holiday

Senior Contributing Editor and back-page columnist Marcia Sherril recounts her most precious Christmas memories

When my siblings and I were young, our Christmas tradition was to sell mistletoe to make money for our Christmas presents—and not just any mistletoe. We didn’t buy it in bulk at the local wholesale nursery. No, our father prudently armed his sons with rifles at a tender age and the boys were instructed to shoot the mistletoe out of the trees near our house—a forest that still runs deep along Birmingham’s Cahaba River. We would gather up the fallen branches and tie them into lovely bunches with red satin ribbons. Placing them ever-so-gently in little brother Billy’s red wagon, we set out on a three-mile journey to sell them to our neighbors. With each house situated on five-acre plots, we had quite a hike before us that lasted all day but would, without fail, result in pockets full of earnings to spend the next day on presents for our parents.

My favorite gifts were always those from my father, who would either have tons of money or be bankrupt and devising a plot to get it all back (a sport I continue to this day) but he nonetheless always gave the perfect gifts. Whether it was Earth Shoes (when those were the rage), or North Face parkas, or elephant-bell-bottom jeans when we were older—or when we had our own children: Cabbage Patch dolls, Furbies—whatever was unattainable, he got it. Every Christmas morning we would awake to the sound of him playing guitar and singing Christmas carols and Momma warming cinnamon buns in the oven while the Boston Terriers feasted on bacon. We still have the dogs, and we have our memories, and of course, we have Momma.

–Marcia Sherrill