My first Christmas I was nine months old and we lived at Eglin AFB near Pensacola, Florida. As you can tell by the highly intelligent look on my face in the photo below, I was totally baffled by what was going on. All I knew was we were getting up early, staying up very late, and I was getting loads of candy and toys in between. It doesn't get much better than that. To this day Christmas is still my favorite day of the year. I love the wonder and magic of this special time of the year.
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| Tricia and Steve - Christmas 1956 |
The photo above was taken at my maternal grandparents' house in Starkville, MS where we had travelled at some point during the holiday. The cute kid sitting beside me in the photo above is my long-suffering sister. I have another, much more dignified photo of the two of us at home that first Christmas, only I'm trying to eat the silver tinsel icicles off the tree (remember those?). The tree at my aunt's house, as you can tell from the photo, is simply a cedar someone cut from the nearby woods, nailed a couple of boards to the bottom of, and voila! There was no such thing as Christmas tree lots on every corner back in the fifties in Mississippi.
The two companion photos below pretty much sum up my life at the time. I was very happy to see all the presents and I wanted them all (photo 1). And what I mostly cared about back then was getting whatever I could in my mouth at the time (photo 2). It didn't much matter what it was or where it had been. Some would say not much has changed about me in the ensuing years!
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| I like presents! I want them ALL! |
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| I want to put that (and everything) in my mouth! |
I'll close with a Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti
A Christmas Carol
In The bleak mid-winter
Frosty winds made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.
Have always loved this poem! Love poetry anyway! Great blog, this Christmas one...I remember this one too! You had a ball! That's the year I got my ballerina doll...she is sitting behind you in the first picture. I still have her! Mom made a beautiful gown for her to have along with her ballerina outfit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories. Love, Sis