Family Gatherings: A Personal Christmas Story

Sitting down and looking at the title here, I am transported through time, over years, in and out of days and holidays of my youth, and I land in the living room of my great-grandmother's house.

As a child I was completely unaware of how truly lucky I was to be surrounded by the extended family I had. I was blessed to have all my grandparents still living until I was well in my 30's and my great grandmother was with us until I was a teenager. All of them lived in a small southern town. My father's family lived on the corner of one intersection and his grandmother, my great grandmother, lived less than one block away. My mother's family lived about a mile away from them. My family, my parents and three younger brothers and I lived about an hour away and we traveled that hour once a week, making our visit to both sides and growing up very close to each in location and emotion.

Holidays on my father's side were spent at my great-grandmother's house and if I close my eyes I can hear the voices and smell the food. The house was filled to overflowing with people and if I could bottle and sell the aroma that emanated from this house I would be a millionaire many times over. Even as a child it was a feast for the senses.

Great grandmother, grandmother and her sisters all had their specialties and created most of the food, but others brought things as well. Now this was a small house and we had enough food there to fill 2 very large tables and people had to scatter about to eat as the tables were full to the edges with food of all kinds. Then there was a third table exclusively for deserts, that ranged from 7 layer lemon cake that would turn your mouth inside out to a 9 inch tall coconut cake with freshly grated coconut all over, and all were made from scratch.

The above was true for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas every year until my great grandmother passed away. The Thanksgiving one ended with the drawing of names by the adults for Christmas and everyone bought for the children. While the adults handled these mundane issues we, my cousins and I, would be playing outside around the roots of the old oak tree or in the branches of the crab apple tree.

When we arrived for the Christmas get-together, walking into the Victorian-style living room or parlor, we were greeted by a small plastic tree that was standing on a white sheet over a Victorian table and surrounding it and spilling out to cover half the floor would be the biggest pile of decoratively wrapped presents you can imagine.

As a mother now myself, I think of what joy and wonder the adults must have seen on the faces of the children. And what I wouldn't give to get to experience that with my children now, there in that house, with those faces and voices, and the smells and aromas.

I think it is these experiences of my childhood that make me now want to try to permanently etch in the memories of my children the holidays and important times of their lives by appealing to their sense of smell. Each occasion being marked with a particular set of aromas hoping, when encountered later in life, the repeat of them will invoke a thrill and memory of their own childhood and happy times in their lives.

As parents, what could be more fulfilling or comforting than to have your children sitting around you on Christmas Eve, sipping hot chocolate, reading the Christmas story from Luke 2 and listening to your children chatter about past times together and past Christmas memories while the smell of warmed spiced apple cider and the turkey cooking for the next day wafts past you and fills you with your own trip down memory lane, of people and places long since gone, but stamped and etched in your memory as ice becomes etched in lacy patterns on the windows on chilly winter mornings.

The warm and fuzzy feelings these scents still bring up to me are the very things I am most thankful for and are what Christmas means to me. I happen to believe that each time we walk back in our memories of times with those no longer with us here on Earth, we summon them back close to us again and I can sometimes feel their hand on my shoulder while I wrap myself in the feelings remembered.

What does Christmas mean to you?

I challenge you to spend your time this year creating just such memories for your children to be able to pull from later in their lives. One day, as they remember, when you are no longer with them, the remembering will summon you back to them and allow you the opportunity to be able to place your hand on their shoulder and let them know you are still with them, watching and protecting them. What a gift for you all, for you the gift of the joy of giving and the knowledge of what you are creating, and for them the gift of the joy of remembering you and the lovely times spent with you.

Merry Christmas to you all and happy memory-making this year.