Christmas Joy

The smells of Christmas.

When I look back on fifty some years of living and consider the smells that I most associate with Christmas, two specific smells are predominate. The first smell could be found in the smokehouse behind my grandparents' farm house. I don't remember ever seeing hams or poke sacks of sausage hanging from the rafters in the smokehouse when I was a child. However, many years after those parts of the pig had quit residence in that little white clapboard smokehouse, you could still detect the wonderful smell of smoked hams and sausage hanging in there from years before.

I will tell you right now that the smell of a cooked ham is so exotic and so nostalgic for me that the mere thought of it will make me smile. This afternoon, a UPS delivery person arrived at our house in Central Georgia, and my loving daughter removed its contents into our refrigerator and freezer, but left the empty box, so I could smell it and catch the earthy, piquant smell of the ham and bacon that had been shipped within it. My wife even volunteered to allow me to take the box in my car, so that my car could carry the smell of that smoked pork around town with me.

I can't tell you how many times at this time of year I have had this experience: my family drives up to North Atlanta to visit my parents and they have received their shipment of ham and bacon and sausage. Prior to our advent, my mother has soaked and baked same ham and allowed it to cool on her counter. The perfume of the ham, when you enter the door, is as intoxicating as liqour. If I weren't stuffing the fingers of the hock into my mouth, allowing the grease to cover my lips and fingers and hands, I might be tempted to brush the hock behind my ears and under my nose. Just because.

That is Christmas.

The second smell of Christmas, is a smell which is safely packed away in my past. When my family would travel back to Kentucky and Tennessee in the Wintertime, you would drive through the cities and towns and communities in which our relatives lived and you could see the grey skies of Winter and the browns and tans and greys left behind when the leaves had turned and left their branches. But then, when you arrived at your destination, the first sense that would be alerted to the season would be your sense of smell. As you opened the door, your nostrils would be filled with the the sweet peat frangrance of coal smoke coming from the chimneys in the neighborhood.

The smell of coal smoke would be all around you. Everyone seemed to have a fireplace which burned coal back then. I remember the little shed out back of the farmhouse, where my grandfather would keep his garden tools and other yard gear. During the late Fall and Winter, a pile of coal would lie at the center of the shed. Many years after my grandmother had converted from coal to other forms of energy, you could still find the remnants of the coal pile in the center of the shed.

At Christmas time, when great aunts and uncle and cousins would visit, the coal scuttle from the parlor would be taken out in the crisp night air to the shed and a healthy pile of coal would be brought back into the parlor. At night, after Christmas supper and the ambrosia and caramels and caramel corn and coconut cake and boiled custard, the ladies would gather in the parlor, enjoying the heat from the coal stove and discussing the family and the town and anything else which might come to mind. The coal stove would glow red and yellow with the flames from the coal fire.

Meanwhile, the men and boys would lay around the hall we used as a living room like fat, satisfied hound dogs, often sleeping off the evening's bounty. The young ones would play with their toys. I would take one of the books I received and start reading.

The night would get dark and the wind would kick up, making a song as it blew across the side of the farmhouse on the hill. But inside, we would warm and full and captivated by the lights and the sounds and the smells of Christmas. A safe harbor of family and Christmas and warmth and love.