Once again, the Christmas season is approaching. Christmas presents a marvelous opportunity each year to make new memories. Reflecting on the memories of past Christmases is also refreshing. Let me take this opportunity to share a few random memories of Christmases past.
Many who attended or taught at Luttrell Elementary School during the past couple of decades will remember Mr. Jimmy K. Lilley’s outstanding Christmas holiday decorations. Mr. Lilley brightened Luttrell’s hallways by hanging decorations from every light fixture. Mr. Lilley was a perfectionist, and I believe he custom made each of those light fixture hangings, carefully preserving them to reuse year after year.
Amazingly, it seemed that every year the decorations looked brand new. I remember how those decorations made the responsibilities of teaching during December days seem fairer and lighter. If they lifted the spirits of an adult like me, imagine how magical they must have seemed to the students, particularly the younger students in the lower grades.
Mr. Lilley passed away a few years ago. I doubt he ever knew the depth of joy his decorations provided to so many. Beautiful as Heaven must be, the decorative talents of Jimmy K. Lilley can only make it more so.
Two of my most precious treasures I purchased from Mrs. Gladys Bolton of Harrogate, Tennessee. I met Mrs. Bolton when I was an undergraduate student at Lincoln Memorial University. Mrs. Bolton was the custodian for East Dorm, the freshman dormitory for girls that sat perpendicular to West Dorm, the freshman dormitory for boys. Mrs. Bolton was just the sweet grandmotherly personality that made new college students away from home for the first time feel less lonely. A group of friends and I ate lunch in the college cafeteria with Mrs. Bolton several days a week. She was so delightful!
When I graduated, Mrs. Bolton gave me her address, and we corresponded by what’s now known as “snail mail” until she passed away several years later. In one letter, Mrs. Bolton asked me how my mother was doing. She wrote, “I’d like to meet her sometime and eat her beans.” Never before or since have I heard that phrase.
So Mother and I started going out to eat a few times each year with Mrs. Bolton and her friend Mildred, always on a Sunday after church.
One Sunday, Mother and I visited Mrs. Bolton at her church and went out to eat afterwards. We visited Mrs. Bolton in her home, where I learned that Mrs. Bolton was active in her senior center. She showed us some wonderful ceramics she had made.
One was of a church. I asked Mrs. Bolton what she would charge to make a church for me just like the one she had in her home. I don’t remember the amount—it was probably around $20. The church has a bell in the belfry (it is for looks—it doesn’t actually ring) and a wind-up music box that plays “Amazing Grace.”
The window openings are covered from the inside with decorative plastic that looks like stained glass. There is a socket for a decorative bulb. How beautiful that church is when lighted. Light shines not only through the windows, but through the bottom of the steeple to shine on the bell in the belfry. I display that church every day of the year in my home library, always keeping it lit. It is a constant reminder of a beloved elderly friend who brightened my college years and encouraged me during my early working years.
Another ceramic wonder I hired my amazing friend to make for me was a mother of pearl ceramic Christmas tree. The tree is about a foot tall. It has red birds all over it and a red star that sits on top. The tree sits on a mother of pearl base that has a socket for a light bulb. I only display the tree during the Christmas season.
I never let my wife touch my ceramic Christmas tree. I remember a Christmas season when my wife and I visited Barbara and Straw Archer. Straw had a ceramic Christmas tree on which the lights no longer worked. My wife exclaimed, “I can fix it! I can fix it!”
She certainly did. She fixed it so it would no longer work again!
I will give Mary Ann a little benefit of the doubt. Straw’s ceramic Christmas tree was somewhat complicated compared to mine. Nevertheless . . .
In between these treasures I display a small manufactured ceramic Victorian house. It was not specially made for me, but it was the last gift my sister Anna Mae gave me. Just like Mrs. Bolton’s church, I display that lighted house year round. In November 2010 Anna Mae handed it to me, saying, “This is your Christmas present.”
I asked her why she was giving it to me so early. She replied, “I want you to have it now.”
Little did I know that Anna Mae wouldn’t be there for Christmas. Anna Mae passed away on Christmas Eve, the very date she had always had the family at her house for dinner and to exchange gifts.
There are hundreds of Christmas memories I could share, but these are a few that my very light Christmas decorating bring to mind. My hope for you, Dear Reader, is that you have fond Christmas memories of dear ones in your past and that you are making new memories with current friends and family. I close with best wishes for the merriest Christmas ever. May it be the best you’ve had, but not the greatest you will have.
Don’t forget to remember the reason for the season!