Southern Christmas

Where you can Christmas shop in shorts at 2:00 pm and at 6:00 pm have on two coats and four pair of gloves.  That this time of the year the Southern winds hates everyone.... I truly think they punish all because they miss the sun and flip flops...

In the south, Christmas means tinsel it, put lights on it, or spray paint it.  Because of this, I was so excited when I found this book... The Official Guide to Christmas in the South or, If you can't fry it, Spraypaint it Gold by David C. Barnette.

Here are some of the Chapter titles
1. Stockings must be stuffed beyond recognition

2. Y'all get in line

3.Unplug the smoke alarm

4.Never mix Dirty Santa with Dirty Dancing

5. If you don't believe in reincarnation follow a gift bag around this Christmas

6. Guidelines and paint lines

7.The Divinity Code

8. Holidays are for celebrating the ties that bind.  And nothing binds quite like cram of chicken and Velveeta



I really enjoyed this book because I could see snippets of my family on it's pages.

Here are a few of my Christmas memories

1.  Momma crying every day the week before Christmas... after she married Daddy she never spent another Christmas with her mother and sisters... Thank you Lord for keeping my babies close

2. Getting the BIG package from Granny Dugan and Auntie Vi  They lived in Rhode Island and liked to spoil me and my brother.

3.  Getting up in the middle of the night to carefully open gifts that was in BIG package ... then tape them back... yes I was a bad child

4. Granny Trousdale's house... it always smelled like love but at Christmas the smells embraced you, wrestled you in a bear hug and pulled you to the kitchen

5. Everyone in one place... Granny and Granddaddy Trousdale.. their eight children... their spouses and 14 grandchildren...You had to be tough to withstand all that love... or sometimes the lack of it...   Ah, the Christmas fights   Remember I said I was a bad child so I might have started a few of those fights... but really it wasn't my fault... the Aunts were so easy to crank up

6. Perry Como and Jimmy Reeves singing Christmas songs all day and half the night

7. School being out so I could ride my horse every day, play football with the neighborhood kids or shoot some hoops, play with the dogs or ride my bike