HEARTS OF APPALACHIA PROJECT

These memories are shared with us by members of our communities. We’ve gently expanded it into story form while keeping the heart, details, and intention true to what was told. These memories help preserve the way Christmas once felt in the mountains, and we share them with gratitude. Three Little Cowboys in Kirktown (1955 or ’56) Shared with permission from Dan DeLaney Back in Kirktown, sometime around ’55 or ’56, Christmas morning came with a dusting of snow and three boys

If an Appalachian schoolhouse Christmas had a heartbeat, it thumped loudest inside that little coal camp schoolhouse. The walls were thin, the floorboards creaked, and the stove rattled every time someone sneezed — but in December, it felt like the warmest place in the world.

I reckon Christmas always starts earlier in a coal camp than it does anywhere else. Not the decorations — those came later, simple as they were — but the feeling. A soft kind of excitement that settled in right after the first cold snap, when the mountains turned blue-gray and the air felt thin enough to crack

In much of Appalachia, Christmas didn’t always end when the wrapping paper was swept up. For some families, the real celebration waited quietly until January 6. They called it Old Christmas.

Before truckloads of perfect firs showed up in parking lots, Christmas trees in Appalachia came straight from the mountains themselves — usually a scrappy, sweet-smelling cedar growing stubborn as a mule on the hillside, the very heart of an Appalachian family Christmas tradition . A week or so before Christmas, Daddy would holler, “Come on, young’uns — let’s go find us a tree!” And just like that, the whole troop bundled up and headed toward the ridge, boots crunching frost-

When I was growing up, we always went to my grandparents’ house for Christmas. There would be anywhere from twenty to thirty people crowded inside, with children packed in so tight it felt like the house could barely hold us all. The air buzzed with excitement as we waited for the moment when it would finally be time to open presents.

When Christmas Came in the Mailbox Long before Amazon trucks rumbled down our hollers, Christmas arrived in a much quieter way — tucked in the mailbox between the electric bill and the coal company coupon. It was the Sears Christmas Wish Book , better known across the mountains as the Wish Book . That catalog didn’t just show things. It showed possibility . Mama would set it on the kitchen table like it was made of glass, smoothing the cover with her apron. The kids circled l