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

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 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