By Sue Seibert | siouxsue42@att.net

When you recall the Christmases of your childhood, what images do you see? Do you see the firelight; the glow of the Christmas tree? Do you smell the pumpkin pie and the turkey and dressing? Do you hear the church bells ringing in Christ’s birth?

I think I will share with you a few of my Christmas memories.

The first few years of my life, World War II was in progress, and I really only remember sketches. One is sitting in front of a Christmas tree in what we fondly referred to as, “The Little House.” Mother posed me there to take a picture to send Daddy who was away in the war. I am sitting in a tiny rocking chair holding a big stuffed doll.

But, hey, those of you who know me know that dolls were not my favorite toys, and while Mother always insisted on giving me one each Christmas – Mother being a girly-girl – Daddy always accommodated me with boots and guns; cowboy hats and ranch sets; Lincoln logs and jeans. I was, and still am, a tomboy, through and through!

The smell I most associate with Christmas is the smell of cedar. Every year right after Thanksgiving dinner we would go out to the farm and cut down a cedar tree. Since Daddy had done a pretty good job of ridding our pasture of cedars, we would often have to go to a neighbor or friend’s farm, but we always got a nice, fat, sweet smelling tree and decorated it with all the balls Daddy and Mother had collected over the years. We put cotton batting on the floor for snow, and we filled the area under the tree with gifts.

We had a manger scene under the tree, and one year one of Mother’s many Boston terriers chewed the head off one of the shepherds. But that was OK, we used that manger scene anyway. Mother loved those dogs. ‘nuff said!

We always stayed at home on Christmas because Mother was an only child, and her widowed mother lived right next door. Mother wouldn’t leave her mother, and as Daddy had seven sisters, Mother felt justified in his not driving to Midland for their family Christmas. I must say that never made me particularly happy, but that’s the way it was. Daddy and I always had fun in the afternoon riding our horses in the quiet of that farm.

Our church usually went caroling during Advent, and once our Methodist youth choir sang at Midnight Mass at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Stephenville. That was my first time at Solemn High Mass, but, thankfully, it wasn’t my last.

Christmas Eve was usually spent with my parents’ best friends, the Coles, and their children, David and Carolyn (hence our Carolyn’s name). We sang around the piano, drank non-alcoholic egg nog, and ate fruit cake. We were a happy bunch.

During the war, I heard on the radio, probably a 1940s talk show, that there was no Santa Claus and that parents should not tell their children there was a Santa. I went right to my mother who simply agreed with the radio and went back to her cooking. I was horrified, but I remember later as Santa came to church on Christmas Eve that I was not to tell the little girl next to me that it was really her daddy. How she could miss that I had not a clue, but I never told the secret to a soul!

Christmas is a precious time. It is the day, the season, to celebrate the birth of Christ. For me as a little German American girl, it was also the month of Christmas, from December 6, St. Nicholas Day, until Epiphany on January 6. It was, it is, pure joy! For you, I pray that it is a time of joy, even in the midst of what may be, for some of you, a time of sorrow, for in this season we thank God for sending His Son to us.

Merry Christmas!