Blog 3701 – 12.23.2025
Christmas Eve Eve
My earliest memories of Christmas are magical ones. One of my fondest Christmas memories is of finding a shiny new yellow Davy Crockett wagon under the tree on Christmas morning. That must have been Christmas 1955. I had just turned five and was in the first grade.
Christmas never seemed a big deal to my dad, but my mom found all things Christmas very important, so much so that until I was in high school mom, a true stay at home mom all the rest of the year, took a Christmas job at a dime store that she had worked at as a teenager before she married my dad at eighteen, all so she could make extra money to insure that my younger brother and I would have a Christmas to remember each year.
Dad worked in construction and drove a concrete mixer for Vulcan Materials in Chattanooga. He was a Teamster and the union rule of seniority meant that the senior most drivers, the top ten, kept worked in the winter when construction work got slow while less senior drivers were laid off till the weather and work improved in the spring.
It was many years before dad was one of the top ten. This meant money started growing scarce at Christmas time. That is why mom worked at McClellan’s Five and Dime.
I watched a Lifetime Christmas movie yesterday in which a young cowgirl was so exited about Christmas that she referred to the several days before as Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve. I recall being just as excited as the big day got closer and closer.
Dad always said Christmas was for children. He was twenty-five when he married my mom on February 9th, 1950. Mom said he already thought and acted like an old man even then.
I am thinking of a line from a favorite Carpenters’ song, “Like a child’s eyes on a Christmas night, I’m looking at you now, finding answers to my prayers.”
Happy Christmas Eve Eve.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Those Good Old Dreams
theencouragingword 