Christmases and Winter snowfalls

A day of shopping with Kate, one closing in the afternoon, church at 7:00 and a long Winter's nap before Christmas morning. Tomorrow should be a good day out in the milieu. All the Christmas songs coming to life. I hope to have some of the money in my pocket still in my pocket when the day is over. I am not sure that is realistic, but it is my goal.

I have tried to keep some traditions going. I like to spend time shopping and stop to have some beef in celebration of the season. I opened the refrigerator in Dunwoody this evening and noticed a pint of oysters. Some things need to stick around, I suppose.

Oysters on Christmas Eve are an Irish tradition. This is a tradition which was passed down in our family through the Cooleys. My great-grandfather Cooley owned a grocery store and could order oysters in the dead of Winter from the gulf coast, so that even in the dry land-locked center of Tennessee, there could still be oysters on Christmas Eve.

When I was a child, Christmas Eve meant watching my father eat oyster stew and coconut cake. Meanwhile, we ate pot pies and thought about the joys to come on the next morning.

We would get dressed and go to church on Christmas Eve, then return and sit in the living room and read the Christmas story from Luke. Good old Luke, much more poetic in the King James Version, even for a physician. Later, Linus snagged the glory on A Charlie Brown Christmas, when he recited the Luke passage in the middle of the commercialization and yearning for meaning among the cartoon images.

On Christmas morning, we would get up early and drink a small glass of orange juice, then jump into the chaos of Christmas, the wild frenzy of me, me, me. Later, we would pile our presents in a stack and struggle to transport them to our bedrooms above, where I would try on every piece of new clothing and inspect every toy or gadget, then settle down with whatever book was the best gift of Christmas.

I almost forgot the breakfast with grits and coutnry ham and polish sausage and ambrosia. Then, later, the feast of turkey and ham and green beans and potatoes and pickles and several glasses of wine and boiled custard and pies and more ambrosia and cakes and cookies and whatever found its way to the kitchen and then to our mouths, to find a place on our hips, forever.

I have many memories. I really enjoyed those warm Christmas mornings in Georgia and Alabama when we could take our toys outside and share them with the neighborhood kids. Walking around the neighborhood in shirtsleeves, playing football in the front yard, riding our bikes around Dunwoody.

But I also remember the snows of Christmas in Indianapolis and waking up to look out the windows at the flakes falling and glad to be inside. Later, watching the boys next door building a igloo, using their sand box for a roof. Being younger, I was excluded from their clubhouse, so I built a wall several miles long to keep the barbarians out, much like the emperors of China. Of course, snow walls don't work as well as the stone ones in China, but it did provide some shelter when the required snow ball fight began.

Beagle puppies running through the snow. Molly, just exhibiting sheer joy at the white stuff. Running around the neighborhood, madly, while Georgia shook her paws free of the precipitation. It was so funny. I still don't know why Molly loved the snow so much.