“HOLIDAY MEMORIES AT THE NULL HOME”

My fondest Holiday Memories are the times that our family spent together at Christmas when I was a little boy growing up in the small Franklin County coal-mining town of Zeigler. Everyone in my family who was old enough to work, had chores or jobs to do that would bring in a couple of dollars for the family.

Besides sharing the duties of working at the city library, every Saturday morning my older sisters would walk out to the north city limits and spend half of the day helping a lady clean her large home. By combining these jobs, the girls were able to buy their school year books and class rings and other things they needed.

Every year when the winter came and the snow started falling, the girls knew that it would soon be time for Santa to visit our old home place on Maple street, and managed to save enough of their money to buy gifts for their younger brothers and sisters. As a family tradition for Christmas Eve we would always take the largest stocking that we could find and hang it on a chair that Mom placed behind the front room coal stove. Santa didn’t care if we were rich or poor, or what color our skin was because if we had been good boys and girls, then this was the night he would come and fill our stocking with Christmas candy. When Christmas morning we always woke up bright and early and rushed to the breakfast table where we gave thanks unto the Lord, and after we had eaten our breakfast, we’d go to the chair behind the stove to claim our stocking full of goodies. We then gathered around our beautiful Christmas tree and the older sisters would read the names on each gift, and pass them to their wide-eyed younger brothers and sisters. I remember getting a few things that I needed as well as a few things I wanted. Among the things I wanted were a toy gun and holster set, and an “Ozark Ike” and a “Red Ryder” comic book.

My brother Jim and I knew that we could go as close as our own backyard and through our powers of imagination, we could become any cowboy we wanted to be.

All we had to do was to pretend, and as we rode our broomstick horse through the streets and alleys, we always managed to clean up the town of all the bad guys.

But there was always one thing I could never figure out about this Santa Claus and Christmas Eve stocking deal. I always slept on a mattress on the floor right in front of the coal stove. I would purposely law awake as long as I could so I could spy on Santa as he busied himself filling all those stockings with candy, but I never could catch him at it. Yet when the morning came, I’d look over at the filled stockings and knew that somehow the sly old rascal had landed his big sleigh and all his reindeer on the top of our house without making a sound. I could see that he had slipped in during the night and filled all the stockings while I had been dozing.

I guess I’ll never know these answers, but I guess that’s why he’s our Santa. Christmas would soon be gone, but the love of my sisters was always present and later as I got older and recalled our Christmas times at home, I often wondered that since they were so busy giving to others, who gave to them. It was through these holiday memories of tenderness and love that I realized that the dreams of every little boy can always come true, if he has sisters like I had, because their love and care made everything possible...

Raymond Null

arden@mychoice.net

Herrin, Illinois

Last Updated on November 16, 2005

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