Love The Snow In The Background- Merry Christmas

[nobhead]

Thanks for doing that.

[richardsok]

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE.

The Wall Street Journal published a charming essay of Christmas at a southern orphanage in the 1950s. I thought people here would enjoy it -- even if slightly amended -- not to run afoul of the rules. Here it is:

ORPHANAGE CHRISTMAS

Christmas at my orphanage began the week before Thanksgiving. All 225 girls and boys, ranging from 2 to 18, gathered in our cottages to write to Santa. There were rules for those letters. We could list three (and only three) suggestions that Santa could leave under our cottage tree on Christmas. Each gift could cost no more than $10 (or about $105 today), which we considered generous.

The letters were distributed among benefactors and church circles in North Carolina. Recipients were asked to provide one gift, but who could resist sending three? After all, it was probable many donors had read Dickens and wanted to brighten an orphan’s Christmas.

In eight years at the orphanage, none of my suggestions went unfilled. My pals and I gamed the system, “Always ask for a wallet.” Why? Who could buy a wallet for an orphan and not slip in some cash? By the time I graduated from high school, I had a drawer full of hardly used wallets.

Another highlight of my orphanage Christmases happened during the second week of December, when we had a big dinner before decorating and lighting the campus Christmas tree. Kids, staff and administrators—black and white—all gathered in Rumple Hall, the Georgian-style dining hall, for our one integrated dinner of the year. (Orphanages, like much of the South, were segregated.) The candlelit hall was decorated with holly boughs, and the meal included lavish trays of fried chicken and roast beef.

Our Christmas tree was a 12-foot cedar felled on the orphanage’s acres of woods, pasture and croplands. The tree was bare—except for a lighted star at the top—when we filed into the hall, dressed in our Sunday best. At our places, we stood for the blessing. Each table had a staff member at the head, alert lest a food fight erupt. There was Christmas magic in the air. Then we took our seats, dinner began, and the hall was filled with laughter and conversation. That night—and at every meal—no one pleaded for more food, like Oliver Twist.

After dinner, our minister read the Christmas story from the Bible. The choir director led us in singing carols, including my favorite, “Silent Night.” The showstopper was the chorus of 20 to 30 black workers, who took the stage and injected emotion-filled gospel sounds into traditional Christmas songs. They always brought the house down for a standing ovation.
My favorite moment came later, when we walked up, table by table, to the tree in the center of the room, to add an ornament or tinsel. The big boys and big girls—high schoolers—lifted up the younger ones so they could hang their ornaments.

What was remarkable about the evening, which Dickens could not have imagined, is that after hanging our ornaments, we were expected to drop any change we had in a bucket beneath the tree marked “For Disadvantaged Kids.” They lived in poverty and often amid abuse on the back roads and distressed areas in North Carolina.

On Christmas Eve, while everyone was at supper staff members went cottage to cottage with huge bags of presents. Gifts for the 24 boys in my cottage were piled high around our house Christmas tree. On Christmas Day, after we had opened them, the rec room was knee-deep in wrapping paper.

I’ve learned many alumni of my orphanage and others across the country also have fond Christmas memories. Our orphanage celebrations and traditions often were better than the ones we experienced before arriving on campus.

Mr. Dickens, life as an orphan wasn’t a piteous lot. Christmas in my orphanage, and many others, was a magical time. I have memories to prove it. -ROBT MACKENZIE WSJ 12/23/21

[uncleharley]

Merry Christmas