Christmas Gift!
Merry Christmas to all family and friends of PettisCountyPioneers.com.
It’s been a while since I’ve written. A death in the family and its consequences (a great deal of travel - the acquisition of a little dog), and the serious illness of another family member, have taken most of my time for the past two months.
When you lose a family member or a friend, all of their stories go with them. Take the time now to record your own stories in your own words. They will be treasures for someone in the future. Things that seem very ordinary now may be completely gone in another hundred years. How many of us have used a pot-bellied stove to heat our homes? With GPS systems, we don’t even need maps anymore.
Holidays always mean special traditions, and Christmas is rife with them. In my family, I was allowed to open one present (a small one) on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, we called our Missouri relatives (not a common occurrence when a long-distance call cost a small fortune). My grandfather never talked on the phone except on Christmas. He hated telephones (even though his daughter worked for the phone company).
When you answered the phone, you had to be the first one to say, “Christmas Gift!” From talking to second and third cousins, this seems to have been a tradition throughout the Marshall family. You didn’t win anything if you said it first - just the satisfaction that you’d done it. There are not many of us left in our family, but we do keep the tradition alive.
So, to you and yours, Christmas Gift!
NEWS FROM PETTIS COUNTY PIONEERS.COM
Sunday, December 23, 2007
