Christmas Thoughts

One night around the first of December, the north wind whispers through the tall white pine. She bends and sways but does not shed her gown beneath old man winter's cold wet kisses as the maple, birtch, oak and hickory had done. The wind dies to a whimper leaving the modest tree alone standing fully clothed in a forest full of naked trees. Upright and decent she stands, her green gown sparkling with frost, but not for long...
By the middle of December her branches would hang across many city streets- streached from pole, and resembling long feathery snakes wearing gemstones. This green decoration was called tying pine, or roping by the gentle hill folks that made it.1

Christmas Eves of Long ago2

All busy in the city...
Throughout the streets people are hustling like great herds of cattle to get their last minute shopping done.
Salvatation Santas stand on every corner like the cattle on a thousand hills. Bright lights peek down at the confusion through white pine roping that had been strung from pole to pole- Christmas decoration made by the rough red hands of hill people.
Most shoppers never once pause to think of these hill people. They will never know how these hard working honest people had gathered the pretty branches with their own hands, and had stood on their feet all day- most every day since the first of December and far into the nights tying them to yard after yard of rope. NOT to make the city look as if it had been infested with long green snakes for the Lord's birthday, but so they could make enough money to buy their children a little something for Christmas after paying off the back bills that had awaited in tall stacks from one year to the next. Christmas season was the only time these people had a chance to make extra money.
Many of the five and dime clerks had sneered when money had been handed to them from pine rawlson stained hands in exchange for small rubber dolls and cheap plastic trucks. These clerks had failed to see the good honest spirit behind the stained hands.
How do I know this? Because I grew up in these hills. Mommy and daddy were two of the hill folks that made Christmas roping. I was a hill child, but never considered myself to be poor. I never knew I was. These childhood Christmas's were the happiest times in my life. I look back today and realize that the city folks looked down on me and my little sister when we went to Winchester with daddy in his old truck to delivery Christmas roping. I guess they though their children were better, because they were better dressed. Now I look back and I wonder if these folks had ever known the joy of making a small child happy. You cannot make children happy when they are used to getting everything they want and are never satisfied with what they have. Perhaps these parents had robbed their children of a joyous childhood by giving in to every whim... Yes these shoppers carried home expensive gifts that would soon be toss aside and forgotton, but the two little girls [my sister and me] that sit in daddy's old truck and watched through the awed eyes of timid hill children carried home a happy memory. A memory that was to become a hallmark of childhood in years to come...3

As a child I used to gasp at the Christmas lights hanging over the city. Christmas was the only time I was ever allowed to go there, and although the Christmas lights and the many santa clauses caused me and my little sister to gasp in wonder- I look back now and relize that they were a cheap imatation of the real thing, and that my sister and I were the blessed ones, yet we never knew it until we grew up.
Now we both look back on our childhood with longing.4

It was daddy's opinion that On Christmas Eve the city folks would take a pill and go to bed only to awaken a half hour later with the big eye.[Wide awake unable to sleep] They would take another pill, go back to sleep only to awaken again with the big eye and to the sound of a TV blaring somewhere in the night. ''Turn that damn thing off!''
The hill children would be asleep nestled deep in the mountains like rare gems sparkling with childhood magic. Sweet memories in the making- memories that will be remembered long after the city has been forgotton. Maybe he made that up to make us feel better.
It never mattered, we were too young and innocient to feel bad but we loved to hear him talk about this.5

Happy Holidays
Judy C. Meeker