Appalachian Christmas Memories: Part One

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 who thought they were the toughest cowhands east of the Mississippi. Dan stood front and center, proud as could be, his brother Ronnie — “Pee Wee” — beside him, and Johnnie on the other side.

Their daddy, Buck, is the one Dan figures snapped the picture, catching that perfect moment when those boys felt ten feet tall in their western hats and gun holsters. Their mom, Edith (Seymore), is just visible in the mirror behind them, probably keeping a watchful eye while her boys strutted around the living room like pint-sized sheriffs.

Back then, every little boy wanted a cowboy hat and a cap gun for Christmas. For these three brothers, that morning wasn’t just about gifts — it was about stepping into a wild-west world of their own making, right there in a humble Kirktown home warmed by family and imagination.

A small photo, a big memory. 🌟

Kathy's Memory: The Christmas Oranges

My Father used to say the sweetest smell in the whole wide world wasn’t pine or peppermint — it was a bag of oranges on Christmas morning. When he was a boy in the 1920s and 30s, growing up in a coal camp tucked against the mountains, Christmas didn’t come in boxes wrapped with ribbons. Most families barely scraped by, and the miners’ children learned early not to expect much more than what their daddy’s shift could provide.

But every December, no matter how lean the year had been, the company store sometimes brought in a shipment of bright, shiny oranges. Folks said they came in on the same railcars that carried coal out. Down in those hollers, oranges felt almost magical — a bit of sunshine wrapped in a peel, all the way from places warmer than the miners could imagine.

Every Christmas Eve, Dad and his brothers would crawl under their cedar tree, noses pressed to the cold floorboards, whispering hopes that Santa might’ve left each of them a little brown poke with two or three oranges inside. Some years that bag was the only gift in the camp, but Dad always said it didn’t matter. That orange meant the world — a treat sweeter than candy, rarer than toys, and brighter than the lantern hanging by the coal stove.

And when Daddy grew up and had a family of his own, he never forgot that feeling. No matter how many presents crowded under our tree — dolls, trucks, little wrapped surprises — he always slipped a brown paper bag of oranges right in the middle. He said it was so we’d never forget where he came from, and how even the smallest gift can fill a whole childhood with joy.

To him, those oranges weren’t just fruit.

They were memory.

They were survival.

They were Christmas in the coal camps.

These Appalachian Christmas memories are shared to preserve the stories, faith, and traditions of mountain families—one memory at a time.

Appalachian Christmas Memories: Part Two