THE TRADITIONS OF CHRISTMAS

 

   Christmas is about traditions.  It is designed that way ( the sights, the sounds, and the smells). It all began some two thousand years ago.  Over the millennia the way we celebrate Christmas has changed.  The way we approach the Christmas season is just not the same anymore. What do I miss most about Christmas?  I miss my mother clapping her hands and singing “You better watch out, you better not cry, ...”  I miss my father going to the office around midnight on Christmas Eve.  I miss staying up all night waiting to see what Santa Claus brought me. What were your favorites?

    One of our oldest traditions is the Christmas tree.  The tradition of the Christmas tree came to the South when German immigrants began to place trees in their homes many years ago.  Pine and bay boughs, and real live mistletoe were plucked right from the bountiful forests.  In the days before roadside stands and Christmas tree farms, most folks were contented just to go out into our bountiful forests and find just the right cedar or a small pine.  You could buy ornaments in the store or you could make your own.  Paper, scissors, and glue were all you needed.  How many of you made a garland of popcorn with a needle and a thread?   When did you last see a tree with icicles?  No, not real icicles, but the synthetic kind which comes in a box and rarely winds up just where you wanted them to fall.  

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 

    Then the world got in a hurry.  “Just go buy a tree,” someone said.  Then someone said to himself, let’s make an artificial tree - no needles, no mess, no hassle.  We can even make them smell like a real tree.  Just stuff some evergreen-smelling chemical into a can and spray it on. Presto!  You could even go to the store and spray artificial snow on your tree if you wanted a white Christmas.  Some enterprising person came up with the idea of making silver trees back in the fifties, you know, they were about three feet tall with silver needles on a silver metal trunk. You could hang balls on them and if you were really cool, you could buy one of those revolving spotlights with three colors to illuminate your window with the prettiest tree on the block.   Technology has allowed us to create revolving trees, flashing trees, and even one that plays carols. What will they think of next?  I guess they will make a computer, camera, and a cell phone that looks like a tree so you can go online in full view of Grandpa and Grandma while you are opening your presents. 

1940

1907

    To me, the most important Christmas tradition is spending quality time with your family and friends.  Yes, there are people who are alone. (Maybe there is a new tradition you could start - no one should be alone at Christmas.)  In my nearly five decades on this Earth, I have noticed that the way families celebrate Christmas has changed, changed for the worse I fear.  In these days of hustle and bustle, we have grown further apart, too far. Kids grow up and move away.  In my youth, Christmas was a time when all of my family gathered together - parents, grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles, even great-aunts and uncles.  

  The centerpiece of the Christmas gathering was, and still is the Christmas meal. Times have changed here too.  When Grandma was cooking, she rose before dawn and promptly went into the kitchen. Of course, she had been in there for days getting everything ready before everyone came home.  There was usually enough food to feed everyone, three times over.  The foods we eat have basically stayed the same, turkey, ham, dressing, peas, breads, and desserts.  It’s the atmosphere that surrounds the feast that has changed.  No longer do you see embroidered tablecloths.  Rarely to you see homemade table decorations.  When was the last time you ate on your grandmother’s old dinner plates?  You know, the ones she got when she got married.   Today,  most of our foods come already prepared, out of a can or a frozen plastic box or bag, so much for cooking from scratch.

    The toys (ah yes, the toys!) have changed too.  In the days of the Great Depression, many kids would be happy to find their stockings filled with fruits, nuts, and a lot of candy.  A new set of clothes was a treat.  If you were lucky, you might find a ball or a doll, or if you were really lucky, you might find a new bicycle or Radio Flyer wagon near the tree.  Yes, there are still GI Joes, Barbies, slinkies, legos, hula hoops, and erector sets.  When is the last time that you saw a cap pistol, a paper kite, or an electric choo choo train under the tree?  You still see bicycles. But, back in decades following World War II, all you had to do was to go outside in the neighborhood on Christmas morning and you would instantly see just what kids got new bikes for Christmas.  They were all riding them around - with card spokes or the ultimate in sound devices, the classic V-rooom motor, which made any bike sound like a motorcycle - well not really, but we thought so anyway.  CDs, DVDs, and video games have replaced plastic army men, tea sets, and board games. Skateboards and scooters are still around, but they’ve been souped up just a little bit.  

 

   Where are the Christmas carolers?  Whatever happened to the hay ride? (We have to settle for hay rides since there isn’t much snow for a sleigh ride) Why don’t they decorate the VA hospital with tens of thousands of lights like they used to?  Why did they take the star off the top of the courthouse?  Where are the kids riding around the neighborhood in packs showing off their new bikes?   

    Do you remember how many people used to Christmas shop downtown before the mall came?  There were thousands of folks crowding the streets on the weekends before Christmas.  You couldn’t find a place to park. That was okay, we didn’t mind the walk.  After all, it was Christmas. To most of us baby boomers, the best place in town was the toy section upstairs in McLellan’s Department Store. Few people went to Macon to shop for toys or gifts, and even fewer went to Atlanta. Shop-at-home was the norm, not the plea of the Chamber of Commerce.  Remember when you went to a movie at Christmastime?  Remember the Christmas trees around the courthouse? At the Martin Theater, we had to endure a seemingly endless series of commercials wishing us a Merry Christmas and thanking us for our patronage during the year.  Remember the green and silver garlands and the Santa Claus that hung over West Jackson Street?  They’re gone now, victims of that abominable bureaucratic grinch, we have come to know as the D.O.T.

    There hasn’t always been a man in a red suit and a white beard.  Before he was Santa Claus, he was known to some as Father Christmas or Kris Kringle.  There isn’t an adult or a kid alive who hasn’t sat up the whole night waiting for Santa, listening for the reindeer, and peaking in the living room to see if he had come yet.  Some clever father or mother had an idea, why not feed Santa Claus?  Let’s give him some cookies and a Coke.  I always wondered why Santa Claus changed his drinking habits when Diet Rite Cola came out.  He always left his plate clean.  As we grow up many of us don’t believe in Santa Claus.  I, for one, am an exception.  There was, is,  and always will be a Santa Claus.  If he ceases to exist, then we might as well forget Christmas altogether.  To most kids, he represents getting toys and presents under the tree, but his spirit should live in all of us, reminding us that Christmas is about giving and not getting. 

 

   Tonight, I ask you to think about your family’s Christmas traditions. Share them with your family.  Remember the old ones, the ones that make you laugh,  the ones that make you cry, and the ones that, well, make you feel good, way deep down inside.  Start a new tradition - one that your children will always remember.  On this holy night, remember that it is the night of our dear savior’s birth.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.