My Holiday Reminiscences Our Christmas tree was real, as lush as we could afford, at least 5 feet tall, and endowed with the most wonderful aroma. There was no such thing as an artificial Christmas tree until after I was grown. By then these "manufactured by humans" tree came in metal or plastic versions. The metal ones were silver or gold. The plastic came in good-weather green. But by then you could also get your real evergreens artificially "flocked" to look snowy-white.
Most of the decorations we hung on my childhood trees were homemade. The "garlands" were made of onstruction paper strips circled into multicolored chains. They also included stringed popcorn. At school we made ornaments as class projects, and Mama hung every one, ugly or beautiful.
Presents were sometimes homemade, sometimes ordered out of the Montgomery Ward "Christmas" catalog. Re-gifting, however, was verboten with my mother. Our parents saw to it that each child's was of equal monetary value, as nearly as possible. We got one main gift each, as much as the folks could afford that year.
Food was always delicious, and never felt anything less than special. It was not the cost, it was the care with which it was prepared. The Christmas day menu might include ham, turkey or roast hen with bread dressing. Side dishes were mashed potatotoes, candies sweet potatoes, gravy, green peas, homemade cranberry sauce, and yeast rolls. Desserts would be fruitcake, or coconut cake, mincemeat pie and homemade fudge and fondant candy. Christmas Eve's menu was always oyster stew with little round soda crackers.
To summarize - now I know they were on a shoestring. But I never felt this as a child. Our Christmases were celebrated together with much attention, tradition and with love. We looked forward to Christmas Eve and to the day itself when we got to open our presents. And we felt rich.
My topical post today at South by Southwest is about Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
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