I grew up during the century's peak period for children's Xmases. The economy was booming and no one doubted that it would continue to do so for some time. Children were the very centerpiece of American life, honored, treated and flattered at every opportunity, and Xmas presented the year's best opportunity. I remember sorting and arranging my gift packages for hours, one year making a fort out of them in a living room corner.

Our Xmas trees came from Shackville, as did the wood of the house itself. Granddaddy had personally gone out into a wooded section of the farm, selected the oaks to be used, and ringed them with the hog castrating knife he'd inherited from his father (now used at Uncle Jack's house for holiday carving) so that they could season standing for a year before being cut down and made into boards for the construction of 108 Adger.

Familiar with the house's sturdy construction and double floors, Granddaddy disdained storebought Xmas tree stands and just nailed the annual pine tree directly into the floor most years. The long nails he used had to be driven first through bars of soap to make them slippery enough to penetrate that double thickness of seasoned oak. Twice during my childhood, the floor was taken up and replaced with new Shackville oak beams, but that was a small price to pay for having Xmas trees so solidly emplaced that even our largest cat, the half-wild, ink-black Wampus, who had lived his first two years hunting possums in our attics and field mice in the grape arbor before being tamed enough to be lured indoors, was unable to knock them down.

The following example may give you an idea of the quantity of my Xmas hauls, primary source of my toys. Thirty friends were invited to my eighth birthday party, where we planned to play Army. None of the invitees had to bring their toy guns along. As in an earlier reminiscence, I must ask you here to forgive me for having grown up when and where I did. Toy guns were all the rage in the Deep South at that time and no one though we wee warriors to be extraordinarily bloodthirsty.

As my sister, Heloise, got as many gifts as I did, and when my mother's gifts and Edwina's were added to the pile, plus my gifts to my father and Heloise's gifts to Lloyd Turner(her father), it was quite the display of tinsel and candy stripe paper under the tree each year. More joys were displayed and consumed away from the tree. My oft-maligned maternal grandmother, whose cooking abilities were somewhat limited, came into her own during the holidays. Her ambrosia salad (coconut, marachino cherries, walnuts, miniature marshmallows, pineapple chunks and white Karo syrup beaten with egg whites to a froth, I think) was incredibly tasty. There was never enough of her egg nog, made with egg yolks, vanilla ice cream, fresh ground nutmeg and cinnamon, and Myer's rum, all blended with a heavy old handheld electric mixer. My mother's whisky balls (one pound confectioner's sugar, one stick butter, green or red food coloring, chopped pecans, one and a half ounces bourbon, just mixed up at food temperature and dropped in candy-sized mounds onto a sheet of wax paper for chilling) were so delicious as to make up for the consternation they brought to teachers' faces wand ridiculous behavior of classmates who swore they were drunk after eating aone or two when I took batches of them to school during the holiday season. Cousin Dorothy did magic things with asparagus spears, dill weed and Durkee's sauce wrapped in a blanket of pastry dough and baked. Uncle Pete Young used finely minced red onion, horseradish and dry, crumbled Danish blue cheese as the foundation for a dip that one could hardly help making a meal of while Johnette unloaded rich pecan pies with creamy insides, exquisitely caramelized tops and the kind of flaky crust one can only achieve with a lard-based pastry dough.

My father usually came up with a smoked turkey graced with garnishes like floretted radishes and peeled red potatoes sprinkled with dry mint. Often, he was fired from restaurants that had hired him as extra holiday help for stealing these things. The Shueys all gathered at 902 Prospect each Xmas evening for their unvarying family meal (preceded by Arthur Sr.'s unvarying Presbyterian blessing, "Lord, bless this food to our use and us to thy service. Amen.") of rare roast beef, baked potatoes, green salad and an ice cream dessert, all washed down with Eight O'Clock coffee and Paisano wine, followed during the Xmas holidays by Calvados for the men and Calvados Alexanders for the ladies.

Because the Pous opened gifts, celebrated and ate early and the Shueys did these things late, I was able to share Xmas activities with both families, which was quite nice, though I never had the patience and self-discipline to wait until Xmas evening to open my gifts from the Shueys. Their gifts usually took the form of either books or money, and it was not unusual for Shuey book givers to read passages from gift books aloud at the dining room table to acquaint book receivers with their new possessions.

On Xmas Eve, we all visited friends and relatives and/or received them in our own homes. Uncle Pete's house and 108 Adger were popular stops because ours were the homes with fireplaces in the rooms with the Xmas trees, but everyone made sure to be at 1030 East Kings Highway at nine o'clock, when my grandparents would stop serving eggnog, go into the living room, and dance to an old 78rpm recording of the Gershwins' "Embraceable You," their longtime favorite song, always requested for them at parties. In the years after Dr. Pou had the stroke that forced his retirement, some of us whad to work hard to fight back tears as he hooked his cane over his wrist before taking his beloved wife in his arms.