Appalachian Christmas Memories: Part Two

Appalachian Christmas Memories at My Grandparents’ House

Shared by Poly

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.

Christmas dinner was always something special. My grandmother spent days cooking, and the table was filled with food made with care and love — turkey with homemade giblet gravy, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, salad with her homemade vinaigrette, cornbread stuffing, and homemade biscuits. Dessert came next, and it was just as memorable: applesauce cake, coconut cake, homemade fudge, and sugar cookies. Everything tasted like Christmas itself.

Once everyone finished eating, the children knew what came next. It was time for the gifts. So many of us sat on the floor that it was hard to move without stepping on someone. That’s when my grandfather, Thomas Bond, would reach up and take down an old stagecoach horn from the fireplace mantel.

He used to tell us how stagecoach drivers would blow a horn as they approached a town to signal their arrival. We all knew what was coming. Grandpa would lift that horn to his lips and give it a blast that rivaled what I imagine Gabriel’s horn will sound like when Jesus returns. That sound was our signal — Christmas presents were about to be handed out, and you’d better be in your place and ready.

Then the chaos began. Wrapping paper, bows, and cardboard boxes flew everywhere. If you weren’t careful, you might even get hit by flying debris. But none of us cared. We were together, and it was Christmas.

My grandparents passed away years ago, but every Christmas I can still hear that horn blast in my mind. What I wouldn’t give to go back and visit those Christmases from long ago.

Christmas Cookies Covered in Color

Shared by The Duncan Family

In the 1970s, Christmas didn’t really begin at our house until the cookie decorating happened. Mama always baked the cookies first — sugar cookies rolled thin and cut into stars, bells, trees, and shapes she’d been using since before I was born. But baking was only half of it. Decorating was where Christmas showed up.

A few days before, she’d come home from the store with paper sacks full of supplies just for that purpose. Out would come the little plastic bottles of sprinkles, the ones with red and green dots that rattled when you shook them. There were silver candy balls too, hard as rocks and shiny as nickels, and tubes of icing in every color you could think of. She even bought the kind of icing that came already mixed, thick enough to spread, in tubs meant for covering the whole cookie before you ever touched a sprinkle.

The kitchen table was cleared as best it could be, though it never stayed that way for long. Mama laid out wax paper and lined up plates of plain cookies, still pale and waiting. Bowls of colored icing sat in the middle of the table, each with its own spoon, and before long the chairs were pulled up and every spot was taken.

We didn’t worry about neatness. Some cookies were iced thick, some thin. Some ended up so covered in sprinkles you could barely tell what shape they’d started as. Silver candy balls rolled across the table and onto the floor, where someone always stepped on one and learned real quick how hard they were. Mama just laughed and told us not to waste them.

Hands got sticky. Sleeves got messy. Someone always smeared icing where it didn’t belong, and more than one cookie got dropped and quietly eaten before Mama could notice. The radio played Christmas songs in the background, and the windows fogged up from the warmth of the oven and all of us crowded around the table.

By the time we finished, the cookies looked nothing alike. Some were beautiful. Some were downright ugly. But Mama said that was the point. She laid them out on trays to dry, every color shining, every sprinkle stuck in place. Those cookies never lasted long — a few were wrapped up for neighbors, some went into tins, and plenty disappeared before Christmas ever arrived.

But even now, when I see bottles of sprinkles or silver candy balls in the store, I don’t think about the cookies as much as I think about that table — crowded, loud, sticky, and full. That was Christmas to us. Not perfect. Just covered in color.

Appalachian Christmas Memories: Part Three