To Be a Child at Christmas

When I was a child, to help pass the time until Christmas, Mother played a game with me. Each day of December, she put something in my stocking--the red one, handmade with white bias binding around the edge and my name embroidered in white script lettering on the cuff at the top--made for my first Christmas by a family friend, Mae Tingey, mother of our bishop, Maurice Tingey, grandmother of Kent Tingey, my childhood playmate. Mae lived next door on what was once Grandpa Morgan's farm, in the home that had belonged to my father's brother, Edgar. I will hang that same stocking again this year, just for sentiment, but as a child, it was such fun to see what was there for me to find. Mother used the letters of the alphabet, all 26, within the 24 days of waiting. I had to learn to spell whatever it was that I found in the stocking before I could have it.

Daddy put hay on the front porch, for the reindeer to eat, of course! Sometime during the Eve, I'd hear sleigh bells, my imagination would take over and I was sure that I'd heard the sound of hooves, too!

Mother spent time cleaning my dolls and washing their clothes, cleaning Teddy bears and giving them a fresh bow of ribbon in time for the holiday. On Christmas Eve, she'd line them all up on the couch for me, a part of the night's ritual. Mother had decorated the tree earlier but as the final touch, I got to hang my red bells on the tree--three deep ruby-red plastic bells, two small and one larger with an actual jingle bell inside.

Todd was less than a year old for his first Christmas. He took the balls off the tree as fast as I could hang them. I found him one day with broken particles of an ornament in his hands and in his mouth. I frantically called my doctor, asking what I should do in such an emergency. He paused, then advised, "I wouldn't worry about it too much. You can buy those ornaments anywhere downtown, two for a quarter."

One way to avoid a family feud when I die is to take the two, wooden German crafted tree ornaments with movable parts with me. I bought the pirate for Todd, the wooden soldier for Jenn. She took a liking to the pirate and quietly slipped it away long enough to write her name on it in black marker. It was hard to scold a 3-year old who could write her own name. The backwards "J" only made it more adorable.

One year, there was a special delivery, in the final hours before the Eve. My first grandchild was born! He came to his Grandma-ma's dressed in a Christmas stocking, on the day of Christmas Eve. Was it that I had not put up a tree or decorations or planned a festive meal? I don't know, but he sure was upset about something. That baby cried all night! Near morning, with a dry diaper, and an extra feeding while his tired parents got some rest, I rocked him, quietly singing in his little ear, "I Am A Child of God," and he settled right down. It was a sweet moment for a new Grandma-ma, holding a newborn who still smelled of heaven, on Christmas morn.