We were poor folks, monetarily, but we were rich in a family full of love. We loved each other and Christmas was the one time everyone was together so it became a big event.

My grandparents lived in the country near a little town in North Mississippi named Pontotoc. As Christmas approached it seemed that everyone in town got the spirit.

In the old days, Saturday was the day to go to town so the Saturday before Christmas Pontotoc turned into New York City with people walking the streets shoulder to shoulder.

You would hear an occasional "Merry Christmas" shouted on the streets as people did their Christmas shopping with the little money available.

As I said money was short so our family drew names and that one person was who we bought or made presents for.

Our complete immediate family consisted of eight adults and three children of which I was the oldest.

Of course, a house with two bedrooms presented a problem when we had eight adults and three kids there but it was one easily solved by my grandmother.

She and Grandaddy kept their bed. My Dad being the oldest got the spare bedroom with my mom.

My aunt was second oldest so she got to choose between a rollaway bed or the couch that made into a bed and she always chose the rollaway bed for her and my uncle.

The youngest boy and his wife was then put on the couch. However that left three young boys but their fate was already determined.

There happened to be a bed out on the screened in back porch and we inherited that for the holidays. Being wintertime there were always cold nights but out on that porch we went.

I well remember us lying there with only our nose out from under the cover and so many quilts on us we couldn’t roll over. Yes, it was cold out there but we always had tomorrow morning’s wonderful breakfast to look forward to.

We always drew names on Christmas day for the next year and who had what name was the biggest secret of the year.

No one knew whose name anyone had (well my parents did know whose I had since I had no money of my own).

After everyone arrived my grandmother split up the firecrackers she had bought for the grandchildren. This wasn’t many but she had to get a few at a time all year. This was usually around noon on Christmas Eve.

I often wonder how my two cousins and I managed to keep all our fingers and eyeballs as we sometimes got pretty dangerous with the firecrackers.

Anyway, we always had just enough to last us till supper. Always, during supper, my Aunt would ask my grandmother if she could take us somewhere to buy more fireworks.

She always said OK. We tried several different stores until we found one with fireworks (later we found out the delay was on purpose).

When we arrived back home, Lo and Behold, the adults were in the kitchen drinking coffee and Santa Claus had come. What an excited time that was as the family came to the living room to see what Santa brought.

Each of the grandkids had something from Santa and we also got to open our family present(s) that night.

We took turns opening presents so that everyone know what others had gotten. I do remember how hard it was to get to sleep after that.

One year when we got to my grandparent’s house there was a huge box under the tree with my name on it. It seems that my grandmother drew my name that year.

When my turn finally came to open it, it was chock full of wrapped presents. None of them was very large but they were all so very special to me.

I remember that one contained a lead pencil, another had a yoyo, and one even had a comic book. However, no matter the size, each one was perfectly wrapped.

Another time when I was some older I heard an old man way out in the country had a pendulum clock for sale. I talked my grandpa into taking me there and I bought it for the $10.00 I had been saving for Christmas.

Now, I had a reason for my madness. I had drawn my uncle's name and heard him say one day he wanted one of those old clocks. I spent several weeks, cleaning, varnishing, and working on it, until it was nearly perfect.

On Christmas morning it so surprised my hard old uncle that he actually cried when he saw his gift.

Christmas morning was squirrel hunting morning for the men and boys. After a true country breakfast of ham, eggs, grits, biscuits and gravy, we all got in the car and drove to the woods and had instructions to meet back at the car at 12:00 noon.

The younger boys hunted with their dad until about age ten then they hunted as adults. While we were gone the women got busy and prepared the greatest feast ever known to man (or so I thought).

We had baked chicken (juicier than turkey), Baked ham, cornbread dressing with giblet gravy, Green beans and onions, mashed potatoes and, of course, purple hull peas and okra cooked together.

On the buffet in the dining room were about twelve different desserts. Everything from peach cobbler to banana pudding to coconut cake was there for us to try.

That pretty much ended Christmas for everyone but me. I got to lay in the back seat of my car and listen to my Dad sing Christmas carols all the way home to Mobile so it had a perfect ending for me.

I'm sure each of us have our own memories of a past Christmas but this story is one told by Charlie Baldwin from Mississippi.