Merry Christmas!
I always remember that Christmas meal: gumbo, some type of barbecue, and stuff that was not made for Thanksgiving.
I remember the day after Christmas when everybody was out with their new toys that would be broken in a week or two. You had to enjoy those fleeting moments of initial possession. Our family had enough brothers for opposing teams in all sorts of games. It was always Branford and Ellis vs me and Delfeayo in Monopoly, Scrabble, Operation….. everything in that era before electronic games.
After eating, we would have our holiday football game and then argue into evening about who really won. In high school Branford and I always played some type of dance at night. It was funky and soulful. We would also visit friends and talk about whose momma made the best pot of gumbo. We loved Charlie Brown because the music was good.
Vince Guaraldi——jazz.
There was always a lot of music around Christmas.
A lot. There still is.
Our momma and daddy scuffled to get funds together to buy things for all of us. They did a great job making it good for us. Not till I became an adult did i understand what it was for them and that the difficulty also made it more special and intense. Every passing Christmas makes me even more grateful for their efforts in difficult times. Yeah!
I love all the pagentry around Christmas- the spiritual and commercial implications of it all and there is a lot of music. There still is.
A lot.
Wynton