HEARTS OF APPALACHIA PROJECT

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-