Mountain Christmas

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Please welcome guest author Lynn Salsi. Salsi is a university writing professor (Kennesaw State University), storyteller, and author of books, plays, and short stories for children and adults. She is the recipient of many writing awards, including an American Library Association Notable Book Award, two Mom’s Choice Awards, and a Pulitzer nomination for The Life and Times of Ray Hicks, Keeper of the Jack Tales (University of Tennessee Press).

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High Country Christmas in North Carolina was just another day, especially in 1932. Daddy didn’t set any store in holidays. “It’s just another day,” he’d say to us young ‘uns. The Primitive Baptist marked the occasion with a service at the church the Sunday before the 25th when we heard the minister speak about the Christ Child.

There was a stubby pine tree, our one thing of beauty, at the front of the church. There were no lights, but it was transformed when the younger children adorned it with homemade paper stars and crosses in every color of the rainbow. There were no instruments, but the singing was always vigorous. Mama explained why the Prims did not believe in using instruments, but I felt that someone should play a fiddle or a banjo to make it special for Jesus, even if on that one day.  

Next to my birthday Christmas was the day I looked forward to. But that year my daddy was more concerned about keeping starvation from our door. The Great Depression took the cash money out of mountain communities, and along with it, a lot of good feelings went out of our lives beginning when I was nine-years old.

That December one of the best things about the holiday was the coming New Year—1933. The weather had been poor and unpredictable since September. It defied the writing in Blum’s Almanac. My daddy said, “I figure that almanac man couldn’t imagine how to write about such rough weather as we’ve had.” 

Sunday after church the mountains were hit with a blizzard that lasted all night. The next morning the snow was five feet deep in some places, and the wind had banked it half-way up the front door. Sleet came later in the day and spread like long fingers across all the high peaks. It touched down to freeze everything in its path.

It encased the snowbanks in solid ice and covered the one-lane dirt haul road in front of our house—our only way off the mountain. Icicles hung on the front porch eves. When the sun shone for a few hours up in the day, the young ‘uns took turns staring through the window at the colors reflecting through the ice formations. 

On Monday, Daddy was set to haul a load of hand-hewn ties to the little narrow-gage railroad off the mountain. But with the near zero temperature and the ice-covered road, he worried that our horse, Major, might freeze to death.   

That got us all shut-up inside with Daddy fretting about the money he’d lose and us five young ‘uns mostly standing around Mama’s cook stove or in front of the old pot-bellied stove in the front room trying to stay warm. We didn’t know anything about Santy Claus except how he might still come and bring us a few sweets.

We looked forward to the treats—an orange or two, four or five peppermint sticks, and some hard candy. We were careful to set out a sock in which we’d find four marshmallows wrapped in paper along with sugar wrapped in a small piece of clean cotton cloth. We called a “sugar tit.”

All us young ‘uns would walk around all day sucking on the thing. After dinner, Granddaddy Ben would bring a big bag of peanuts to share. We’d sit in front of the hearth, and as he told stories, we’d eat them and throw the shells into the blaze. Little as it was, we loved the thought that a secret Santy could find us where we lived five miles off the black-top and nowhere near a store. Later, Granddaddy Andy and Grandmother Suzy came with their banjo. Having the house filled with songs created good feelings. 

The few days before Christmas in ’32 everything turned different. It snowed off and on for days before Sunday-church. But with the blizzard and ice storm and the near zero temperatures we nearly froze to death just getting in firewood already stacked in the front yard.

But the day before Christmas we got our socks and stretched them out as far as possible to make them seem longer. They were hand-knitted of wool from Mama’s sheep. They were thick and well-worn. By Christmas they smelled awful. We cleaned out the toe jam, turned them wrong side out, scrubbed them on the wash-board, and hung them on the old ladder-back chair to dry in front of the fire before Santy might arrive down the chimney.

On Christmas Eve we turned them to the right side and thought about how good a peppermint might taste. Christmas morning we were so excited we pushed each other out of the way to be first to run over to our sock. We grabbed them and turned them inside out but didn’t find a thing. There was not even one stick of candy. All us young ‘uns were stunned. 

Before we could whimper, Mama came in the room from the kitchen and said the weather was too bad for Santy to travel. She said, “Santy couldn’t get through to our high mountain in such cold and ice. He froze in his sleigh—reindeer and all.” 

That was something. We all took to crying. We couldn’t even eat our biscuit with blackberry jam Mama made to pet us up. It lasted until Granddaddy Ben came over with some apples from his cellar house and the bag of nuts. He still couldn’t get us happy with all of us thinking that Santy was dead. I kept picturing him in my mind all frozen somewhere on the mountain. Then Mama said how sorry she was that they didn’t hatch out many Santys.

That did it for me. After that, I didn’t put up my stocking. Daddy helped the oldest of us along by saying that he was Santy. I tried to put my heart into having a happy Christmas for the three younger than me. There weren’t no way I could tell them that Santy only came that year to well-doing families.         

More articles by Lynn Salsi:

Ray Hicks, keeper of the Jack Tales(Opens in a new browser tab)

‘Power in the Blood’ Reviewed(Opens in a new browser tab)