Before we forget the egg nog and stockings and broom up all the pine needles from the tree we've put away, I thought I'd leave everyone a great little Christmas story written many years ago by Charlie Daniels and just recently reposted on his website. It's a beautiful story- well worth the read:
I know, I know. It sounds like I’ve had too much eggnog, don’t it? All I ask is that you wait till I get through telling my story before you make up your mind.
When I was a kid, Christmas time had a magic to it that no other season of the year had. There was just something in the air, something that you couldn't put your finger on, but it was there, and it affected everybody.
It seemed like everybody smiled and laughed more at that time of year, even the people who didn’t hardly smile and laugh the rest of the year.
“You reckon it’s gonna snow? I sure do wish it’d snow this year. Do you reckon it’s gonna?”
Heck no, it won’t gonna snow. As far as I know, it ain’t never snowed in
In the funny papers, Nancy and Sluggo and Little Orphaned Annie had snow to frolic around in at Christmas time. The Christmas cards had snow. Bing Crosby even had snow to sing about. But not one flake fell on
But that didn’t dampen our spirits one little bit. Our family celebrated Christmas to the hilt. We were a big, close-knit family, and we’d gather up at Grandma’s house every year. My grandparents lived on a farm in
They lived in a great big old farmhouse, and every Christmas they’d fill it up with their children and grandchildren. We’d always stay from the night of the twenty-third through the morning of the twenty-sixth.
There’d be Uncle Clyde and Aunt Martha, Uncle Lacy and Aunt Selma, Uncle Leroy and Aunt Mollie, Uncle Stewart and Aunt Opal, and my mama and daddy, Ernest and Nadine. I won;t even go into how many children were there, but take my word for it, there were a bunch.
There’d be people sleeping all over that big old house. We kids would sleep on pallets on the floor, and we’d giggle and play till some of the grown-ups would come and make us be quiet.
All the usual ground rules about eating were off for those days at Grandma’s house. You could eat as much pie and cake and candy as you could hold, and your mama wouldn’t say a word to you.
My grandma would cook from sunup to sundown and love every minute of it. She’d have cakes, pies candy, fruit and nuts setting out all the time, and on top of that, she’d cook three big meals a day. I mean, we eat like pigs.
Christmas was also the only time that my Granddaddy would take a drink. It was a Southern custom of the time not to drink in front of small children, so Granddaddy kept his drinking whiskey hid in the barn. When he’d want to go out there and get him a snort, he’d say that he had to go see if the mare had had her foal yet.
It was a good, good time. A little old-fashioned by some peoples standards, but it suited us just fine.
If I’m not mistaken, it was the year I was five years old that my cousin Buford told me that there wasn't any Santa Claus. Buford was about nine at the time. He always was a mean-natured cuss. Still is.
Well, I just refused to believe him. I said, “You’re telling a great big fib, Buford Ray, ‘cause Santa Claus comes to see me every Christmas, right here at Grandma and Granddaddy’s house.”
Read the rest of this story HERE.
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