I come from a family of storytellers.
Growing up, much of my time was spent laughing around the dinner table with my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and sisters while listening to or telling “remember whens.” The heart of each story was pretty factual, but like most Southerners, we love to embellish and add a little color to even the most mundane tale. A little local flavor, if you will.
My grandfather, Charlie Sexton, grew up on a farm in Eudora with nine brothers and sisters, and the tales he could spin not only entertained his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, but they became family folklore – still told by Sextons three and four generations later.
One of these stories about his older sister, Tura, an old maid school teacher, is still popular at Christmastime.
During the Depression, Aunt Tura taught at a country school in Eudora. Poverty was a way of life in rural Mississippi, and with the Depression lingering for many years, her students never experienced Christmas morning with a mountain of presents under a festive tree. In a time of bread lines to feed those who were hungry, even a traditional holiday meal was rare.
A deeply religious community, the children knew the Bible and the story of the first Christmas, but the secular Santa Claus, with his sack full of gifts, was not something these children knew much about.
Aunt Tura, led by the love for her students, hoped to bring a smile to all the little faces during the annual Christmas pageant at the school, with a surprise visit from St. Nick complete with gifts for the children.
With Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and three wise men, the pageant memorialized the first Christmas, complete with singing spiritual carols. As the audience applauded the young actors for their performance, Santa Claus burst into the school house and shouted, “Ho, ho, ho.”
With his red felt suit and curly white beard, Santa lumbered through the door with his bag full of goodies. The children did not shriek with glee, they screamed with fear, and launched themselves out the windows.
Like pirates bailing out of a sinking ship, all of Bethlehem flew out the building and hit the ground at a sprint – running through neighboring cotton fields to safety.
Still inside the school, parents sat open-mouthed in shock at the chaos around them, and poor Santa was left in the middle of the room with no children to deliver his goods.
I loved to hear my Daddy tell this story. He would get tickled as soon as he got to the part about the kids bailing out the windows. His laugh was contagious, so my sisters and I would laugh as well – at Daddy’s reaction to the story more than the story itself.
My sisters and I have our own Christmas “remember whens” that we tell every year, and like Daddy, we get so tickled, it is hard to finish the tale. For those who have never heard the stories before, they usually look at us like we are crazy – never thinking these stories are nearly as funny as we do.
With three little girls, my parents were experts on getting us “matching” gifts. They knew the best way to prevent a daughter skirmish was to buy each daughter the very same gift, with a few minor differences.
Christmas mornings were the same every year at the Sexton house. At approximately 4 a.m., one of us would wake up and go and rouse the other two. We would perch ourselves on the top step and wait for Momma and Daddy to finally get out of bed – it only took one time for us to actually wake them to know we didn’t need to do that again.
My parents would stumble down the hall around 6 a.m., disoriented from the lack of sleep due to their “waiting to greet Santa” the night before. The rule was Momma and Daddy would go down the stairs first for Momma to make coffee and Daddy to get the camera.
Then, Daddy would yell from the family room, “Okay, y’all can come down now,” and the three of us would thunder down the stairs, sliding across the hardwood floor in footy pajamas. We were greeting by “The Display,” left by Santa and bulging stockings.
Santa would leave three bicycles of varying sizes, matching dresses, three Barbies in different outfits, board games for us to play together, chapter books, and crayons.
One Christmas, Santa once delivered three matching macramé shawls for my sisters and me to wear to church on Sunday. Santa must have gotten our house confused with another because the last thing any of us wanted was a macramé shawl.
Made of white, very itchy yarn, these shawls had a single button at the neck, fuzzy fringe around the bottom, and two slits on the side to stick your hands through. I don’t really know who these shawls were made for, but whomever they were, they had extremely short arms.
They were and still are the most unattractive garments I have ever seen, but Lord have mercy, Richard Sexton was proud of those shawls.
Every Sunday after, Daddy would insist for us to “go get your shawls,” and we would stomp back upstairs in protest to retrieve them. Apparently even in the warm weather, a shawl was needed for good Southern girls.
And lucky me, as the youngest, I got hand-me-downed Stephanie’s shawl and Deana’s shawl. I was still getting my shawl in junior high school.
I wonder where those shawls are today. And the fact that there is no photo evidence of those gems is so disappointing.
Growing up, my family spent Christmas Eve with my paternal grandparents and the rest of the Sexton clan. At least four generations of Sextons would crowd into my grandparents little yellow house for Christmas dinner, followed by a reading of Luke Chapter 2, carol singing, and a $10 gift exchange determined by drawing names from a bowl.
As the youngest grandchild, I was still getting Barbies while I was in high school. For some reason, none of the Sextons realized that I actually grew up.
My sister, Stephanie, on the other hand, wishes she still got Barbies after a most inappropriate gift when she was about 16 years old.
Now, Stephanie is not one to bring any attention to herself. She has always been the quiet one of the three of us, and she avoided attention like the plague, and still does for that matter.
This particular Christmas Eve, Stephanie and I found a spot on the floor of my grandparents’ living room for the Bible story and Christmas caroling. Some way, the entire family squeezed into that tiny room, so nothing could possibly happen without notice.
As the gifts were passed around, both Stephanie and I got our brightly-wrapped packages and proceeded to rip into them. When Stephanie, dug into her box, a piece of sparkly fabric flew into the air. With a red face, she caught the item like a Major League outfielder and buried it in her lap.
“What did you get?” I asked.
She waived me off. I persisted.
“What did you get?” I asked louder.
Her face was nearly crimson and her eyes were wide with mortification.
Stephanie had received a pair of racy, sparkly underwear. Not only did she receive a pair of see-through sparkly drawers as a gift, she had opened that gift in front of my grandparents and 90-something-year-old great aunts.
Now to anyone else, a gift of fancy panties (by the way, I hate that word) wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but for Stephanie, a gift of fancy panties was the absolute definition of embarrassment.
Telling these old family stories are bittersweet to me because so many of those in these stories are gone. There are no more Christmases shared with my grandparents, my wonderfully eccentric and witty great-aunts, and my parents as they have gone to Heaven.
As a little girl, I never understood why my Momma would get teary every Christmas. She lost both her parents at a young age, and although she had wonderful memories of them, those memories also reminded her of their absence.
Memories of my parents and grandparents make me sad, too. Those memories are so very precious to me, but in my heart, I know they are all I have left of them, and I will make sure my son, Dean, remembers them as well, through stories my sisters and I continue to tell.
One day, I hope he will share them with his children and the tradition of telling “remember whens” will continue for another generation.
