By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
It was Christmas Eve in the late 1990s and I had recently bought a new car, so was excited to travel with my family to Pendleton County to celebrate the holiday with my parents, and show off the new acquisition. Afterward, as the night had gotten progressively colder, we undertook the nearly two-hour drive back to Lexington, and we discovered that the heat in our car had gone AWOL—along with the ability to defrost our front window.
To this day, I’ll never understand how two adults and two teenagers made it back home under such conditions. We did, with a lot of forbearance from three people not named Steve. We probably should have stayed in Pendleton County that night but didn’t. I don’t recall much else about the Christmas celebration that year, but the car episode sure sticks in my mind… and was a true learning, and humbling, experience for me.
I checked around with other Kentuckians to learn of their most memorable Christmases and was relieved when most shared happy ones. And what vivid descriptions of times long past they gave.
One came from a former student of mine from Winchester, Stacey Anderson, telling about the year she helped her father, a Christmas light lover, put some of them up outside. “We had two strands that only half the lights worked when we got them put up,” she said. This, though Stacey claimed she had checked all the bulbs beforehand. “When it got dark, we went for a quick drive to check them out. From the road, it looked like a duck! Daddy always laughed about our ‘Christmas duck.’ We tried and tried to recreate it and never could.”
Joyce Burnette, of Lexington, shared this one. “My dad was very proud of his first movie camera that he got in the late 1950s,” she said. “It was outfitted with a bar of huge, blinding light bulbs. My uncle, who had very little in common with my dad, would get out his sunglasses every Christmas and still just barely tolerate that camera on Christmas Day. His beer helped; I think. Those old movies all show the rest of us trying to shade ourselves or majorly squinting to deal with those bright lights.”
Another Lexington resident, Cheryl Wurtele, mentioned a simple gift she received. “One year when I was little, I had a cold for Christmas.” The remedy, perhaps, was poetic justice. “My sister gave me vitamin C and grapefruit juice for a Christmas present,” explained Cheryl.
A neighbor of mine, Fred Baumann, recalled playing football in the early 1950s “in the front yard, Christmas Day with some football equipment, including a helmet, that Santa brought me.”
Mary Sue Mitchell and her brother, Mark, always tried to spend time with their parents at Christmas, even after they were grown and living on their own. “My mom made both Mark and I photo albums of our lives up until that time,” said Mary Sue. “We spent hours looking, laughing, and remembering. Such a wonderful memory! We both still have our photo albums.”
Christmas often brings out the best in humankind. Just ask Tina Neyer, a freelance writer in Bellevue. “I was married with three children, the oldest of which teetered on disbelief in a bearded man, dressed in red, bringing gifts for him,” she recalled. “That year, the good people of the St. Vincent de Paul Society had brought many deliveries of groceries, paid our utility bills, and guided me ever forward toward a time when I could sort through how to live with an out-of-work alcoholic. So deep in the night, a knock at the door harkened the coming of our friends to deliver gifts bought by a local company to provide us with a proper Christmas.
“My oldest son opened a large, slim box to reveal a set of youth golf clubs, and his expression belied that fact that that he might just believe one more year in miracles.”
Each of us has a traditional Yuletide tree story, and Lois Windgassen Summey, a Grant’s Lick native now living in Florida, has a beautiful and eloquently told one. “The week before Christmas, with hatchet in hand, Dad always took us three girls tree hunting on the farm,” Lois recalled. “We would wrap up in our warmest clothes and boots to stave off the bone-chilling cold of winter in Kentucky, then head out through the cow pastures and distant woods to search high and low for the perfect Christmas tree.
“Our yearly expeditions always began with much excitement with visions of the most spectacular of all trees. There was no such thing as a tree too big. Dad would patiently steer us toward the more practical trees—ones that would actually fit into the house. The three of us kids were always determined to convince Dad to cut one at least 20-feet tall.
“Those cedar trees always appeared so much smaller outside in the open woods. After trudging up and down the back hills and making arguments for at least 30 magnificent cedar trees, we would grudgingly compromise on a much smaller tree than we wanted. The long walk back to the house always included a lot of fussing and fuming and sometimes crying. Once the tree was trimmed and moved into its spot in the living room, we were always amazed that it was the perfect tree after all.”
Sondra Johnston Macht, of Mentor, grew up not far from Lois. She shared her own light-hearted tree story. “Our cedar Christmas trees came to a screeching halt the year Daddy chopped down a specimen that couldn’t be turned well enough to hide the bare or browning branches,” she said. “Mom, a good-natured perfectionist, had brother Roger go back to the hill and find a better one. The following year, Daddy purchased a live, lush evergreen in town that was replanted after New Year. No more cedars.”
An Independence woman told of her dad always working Christmas Eve at the post office and stopping at the Super-X on the way home. “They’d have all of their stuffed animals 50 percent off then,” said Debby Morgeson. “He would pick up three for my two sisters and I. When we woke up Christmas morning, there would be those three big stuffed animals, all different, sitting apart from each other on the couch.”
She noted that they all ran excitedly to a different one and didn’t fight over them. “That was always our BIG Christmas present. We only received two little presents each along with our stuffed animal. Christmas was so special back then, the early 1960s. It didn’t take much to make us feel wonderfully loved.”
It was a heartbreaking time for sixteen-year-old Gayle Deaton and her family as they attended her father’s funeral five days before Christmas. Afterward, her mother sat at the kitchen table holding a nephew and cuddling him and speaking about the three children among them. Gayle recalled her mother saying as she looked at Gayle, seemingly making a request, “These children don’t understand about death, but they understand about Christmas.”
Soon, Gayle and a friend gathered decorations and put up a tree, creating a Christmas celebration for, at least, the children. And despite being exhausted from the suffering and grieving of the father, she explained that they “were together bright and early that (Christmas) morning, oohing and aahing over bulging stockings and what-all Santa had brought, and doing our best to keep Christmas.” She praised her mother’s selfless decision to keep on “dashing through the snow” for three wide-eyed children’s sake and to observe “joy to the world” despite the sadness of her father’s passing.
After going to Gram and Grandad’s place in Ft. Mitchell for Christmas as a child, Susan Braun-Drach’s family headed over to Grandaddy Braun’s home, in Newport. She noted that “this dear little man had few decorations except for his old German Bottle Brush Santas and a tiny, lit tree near his chair. He loved having company, and the cookies and goodies he always received.” She also added that “this is the grandpa who liked dandelion greens and dying Easter eggs with beets!”
Jim Palm, of Claryville, shared the sad account of a Christmas at his grandparents’ home when the gathering was shocked to learn that a family emergency had occurred at another location.
“My uncle Johnny had to work that Christmas at the B&O Railroad,” said Jim. “My extended family was celebrating when there was a phone call telling my grandfather that there had been an explosion on a train engine and my uncle had been rushed to the hospital.”
The news brought sobering moments for the family, especially in knowing only limited information about Johnny.
“I remember seeing the shock on everyone’s faces and my family members crying and praying,” he continued. “I remember my family driving quietly home and my parents only spoke a few words. Later that evening, my father learned that his brother was extremely lucky. The blast had blown him out the door of the train engine. He was severely burned. He fully recovered in the months that followed.
“I learned at that Christmas not to take my family members for granted. Truly, God answers prayers, even on Christmas, and the people we love are much more important than any Christmas traditions.”
And so, let’s keep those Christmas memories close, Kentuckians. It seems that as time passes, they become more significant… May your 2023 Christmas be one of your best memories!