Christmas memories

All my grandparents are sadly gone now, but with Christmas approaching, I am reliving my family Christmases, telling my kids about them. The kids sort of remember their great-grandparents, but it’s vague at best. And my kids can’t relate to some of the tales as all their family lives within an hour—so holiday traveling…totally foreign. But for me, growing up we traveled. My Texas grandparents were long a drive away (7 hours ‘til I was 10 then only 5 hours). Every other Christmas we’d load up the car and drive to west Texas (a small town called Rotan, an hour north of Abilene). 8 cousins, between 4 to 6 aunts and uncles—and of course the grandparents—would cram into a house so small it was (easily) moved from one lot to another while my mom was in college (can you imagine coming home for a weekend in college only to find the house gone?!?! but I digress…). The house was probably 700 sq ft. and the 14-16 folks staying for the 3 or 4 days didn’t seem to get on each others nerves or fight—well, me and my brother did, but we always did—and the grands’ siblings would pop over so it was an uber-full house.

The only decorations, my grandmother had an aluminum Christmas tree in the corner of the living room; that sucker was 30+ years old when I was a kid. When the cousins got there, we’d go chop down mistletoe from one of their trees. We’d stuff it in everything we could—even my granddad’s church boots—though we never hung it up, not a one of us wanted to get trapped underneath with a cousin… just saying… Oh, and my grandmother had a bowl of hard candies. You know the kind you see come out at Christmas. I am pretty sure that sucker was the same bowl for many, many years and we’d painstakingly pry one piece off, eat it and get a tummy ache—could be the copious amount of cookies we’d had before, but I’d like to blame the old candy bowl.

Every so often it would ice, not snow, just ice—the joys of west Texas—and we’d have to stay inside, but otherwise we’d ride horses, see who my granddad’s goat would knock down first and go to the neighboring town to the community center to see Santa (we’d always get a stocking full of nuts and fruit—which we would then peg each other with ). We’d play dominoes or cards. It was a real treat when one of the cousins finally got old enough to sit in the kitchen with the aunts and uncles and play hearts. This was way before handheld game systems or anything other than the old stick Atari so the cousins would use things we found in Granddad’s shed(s) to play with. FYI lawn darts and kids at Christmas… we were lucky to only hit one cousin—the youngest of course.

Up ‘til I was in high school, my granddad would hook up one of this wagons to the horse and we’d go around the town. Granted the population of Rotan back then was a little over 2K so it didn’t take all that long, but, wearing our Santa hats, we’d sing carols—I’m pretty sure my granddad turned his hearing aid off during the rides—and wave at the cars driving by or stop at a great-Aunt/Uncles and say hello.

I miss the Christmases with my cousins and grandparents and am a little sadder still that my kids won’t get to experience anything quite like it. But I have my memories … if only I had that darn aluminum tree… that would be awesome!

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