Dawn Phelps
Columnist
*I know Christmas is a few days in the past. But I would like to share a true Christmas story from my childhood as I wish a healthy, happy New Year for each reader!
“Don’t worry,” my mother said. “We will have Christmas.” I still remember her words one Christmas when I was a young child, a Christmas when there was no money for the usual “Santa Claus” gifts for our family. Farming had not been profitable for my dad that year, and his health was not good.
But first let me give a little background to my life in Tennessee. I was the second of seven children. At the time of “the special Christmas,” there were six children in our family—my youngest sister had not been born. My grandmother also lived with us, making a total of nine in our household at the time.
We lived in a large rambling thirteen-room house on 160 acres. The house was heated by two fireplaces and a cook stove in the kitchen.
I remember how cold it was to sleep in an unheated bedroom—how my oldest sister Joy and I, wearing our long flannel nightgowns, warmed ourselves by the fireplace in my parents’ bedroom until our nightgowns were hot to touch, then run down the hall, and dive into an ice-cold bed. We would huddle in bed, shivering, our teeth chattering, until we warmed up.
We grew up eating wild greens called poke salad, turnip greens, and wild game, including rabbits and squirrels that my daddy shot in the woods. But we mostly ate white beans or pinto beans with cornbread which were baked in a black iron skillet twice a day. But we also ate vegetables canned from own garden and wild blackberries that we picked, braving the rattlesnakes and copperheads!
For breakfast, my mother baked biscuits 364 days a year. But on Christmas morning, mother took a break from biscuit making—a part of my Christmas story.
Each Christmas eve the children in my family would discuss where our “Santa Claus” gifts should be left. We made name tags, leaving them in our chosen spots for our presents, such as on the couch or a particular chair.
Our gifts usually were not big ones. Sometimes we would get a new tablet or pencils for school, and sometimes new socks or a clothing item. But we were pleased with anything we received.
It was also a part of our tradition to have bananas, pecans, and tangerines on Christmas morning, but only on Christmas morning. That was the day my mother got a break from cooking, and we were allowed to eat as many bananas or tangerines as we wished—they were so good!
That particular year, up until the day before Christmas, there was still no money. But my mother still stood firm that we would have Christmas. To me as a child things did not look very promising.
When the mailman brought the mail that Christmas Eve day, there was a card from my Uncle Douglas and Aunt Ruth in California. Inside the card, there was a twenty-dollar bill—a lot of money for our family!
On Christmas Eve my mother and my oldest sister took the twenty-dollar bill to Columbia to shop. Somehow, with the sales, the twenty dollars stretched to provide gifts for everyone in the family! We also had our traditional bananas and pecans and tangerines.
My Uncle Doug in California did not know there was no money for Christmas that year. He did not know that his twenty-dollar bill would provide the most memorable Christmas of my childhood.
Looking back, Christmas to our family was not just about the “things” we received. Christmas was about memories made as we helped cut a cedar tree from the pasture and about decorating the tree with bubble candles and the same decorations used through the years.
It was about being together. It is about Aunt Mary’s “cup salad” and jam cake, made from the wild blackberry jam. It was about my mother’s homemade coconut cake and boiled custard. And, yes, it was about a special Christmas. To a child that twenty dollars was a miracle provided by God through an uncle in California.
But even more, Christmas is about family, relatives, and friends. But most of all Christmas is about the birth of Jesus—the biggest miracle, the most special Christmas of all!
I hope you have already had a wonderful Christmas and that you will have a blessed year in 2026! Happy New Year!
