LAURINBURG — Christmas is my favorite time of year because of all the family traditions I remember from my childhood – without one of those traditions, it just wasn’t Christmas.
My sister, Sammi, and I knew Christmas was getting close when my parents got down all the Christmas totes from the attic. Our guest room would — and still does — overflow with Christmas decorations.
The first decoration that makes its way down from the guest room is mom’s manger, which was built by my Poppa, my dad’s dad. It holds a ceramic Nativity set that was hand painted by my mom decades ago.
After turning on the light for Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, it was time for the ceramic Santas, also all hand painted. The Santas — in their different outfits and adornments — sit on the mantle above the fireplace surrounded by garland and pine cones.
All work stopped on the Christmas front at that point because it was time to head to Lowe’s and pick out the Christmas tree — a job my sister and I took very seriously. After finding what we thought was the perfect tree, my dad did the heavy lifting — wrestling the evergreen into the back of his truck, up the stairs and into the house.
A few years later we discovered the reason my mom kept getting bronchitis during the holidays was because of the Christmas tree, so we made the switch to the artificial stuff. Which was fine with me, because I had a new job — fluffing the branches.
I was bound and determined — and still am with my own tree — to make sure it didn’t look like we had a fake tree. So I would “fluff” the branches, step back and check for holes and fluff some more. Once I was satisfied with the look of the tree, my dad strung the lights — always the traditional multi-colored ones. I didn’t realize until I got my first non-pre-lit Christmas tree that putting the lights on is an art form.
With the lights in place my mom, sister and I took over the job of decorating the tree, with “Charlie Brown” ornaments as my dad always called them. Ornaments we made as children, or ones that were given to us as gifts. Box lid after box lid went on tree, until it was time for the icicles.
My dad was in charge of transforming the tree into a Hatten Christmas tree with the icicles. It wasn’t until we were older that my sister and I were allowed to help — we had to put them on one at a time, literally. My dad was worried we would just throw them on in big clumps, which my sister did.
My next favorite Christmas tradition was baking and decorating sugar cookies. We would clean off the kitchen counters, hop onto our respective stools and take turns helping my mom roll and mix the dough. After what felt like an eternity as a kid for the dough to cool so we could use our cookie cutters.
We would cut out the cookies, re-roll the dough and cut out more until our trays were full. Once they were in the oven my sister and I kept a watchful eye on them with our flashlights. When the cookies came out of the oven and cooled we made the powered sugar icing, mixed it with different food coloring and went to work creating our masterpieces.
Even though my sister and I are grown now, we still spend Christmas Eve opening presents with my dad’s family and Christmas morning opening gifts at home. My mom always buys us little games or toys from the dollar store that she uses as stocking stuffers.
There is just something so special about Christmas and I wish I could spend the entire month of December with them so I could put up the tree, hang all the ornaments and bake Christmas cookies — but I’m a grown up now and I can’t. That doesn’t stop me from loving Christmas, it just means the tree doesn’t get turned on until I get home from work and I have to save up vacation days to visit family.
But hopefully when I have kids I will be able to give them just as many wonderful memories and traditions. With that, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Amber Hatten can be reached at 910-506-3170.
