This is a little story written by my father, that I wanted to share with all of you. If you have memories of the holidays or the winters season please join in and share them with us! - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess what I remember most of Christmas as a child in Marshall County is..... Mother would gather us kids up and off to the woods we'd go. We would search the woods for that "special tree." We cut it down and together we'd all drag the tree home. We made a stand out of whatever was handy and put up our decorations. We spent hours and hours making paper chains and stringing popcorn to decorate our "special tree." Looking back, I'm sure there wasn't a pretty tree in those woods and by the time we drug it home, I'm sure it was beat up pretty good.... but to us kids it was the most beautiful tree in town. One other thing I remember about those times...we always had oranges and tangerines during Christmas. I think that might have been the only time of the year we had those treats. We had lots of fun and lots of company during the holidays and we visited most of the kinfolks...had to see what our cousins got for Christmas! Christmas was a time all the Uncles brought out there best homemade whiskey and most all of the grownups shared a drink on Christmas Day. November or December was always the time for hog killin', I think all the boys helped with hog killing, it was a lot of work. It was always ccccccccold, it had to be to kill the hogs. You always knew Christmas was close. A tradition was to save the tails, wrap them up real pretty and give them to whomever you didn't like... or one of your sisters! copyright 1999 William Davis Posted with permission.