of what presents might be under the tree or what Santa might bring are still as strong as ever. One thing that I miss from the old days is walking into the living room and smelling the distinctive odor of a freshly-cut cedar tree standing in the corner waiting to be decorated. Someone in the family would have been on the lookout for a good tree all year, and a few days before Christmas it would be cut and brought to the house. Nowadays we have a sterile, plastic tree that smells like recycled milk jugs and has a little tag hanging on it that says, Made in China. Somehow, it just ain't the same! Decorating the tree was different then too. For snow we used to have something called "Angel Hair" that was made from white, spun fiberglass. It was pretty, but made your skin itch. For icicles there were thin strips of aluminum foil and later they made some out of white plastic that glowed in the dark. Large, multi-colored strings of lights were standard, and then sometime in the 50s they came out with lights that looked like candles and were filled with colored water. When they heated up it caused the water to bubble. We never used real candles on the tree because candles and cedar trees don't go together. Peppermint candy canes were hung on the tree too, but they usually didn't last very long with kids in the house. Another thing that didn't last very long were the thin glass ornaments. None of those ever survived a fall, even from the lowest limb. Other decorations in the house were usually homemade from natural materials. Most commonly used were holly branches with red berries, magnolia leaves, cedar boughs and smilax. Smilax is an evergreen vine that grows in the woods and can climb to the tops of the tallest trees. One custom that seems to have largely died out is Christmas caroling, where groups of singers would stop in front of people's houses and sing. When I was little, we lived with my grandparents on West Cedar Street next door to the old South Alabama Infirmary. Carolers would come to the hospital and sing for the patients and then come to our house, so we got to hear it twice. At our house it was the custom to open presents on Christmas morning after the excitement of seeing what Santa had brought had worn off. All of the adults drew names to see whom they would give a gift to, but all of the kids usually got something from all of the uncles and aunts. I remember that one of the things that I always wanted more than anything else was an electric train. I never got one, but I did get one with a spring motor that had to be wound up with a key. It lasted about two days. I did get to play with my cousin's electric train though. It was a Lionel that produced real smoke when a little white tablet was dropped down the smoke stack. An aluminum foil icicle falling off the tree onto the tracks would cause the sparks to fly and sometimes stop the train. Christmas dinner is one thing that hasn't changed much over the years though. It is still pretty much a repetition of what we would have on Thanksgiving except that we might have ham instead of turkey. There is a lot more sweet stuff at Christmas too. My all-time favorites were, and still are, white or pink divinity, date nut log or loaf, and any kind of fudge. And yes, even fruit cake! It seems to me that Christmas day was nearly always cold, but not so bad that it kept the kids from going out to play with their new toys. And if it weren't raining, some of the grown-ups would usually find an excuse to sneak off and go hunting. I have never seen a white Christmas, but I came within one day of it once when I was in the army serving in Italy. On Christmas Eve it started a heavy, wet snow that lasted almost all day, and then it rained that night and melted it, so it was all gone by the next morning. I suppose that I will just have to be content with listening to Bing Crosby sing about it. It's too bad that we have so many people today that are trying so hard to do away with celebrating Christmas in the traditional way. Even the big corporations that stand to gain the most from it seem to be bent on destroying it. Hopefully, some day enough people with common sense will protest loudly enough to save it for future generations. But no matter what the future holds, I will always have my memories, and no one can take those away from me!
Well I've gone on long enough with all of this Rambling and Ruminating, so I will end it by wishing you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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