Medford mail tribune., December 23, 1962, Image 35

THE
Christmas
I Treasure
Most
By CATHERINE
Author of "A Man Called Peter,"
"Beyond Ourselves," and "Friends with God"
Why was her father so intent on making it a
perfect yuletide? When this famous author found out,
the holiday truly became a memorable one for her
Ckktain christm asks tower above
others in memory. In our family,
one of the most unforgettable will al
ways be that of 1960.
The setting was the century-old fiirnihou.se in
Virginia where my parents have lived since
Father's retirement from the ministry. For weeks
the nine grandchildren had been looking forward
to Chrixtmas on the farm: plenty of room to
roam inside and out the old house, which was
set in boxwood and surrounded by 125 beautifully
rolling acres.
We knew that during most of December the
preparations had been under way at Evergreen.
The big farm kitchen would be fragrant with
baking cookies and fruitcake. There would be a
fire in the fireplace with its raised hearth and its
Dutch tiles.
The round center table in the kitchen would be
continuously in use, not just for cooking but for
addressing Christmas cards, for making wreaths,
for wrapping jellies and cookies for gifts n
hundred uses. And on all these activities the blue
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MARSHALL
and white Danish Christmas plates would be
looking down from the walls on which they hung;
this was their season.
Meanwhile we knew that Father had been get- "
ting the boxes of Christmas ornaments from the
attic, testing out the strings of lights especially
his favorite bubble lights. He had been scouting
Evergreen's acres for the perfect tree to cut. In
his judgment, it must be cedar (what would
Christmas be without the fragrance of cedar?),
and it must touch the ceiling. He also had been
busy in his workshop making something special.
He was mysterious about it: "They'll be the first
thing you see when you come into the driveway."
On that day before Christmas we saw them:
a group of life-sized children carolers dressed in
bright red robes. They were grouped around the
lantern post at the end of the driveway. Even
the lantern wore a holly wreath.
And as our three younger children tumbled out
of the package-laden car ( Peter John was to drive
down separately from college), Suzie, the huge
St. Bernard, came rushing to greet us with bells
jingling from her collar. Yes, Father had been
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hard at work no question about it.
For as far back as we three children could
remember, the yuletide season had been especially
important to Father. Always he had regarded
Christmas as the crown of the year's family ac
tivities. What we did not know was that this year
he had felt an inner compulsion to create for his
family the one perfect time.
Something of his mood must have communi
cated itself to me. For during the next few days
I kept remembering scenes like a kaleidoscope
of the years past . . .
THERE was that first remembered Christmas of
my Mississippi childhood when Father had
dressed up and played Santa for our Peace Street
neighborhood. He had the right voice and laugh
for the role booming, jolly. That booming voice
always will be one of the vivid memories of my
childhood.
That was the same year that he had spent weeks
building doll furniture for my gift: a white bed
with four posts, a dresser with drawers with
glass knobs and a swinging mirror, a cupboard
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Candlelight played on the children's
with glass doors above the storage space below.
Father had a weakness for tools and gadgets
and a talent for making and fixing things. He
was generous in using this talent along with much
of his time for us children. When we had wanted
to play croquet, Father not only helped us con- '
struct the court but even strung lights over it so
we could invite our friends to play after dark.
When I had wanted a wild-flower garden, it was
Father who helped me prepare the little plot of
ground. When I had gotten interested in moths,
Dad had made butterfly nets and wing stretchers
for me. When I had wanted a tree house, it was
Father who built one for me in the cherry tree
by the garage.
With these projects we developed a pattern: I
had plenty of ideas ; Dad helped me to implement
them. Because he and Mother entered so deeply
into our lives and interests, for us children there
was never any doubt about our being loved. As I
remembered all this, I knew that this had been
the surest undergirding for life any parents
could have given to their children.
Then, too, during those days at the farm, I
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faces as they tried to understand their grandfather: he had
kept remembering the family traditions which
had developed through the years, many of them
Christmas customs. We had always gone all-out
with decorating greens all the way up the stairs,
on every newel post, on every mantel. There were
always lights around the front door and en
twined in live evergreens in the yard. And many
wreaths; we made them all.
MAKING things together always had been a
big part of the tradition. All of the family
participated in making apple butter and mince
meat, in cracking and shelling nuts and cutting up
fruit for fruitcake and our recipe for date-nut roll.
Then after we had begun spending our sum
mers on Cape Cod, the making and giving of
beach-plum jelly became one of our traditions.
Finding the beach plums in out-of-the-way places
in the Cape's sandy soil and gathering them was
a family affair. There would follow the pots of
cooking plums . . . the night of straining them
. . . dozens of juice glasses all over the kitchen
counters filled with the jelly, a glorious deep cran
berry color when held up to the light.
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just said he would not be with the famtly next year.
At the end of the summer the carefully packed
jelly would be carted back to Washington. Near
Christmas, while we wrapped each glass in cello
phane, we would be remembering the tang of the
sea wind that day we had gathered the plums and
all the fun we had making it.
And what would Christmas dinner be without
our reindeer centerpiece those six beautiful
reindeer once made by skilled and loving German
hands? Or how could the spirit of the Christ
Child ever get inside our hearts without much
plnying and singing of carols and, for many eve
nings, the reading aloud of the beloved stories
like the Christmas passage from Five Little Pep
pers and How They Grew, Louisa May Alcott's
Christmas at Orchard House, leo Tolstoy's Where
Love Is, There Is God Also, and Henry Van Dyke's
The First Christmas Tree?
Another family tradition was our family serv
ice on Christmas Eve after the hanging up of the
stockings. The children would help prepare for it,
and it was a rule that everyone must participate.
That year of 10G0 Lynn and Linda prepared an
improvised altar before the living-room fireplace.
(Continued on page 10)
Fnmlli Weekly, December J3. IM2
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