Christmas Eve 2010
It's Christmas Eve 2010, and no, there's no snow in the forecast. I've been checking every day for weeks. Even though it will be in the 30s (we've had a few Christmases in the 60s, it's heartbreaking), I know it won't snow. I've never had a White Christmas — we only get 2 to 3 good snow days a year in Tennessee, and the odds of that being on Christmas are slim. I tell myself not to get my hopes up, but once again, I check the forecast every day.Â
It's my first Christmas home from college. I've been looking forward to this since September in Anthropology 105, when the summer camp vibe of college wore off. I missed home and was tired of hearing about how religious beliefs are social constructs.
We're on I-26, and we've just swung around Buffalo Mountain, heading back into the valley between Pinnacle Mountain and big Unaka 5,000 feet above the valley. Dad is looking through the dark and the pine trees at our old white house on the hill in Unicoi. He will wonder aloud half to himself if we ever should have moved from there into town.
I'm looking up at the radio towers on Buffalo Mountain, their red lights blinking in the sky. We've made this drive every Christmas Eve, and one time, my brother convinced me one of those lights was Rudolph. I imagined if the heavenly host visited Johnson City, they'd sing above Buffalo Mountain.
Dad has on Michael Martin Murphy's Cowboy Christmas.
That ol' north wind
Howlin' high up in the timber
The only choir that I remember
When I was ridin' on the line
Many things change at Christmas, but Michael Martin Murphy in the Scott House isn't one of them.
We get off the interstate in Unicoi at the Maple Grove exit. We'll drive through town past the VW Bug decked out in Christmas lights with a light-up Santa inside.
Outside of Unicoi, we'll turn up Tall Pine Road to the little log house where my mother's parents, Nana and Dee Daw, live. Nana has red lights in the windows like every Christmas I've been alive.
We pull our coats around our necks on the walk from the car to her door. Inside, her house is warm and smells like the hot rolls she's just put into a basket with a red napkin on top. After Nana hugged me, she told me she's got the grape jelly on the table for me because grape jelly on one of those rolls is a taste that would make an atheist sing in the Christmas Choir.
My Uncle Alan, Aunt Leah, and Cousin Drew are there. Leah gives me a hug, and I tell her how good I've been brushing my teeth (she's a dental hygienist). Alan smiles, says hello, and continues telling my grandfather how he hasn't filled up the gas tank on his truck since July.
Cousin Drew and I make the same joke every Christmas: "This is real nice, Clark, real nice," a click of the tongue and the okie dokie hand sign with a wink: Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation. It never gets old because we only quote it once a year.
After dinner, I, as the youngest grandchild, will be the one to rush everyone into the sitting room to open presents (though I'm much cooler about it at 19 than I was at 7).
There aren't enough seats for everyone, so Alan and my dad sit on the piano bench.Â
After the presents, Nana brings out the stockings with a plastic candy cane filled with M&Ms, spearmint gum, and two pairs of socks.
Our Christmas is a liturgy. We've done it the same every year, down to the socks in the stockings. But as I sit here snacking on M&Ms, I notice the moments pass, and it never happened — whatever I was looking for that day in Anthropology class.
I don't know it yet, but this will be the last Christmas Eve we'll spend at this log house. Nana and Dee Daw have faithfully tended this plot of land on the mountain and this old home for decades. They deserve a condo in town that doesn't leave so many splinters in your hands, creaks in your knees, and doesn't have so many stairs.
We're swinging back around Buffalo Mountain towards town. Michael Martin Murphy is singing, Dad's looking through the pines and the dark at our old house, and I'm looking out at those radio towers thinking about Rudolph and the Heavenly Host and how much I miss being a kid when belief was easy.
Ah, well. Tomorrow, I'll wake up and open an Xbox 360 or a new guitar or something, I don't remember. And after, as we eat pancakes with the fancy syrup in the glass bottle, I'll think how quickly it went by this year. How it got away from me, slipped into the sky with those memories, and floated off towards the Heavenly Host above the radio towers on Buffalo Mountain.
And then I look out the window and see snowflakes falling.
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This week’s subscriber shoutout goes to Danny Wilson! I’m sure Danny didn’t need much explanation for the places mentioned in this story because he’s from just over the hill in Elizabethton. Miss ya Danny, let’s get lunch soon.