This December will mark more than eighty years of the long-running Long family Christmas. That is quite a record. The beginning of these annual celebrations can be traced all the way back to 1939, when a young man named Clarence and a lovely girl named Lela exchanged vows at the courthouse in Bennettsville, South Carolina. Our parents more than likely skirted around a traditional wedding and eloped for monetary reasons, but I also suspect that Daddy hurried up pretty Lela before another fella had a chance to stake a claim.
Mother's and Daddy's early Christmases with just the two of them were probably as quiet as a mouse, but eleven months after their runaway ceremony, Mother delivered Charles Thomas, named him for his two grandfathers, and the Long family Christmas officially began. Twelve and a half years later, eight young 'uns were pawing at Mother's apron hem, impatiently waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. No Donder and Blitzen; just Charles, Lucy, Clarence, Jr., Phyllis, James, Robert, Larry and me.
As might be expected from a dirt-poor family of ten, our Christmases were simple and bare. The setting of my earliest memories is the sharecropper house on the tobacco farm in Gibsonville, where every December a couple of my brothers, in hand-me-down coats and scuffed-up brogans, dashed to the woods to scout for a Christmas tree, at least one of them wielding a hatchet. Sometime later they bound into the house toting a cedar, famous for its floppy branches and thin leaves that stick like thistle.
After they nailed a plank to the trunk and set up the tree, my sisters would string multi-colored lights the size of chicken eggs, and hang silver icicles that twinkled and shimmered in the breezes of the drafty house. Sometimes we turned on the record player and crooned with Elvis in his renditions of White Christmas and Blue Christmas. As we nestled two and three to a bed on Christmas Eve, Santa slid down the chimney, through the ashes and soot of the fireplace, strewed a bundle of presents under the tree, then shimmied back up to the roof where his reindeer waited. Around sunrise the next morning, each of us opened one present from Santa and a brown paper sack, no doubt filled by my mother's hands, containing an orange or apple, a pecan or walnut still in the shell, and a stick of peppermint candy.
One of those long-ago Christmases that stands out is the year I tore open an oversized box to find a doll in a pale blue dress, tall enough that when I held her hand in mine and sort of pushed her along, her legs moved and she walked beside me. A faded photo of that Christmas morning preserves the memory making it easier to remember. Also in the picture are a young Robert and Larry as well as the cedar tree in the corner of the room. Robert is holding the gift he received that year, a small metal safe with a combination lock, and I have often wondered about the treasures he might have kept locked inside.
Since the 1960's when that snapshot was taken and eight kids huddled under one roof, our family Christmases have changed quite a bit. Now we reside in our own homes across many miles and have morphed into this colossal conglomeration of aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, in-laws, out-laws, nephews, nieces, greats and grands. Some unfortunately have left us but others have blessed us. Love is the one constant, even though like every family large or small, we have felt a few hiccups along the way.
With a trail as long as ours, some clatter can be heard from time to time, but no louder than a whistle. We never bicker (snicker perhaps) and we certainly never brawl (that I know of). In the same mettle as that of a strong marriage, in times of disagreement or distress, we bend and mend then forge ahead. Not only have we grown bigger, thus far we have persevered, survived our flips and our flops, and corralled for Christmas every year since Franklin D. Roosevelt lived in the White House. Our lively get-togethers stretch through the terms of at least fourteen U. S. Presidents. To date we proudly boast of only one cancellation and that was due to the Pandemic of 2020.
Our rituals and traditions have changed little over the years, but the venues have varied since that first Christmas in Fayetteville with baby Charles. Our jolly celebrations traveled from there to Colfax to Gibsonville to Greensboro to Mebane to Summerfield to Winston-Salem to Cheraw, South Carolina (not in that order). We have gathered in homes on Butler Nursery Road, Groometown Road, Gilliam Church Road, Sliding Hill Road (a.k.a. Sliding Down the Hill Road), Haystack Hill Road, Castleton Road, Goldenrod Road, Edgewood Drive, London Lane, Highway 150, Highway 87, two addresses on Sandy Ridge Road (a.k.a. Sandy Widge Woad), two addresses on Kenview Street, and the clubhouse at Westlake Apartments.
For many years we gathered on Christmas Eve, but now we meet earlier in December. We begin by packing our cars and pickup trucks with our favorite dishes of food and presents for the names we drew. We arrive at our destination, sometimes skating to the door on icy sidewalks, sprinting through downpours, or rushing in with windblown strands and iceberg hands. Then like a hurricane we commence to feasting and frolicking. Before anyone puts a knife to the pumpkin pie, we pull out our guitars, mandolins, banjos and one dobro to the tune of having the time of our lives.
Our perceptions of Christmas might be as different as our personalities, but when I reflect on our annual parties, I see and hear these sights and sounds: A noisy, rambunctious (but never too rowdy) bunch of sugarplums tearing open presents; little bare feet and big cowboy boots wading through wads of crumpled wrapping paper and curly ribbons on the floor; a table spread that almost rivals my mother's scratch biscuits and milk gravy; pre-pandemic bear hugs; babies' wiggles and giggles; snuggles on shoulders and bounces on a grandpa's knee; competing to see who can roll out the wittiest remark making everyone within earshot boll over with laughter; the plucking of strings in unison; melodic voices and heavenly harmonies; the rare, "I love you," and a certain someone playfully exclaiming, "Bah Humbug!" But mostly when I think of Christmas, I see the blessings of this great big family and hope for its future.
In my quick amateur analysis of the long Long run, I attribute its longevity to two main things: We play together (in more ways than one) and we pray together, the latter carrying more weight than the former.
Cheers to the next Christmas blast, whenever and wherever it may be! A good-for-nothing Corona virus still lurks, and we are scattered from the glaciers of Alaska to the palmettos of South Carolina, but no matter where our wondering eyes should appear, we are together in our hearts. The Long family Christmas, whether wrapped in the past or the present, pardon the pun, will always be as sweet as the stick of peppermint candy I found in a brown paper sack on Christmas morning.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
"Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord." Luke 2:11