Its the Holiday Season--Good Times

Good times always seem a lot better as times go by.

Christmas Trees: 
Growing up in the Delta, our family had a strange tradition. For years. we would drive to Yazoo City to our Aunt & Uncle's house to pick up our scotch pine Christmas tree that the Uncle had picked out for us at the tree lot sponsored by the Boy Scouts.  It didn't take my brother and me long to loose interest in this tradition.  As we got older, and had gotten our driver's license, our Mom instructed us to go to Indianola to pick up a tree.  We had more fun that day, finally deciding on one.  Get it home, in the stand and decorated.  Turned out that it was one of the most crooked tree trunks on record for a Christmas tree.  That sucker must have fallen over 3-4 times during the season.  Did not care, it was ours!

Now that I'm older, married. with grown boys, live trees became less special. The last live tree got put into the stand and sat there a day or two before it got decorated.  The spousal unit and I decided to get ourselves an artificial, pre-lit tree, a big, tall seven footer!  Loved that tree, up and lit in a manner of minutes.   The decorating was another matter.  Had to go recruit "Baby Jess" to come over and help trim it out.   Now that a few years have passed, not so quick to light.  Some of the strands have burned out and have been replaced.  Last year the spousal unit finally spent hours pulling them all off and manually added the lights.  Guess we will see in a few days what the tree plans are for this year.

Holiday Punch:
Years ago, as a young adult, I had the bright idea that the family needed to celebrate the holidays with a festive holiday punch.  I found a recipe, bought the ingredients, including a fifth of vodka, and before long, we had ourselves a batch of holiday punch.  Only problem was that I was the only one drinking.  Next morning, you guess it, the worst hangover ever!  My Dad got such a kick out of me and my headache!

Spousal unit spent her first career as a nurse at Woman's Hospital.  The hospital employed a man, Mr. Shelvee", that knew how to take care of all the doctors on staff.  That man had a recipe for egg nog that was out of this world!  Miss it big time.

Christmas Gifts:
Never been good at keeping a secret.  Getting better at it.

Growing up, the family went to Greenwood to go shopping.  My brother and I had saved up our money and bought our Mother a special gift.  In the car, my Mom mentioned that we was gonna need a box or two for wrapping gifts.  I let it slip the "your dress is in a box".  Whoops!  She said, well, at least don't tell me what color.  Later she hinted to my Dad that she needed some new shoes.  Good ole me-let it slip "get some brown ones".  To this day, I still get reminded of this.

In the early years of marriage, the spousal unit often had to work at the hospital during the holidays.  One particular one, I waited at home for her to get home so we could enjoy opening our gifts to each other,  I decided that we should make a game of it and try to guess what was in the package before we opened it.  The spousal unit was very surprised to see that I was batting 1000, up until the last gift.  Believe me, it was very hard to keep a straight face.  On the last box, I guessed it was a pair of shoes.  The spousal unit was in total disbelief!  That was until she inspected the packaging and box that she had used for the wrapping.  Busted!  She soon figured out that while she was at work, I had secretly inspected, even opened the packages to find out what she had gotten me.  Best Christmas ever!  She now hides them and pulls them out at the last minute.

Christmas Eve:
After moving into our first house, we began attending church at St. Marks.  We made plans to go to the Christmas Eve candlelight service, then go out to get ourselves something to eat.  The service was wonderful, and was over well after six.  We took the ride to I55 to pick out a place to eat, only to discover that most of the restaurants had already closed, and those that were open were either closing or not taking anymore diners.  We ended up at the Krystal on Meadowbrook Drive.  Best Krystal cheeseburger I ever had!

Package from Santa:
My first overnite Christmas at the In-laws was memorable.  I had wrapped up a special gift for the baby sister.  In it, I placed some sticks and a ziplock bag full of ashes.  It included a note "count the times you have been good this year, and count the number of times you have been bad.  Shake the box three times and open it for your surprise!  Later found the box and its contents behind the piano.  Thirty years later, baby sister now has her own babies.  Last Christmas, she looks me in the eye, and says "don't you even thing of doing that to my babies!"


There are many more, may share a few closer to the day for the real reason for the season.  Feel free to share some of yours.  Happy Holidays everyone!