Chapter 12 It Comes But Once Each Year

As I pack up the last of the Christmas decorations and throw out goodies that sabotage our diets, I am reminded of holidays long past, that started in the fall and lasted through December. While different from today, they were precious to us, and the beginning of some of our treasured family traditions.

There were no elaborate decorations or costumes, blood and gore, or evil practices in our house for Halloween, just plain fun. We rarely attended the school carnivals that were always held, but come October, when Mama went to Tallulah for groceries at A&P, she would sometimes buy us a pumpkin to carve and let us go to Morgan & Lindsey 5 and 10 and look at the Halloween masks. We knew we could not choose the more expensive rubber ones with hair, or get a costume, but there was always a selection of the rigid plastic masks with round holes for your eyes and a thin elastic string to hold it on your head, costing twenty-five cents or less. Oh, the choosing…..a ghost, a clown, a gypsy girl, a witch, a cowboy, or a pirate? After we made our choices, we would try them on all the way home in the back seat of our car, struggling to breathe through the hard plastic, and breaking the elastic string on at least one of them before we got home. Somehow they would last a few days until Halloween night. Then we would each get a paper grocery sack for treats and a bar of soap for tricks, and load up in the car to go around the Flowers Landing neighborhood made up of relatives and long time neighbors who knew us well.

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As the sun set and the harvest moon began to rise, feeling disguised in our plastic masks, we would visit each one, shouting “Trick or Treat!” when they opened the door to our knock. We rarely had a need to use the soap to mark up their windows, which was the worst trick we could think of, because the treats were delightful and prepared special for us. One house would give us homemade popcorn balls, another fresh made fudge, and another Rice Crispy treats, along with bags of penny candy, chocolate bars, and bubble gum, all the while feigning fear and delight at our masked faces. Back home, we would spread out our treasures and compare to see who got more, then eat as much as Mama would allow, afterward playing masked chase around the yard in the dark, trying to catch fireflies until we used up the sugar energy and fell sweaty and exhausted into bed.

The end of November brought days out of school for Thanksgiving, and sometimes cooler weather, with plans for a family get together at one of our relative’s houses. That meant more cousins for us to play with, and each family would bring something for the meal that was served around noon. There was always turkey and dressing, chicken and dressing, sweet potatoes, fresh vegetables from the garden that had been picked and canned in the summer, cornbread and rolls and cans of jellied cranberry sauce that needed to be sliced. But the best part for us was the desserts; pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, chocolate pie, coconut cake, pecan pie, apple pie, and cherry pie, since on this one day, we could have more than one piece! The afternoon brought grand games of Red Rover, Hide and Seek, or Keep Away with our cousins, while the grown-ups talked about work, politics, and the high price of everything, with Christmas around the corner.

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And then there was Christmas. The excitement started to build when the Sears Christmas Catalog came in the mail. My brother and my two younger sisters and I would argue and fight over it until we got a plan for sharing it between the four of us, spending hours studying the colorful, shiny pages filled with the stuff of our dreams, trying to decide what to ask Santa for. Even though we were all under the age of 10, we were aware that there were definite limits to our asking, but the fun was in the dreaming!

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Those weeks between Halloween and Christmas would be filled with extra work for my daddy. When the crops were all gathered and sold, he would turn his attention toward hunting, trapping, and fishing to make extra money. When he had a supply of fish, hides, and meat wrapped and frozen, he would plan a trip to Monroe and West Monroe, and load it all into the trunk of our car. With Mama in the front with him, and all us in the back seat, we would drive to Tallulah and take Hwy 80 all the way to Monroe, a treacherous 60 miles on a narrow two-way road filled with too much traffic, including semi trucks that were so close we felt like we could reach out the car window and touch them.

When we got to Monroe, we wouldn’t stop until we drove all the way down Desiard St. and crossed the bridge into West Monroe at Bayles Landing. Across the street from the landing was a grocery and meat market where daddy sold most of his hides and meat. Then we would go on out of West Monroe to Drew, where Uncle Myron Hart had a syrup mill. He would give us pieces of sugar cane to chew, and buckets of thick ribbon cane syrup traded to my daddy for fresh venison. Here we would eat the sandwiches and snacks Mama had packed for us before heading back to Monroe for some window shopping.

At Christmas, in our world, there was no place like Howard Griffin Land of Toys. The ads on our black and white TV promoted it with the jingle, “Howard Griffin Land of Toys, Lots of fun for girls and boys!”, but the ads were nothing compared to the real thing! We would stand mesmerized at the mechanical window displays of animals and elves, and Santa himself, moving their heads and arms to the Christmas music being played, and surrounded by fake snow and twinkling lights. Our eyes tried to take it all in, the rows and rows of shiny bikes that seemed to stretch for miles, and the shelves full of exquisitely dressed baby dolls with real hair and shiny eyes that would open and close. There were aisles with puzzles and games, building blocks, trucks, gigantic stuffed animals, hula hoops, toy guns, and play kitchen sets, all with the brand-new smell.

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If we were lucky, Santa would be there in person. I remember the fear mixed with joy as I sat on his lap, the softness of his suit, his fake beard, and how it felt to be asking a stranger to bring me toys, all the while hoping he would come through. Enjoying our free candy canes from Santa, we would be occupied for as long as Mama and Daddy let us look, and now that I think back on it, one of them would disappear for a bit while we were looking. When the time came to go, we would get back into the car and Daddy would drive us down Louisville Avenue to see the city decorations, stopping at Burger Chef for a rare treat of fifteen-cent burgers, fries and sodas before heading home. With our stomachs full and our hearts hopeful for Christmas toys to come, we would fall asleep to the hum of the road, leaning on each other in the back seat.

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We would put up our tree a couple weeks before Christmas. There was a board bridge across Mills Bayou and Daddy could drive our car over it and along the logging road into the Tensas woods for 3 or 4 miles if there had not been too much rain. He would let us all out and the search would begin for the perfect wild cedar tree to cut down. Once we made our choice, he would cut it down with the axe he had brought and load it in the trunk with part of it sticking out below the tied down lid. At home, the limbs were trimmed and shaped after being placed in the metal tree holder, rusty from the water it held each year. Mama would help us clip on the strings of lights, replacing the burned out bulbs if she had a spare, and then we could put the shiny balls and homemade decorations on the tree as we wished, with an angel on the top and a fake snow skirt wrapped around the metal tree holder. The icicles were the finishing touch to our masterpiece, packages of shiny foil strings that we threw by the handfuls all over the tree, scooping the fallen ones off the floor and throwing them again to cover it.

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For as long as I remember, we had fruitcake at Christmas, and we still make it today. Grandma Willhite had taught Mama how to make it, and we all helped. There were pecans and walnuts to be cracked and shelled, dates and candied fruit to be chopped, pans to be greased with shortening and lined with brown paper cut to fit the bottom. The recipe called for two kinds of raisins, two kinds of nuts, candied fruit, fig or pear preserves, a dozen eggs, a pound of butter, sugar, flour, spices, ribbon cane syrup, honey, orange juice and bourbon. Daddy would help us mix the stiff batter with the nuts and fruit in large dishpans before Mama packed it in the pans to bake. It took all day, and she would make two recipes, so there was plenty for us, and some for giving away or trading to other relatives for their goodies. The heavy loaves were wrapped in foil and lasted all through Christmas and into the New Year, making a favorite snack for my daddy to take hunting with his bottle of hot coffee.

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Christmas was special to Grandma, because she was a Christian and because she had met Grandpa at Christmas when they were young. She hosted a family party every year, hoping all could attend whether near or far. Most of my daddy’s brothers and sisters lived within driving distance of Flowers Landing in the 1960s, all with families of their own. They would come to Grandma and Grandpa Willhite’s on Christmas Eve for a gathering of 30 to 40 people depending on the year. Every family brought food, and there was a gift under her small tree for everybody, Grandma made sure of that. It may be a pair of socks, a small hand cream, toothpaste, a yo-yo, or a ball — whatever she found throughout the year that she thought we could use. We would all crowd into their small house for the blessing, then the cousins would be served first and sent outside to eat. A fire was blazing in the yard, and we all had fireworks to shoot, separating into two groups of the girls and the boys. The girls liked to shoot the Roman candles first, blasting their balls of fire through the bare limbs of the pecan trees on the edge of the yard, and then finish off with the sparklers, lighting them with burning sticks from the fire and twirling them in circles until they burned out. But the boys were all about the firecrackers, delighting in the noise and chaos caused by throwing large bundles into the fire as we girls were standing near it, and then attacking us with smoke bombs as we ran away.

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When everyone had their fill of food and had shot up all the fireworks, we would be called into the house to get our presents, say “Merry Christmas” and “Thank You” to Grandma and Grandpa, and our good byes to cousins, aunts, and uncles we didn’t see every day. Then we would all hurry home and to bed, because Santa Clause was coming!

In the years that have passed since then, I have not experienced any greater joy than those Christmas mornings when one of us would wake and tip toe into the living room to peek at the tree, then rush back to wake up the other three so that we could all four tear into the presents together. That same joy was on our parents faces as we showed them what we got, a feeling that I now recognize as the joy of giving someone something without expecting anything in return, as God did when he gave us His Son. Though we weren’t religious, and we did not talk a lot about Jesus, we had the true Christmas Spirit shown to us by the sacrifice and love of our parents, our grandparents, and our neighbors who gave us all they could.

“Give and it will be given to you. A good portion- packed down, firmly shaken, and overflowing-will fall into your lap. The portion you give will determine the portion you receive in return.”

luke 6:38