Christmas Traditions: Keeping The Memories Of All Those We Have Loved Alive

Since I was a kid, this time of year has been very special to me. Growing up in Oxford, I imagined every citizen in town knew exactly what day to begin with the Christmas decorations. Every year, it was the day prior to the first Monday in December, when the Lions Club hosted the annual Oxford Christmas parade.

The parade is one of the first signs in town that Christmas is only a few weeks away. And as the last float of the parade passes by each year, it always reminds me of my dad, Glenn Brown.
My dad built the Santa Claus float in the early ’90s. Every year, Rudolph prances through the Square, and I smile, knowing that he used to stand in our front yard after the parade until Christmas was over. It was a store-bought reindeer, but my dad customized it with a red-bulb nose and turned it into Rudolph.

Every Christmas Eve, we would gather at my grandparents’ (Burwood and Laverne Baggett) house off Highway 7 to have dinner and exchange gifts. Most Christmases, the whole family would come, forcing us to fit almost 40 people in my grandparents’ three-bedroom house. My cousin, Melissa Johnson Spinks, and I would always watch the movie “Home Alone” and repeatedly glance out the window, looking up and trying to find Santa.
Last year, Melissa gave me a Christmas ornament that depicts two children watching Santa through the window. “This is us,” she said. 

As the years have passed and families have grown, we don’t get together on Christmas Eve like we used to. But we’ve begun a (somewhat) new tradition – new for us, that is, but for my father, it was all he ever knew. Now my mother, Lynn Bostick, and I attend the Christmas Eve service at First Baptist Church. Attending this service was a tradition my father followed as a young boy. Eating Christmas Eve dinner at my grandmother’s house prohibited him from continuing this tradition during most of his adulthood, but, after he passed away, I picked the tradition up in order to the share the same Christmas spirit he felt at this time of year.
Since my grandmother passed away in 2012, we have tried to keep the family get-togethers going at Christmastime; we’ve just downsized and moved them to Christmas Day rather than Christmas Eve. My mom has my aunts and uncles over to our house, which is right across from Lamar Park, for a Christmas night dinner.
We sit and visit for hours, catching up on the year’s events that we’ve missed, even though both sets of uncles and aunts live within close proximity in North Mississippi.
Our holiday tradition continued this past weekend, as the entire family – cousins as well as aunts and uncles – gathered at our house, just like we used to do at my grandparents’ home. 
Uncle Wayne and I, as usual, spent a few hours talking about football, of course. He brags on Mississippi State’s season while I remind him he’s in Oxford. He dwells on the fact that MSU will be going to a bowl game, and I just try to change the subject to baseball.
We laugh, we eat too much, and then we go our separate ways for another year. Above all, these family get-togethers help us keep alive the memories of all the people we have loved and lost throughout the years.
Have a blessed and Merry Christmas, everyone.

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Have some Christmas traditions you’d like to share? Email your stories to hottytoddynews@gmail.com.

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Adam Brown is the sports editor of HottyToddy.com. He can be reached at adam.brown@hottytoddy.com.