When I was quite small we went to church every Sunday so at least a couple of us would be involved in the Christmas pageant at the old Elk Run church. Two weeks before Christmas my folks would hide two little 4 inch tall, plastic elves somewhere around the house. "You'd better be good now coz the elves are watching you", they'd say and we knew it was time to start looking around until we found them peeking out at us. Other than that, my family did everything on Christmas eve. Dad went out in the woods, picked out the tree and cut it down, hauled it back and set it up. Our Christmas tree stand was a huge piece of the trunk of an old hemlock..hollow in the center. One of my older brothers would hold the tree up while Dad hammered the wedges in around the trunk of the Christmas tree until he had it just right. He'd leave it sit for a few hours so the branches could relax a bit.
There were 7 of us and my brothers, the 3 oldest, helped with the chores and eating Christmas dinner the next day
Still on Christmas eve, my mom took the four girls down to Troy to shop for everybody at the Five and Dime which later became the Ben Franklin. She gave us each 6 dollars...to shop for everybody. We usually managed to stay pretty close. Then back home to wrap presents, decorate the tree, and sing Christmas carols. Mom would be trying to bake bread and pies when she wasn't helping us wrap presents. ummm...I think it was a stressful day for her
But before we went to bed Dad would read us the short story by Henry Van Dyke "The Other Wise Man." It never failed to get him all choked up and my dad was not a man who shed tears easily nor often. It was always an awe-inspiring moment for us because then, of course, we'd get all choked up too.
Daybreak and the seven of us would be lining up on the stairs, waiting for Dad to give us the okay to come down. They never put tinsel on the tree until morning after they had put the presents from Santa under the tree (not to be confused with the stuff we bought for each other). My folks had an old 78 record with a scratchy recording/reading of The Story of the Christmas Spiders. On the record we had it was a Christmas Angel who performed the magic. The legend is said to be of German or Ukrainian origin.
http://www.share-christmas.com/stories/christmasspider/ When we finally got the okay to troop down into the living room we did so, in single file. (I got to go first coz I was the youngest. hee hee). Then we would open our presents, one person and one present at a time, going the rounds until they were all opened. As we got older the girls would help with the Christmas fruit salad...always made on Christmas morning after Mom got the stuffed Turkey in the oven. Christmas dinner was pretty much the same as Thanksgiving and we loved it...ate so much we'd go outside and run around the house to pack it down so we could eat some more, then lay groaning on the floor before going back to playing more seriously with our Christmas presents and helping clean up the mess. Sure was fun.
