(Editor’s note: As many of us observe the traditions and messages of Christmas today, we asked members of our Editorial Board to share thoughts and memories of the holiday.)

Bringing Timmy home
By Bert Coe

Even after celebrating 75 Christmases, to pick the most memorable is easy. It was 1959 in Alma. I had just begun a job in retail management. It was December and my wife Brenda was about to give birth to our first child. On Dec. 19th our store manager hosted a party at his home to celebrate Christmas. Brenda had not been feeling well, so we proceeded to the party prepared to head to the hospital if necessary. About 10 p.m. it became necessary. We drove to what was then the Wilcox Hospital on State Street in Alma. We were in for a long night. I hadn’t realized what I had been telling Brenda but I found out later that she was a bit nervous. It wasn’t the delivery, but she had decided that I would only accept a red-haired little boy. Now while that was my preference, I really would have been happy with whoever arrived, boy or girl, whatever color hair. But she told me later that I had repeatedly said that a red-headed little boy was my preference and nearly mandatory. So, after 17 hours of labor, sure enough, the nurse informed me that we had a red-haired little boy and mother and son were doing fine. On Christmas Eve it was time to take Timmy home. I recall I had to pay $98 (he was paid in full) to allow mother and son to come home just in time for Christmas. We have spent many happy and festive Christmas’s while raising our four children. But at our home we have always attempted to remind ourselves that what we are celebrating is the birth of Jesus. Merry Christmas to you all.

A 1960s Christmas
By Dan Marvin

Christmas, as a child back in the ‘60s, was very memorable for me. It’s based on an imagination that only a child can experience, which I most certainly have magnified over time. My mom and dad struggled financially and we had very few worldly possessions. It’s now easy to see how possessions have little to do with happiness, because we had everything we could have wanted. Christmas memories as a child are equally divided between packages found under the tree, the wonderful smell of my mom’s meat pies that were slid into the oven just before the gift opening, and visits from relatives donning gifts and jovial conversation. Meat pies are a French Canadian tradition passed down through generations and are the result of many hours of work. Later in life, when my kids were younger, relatives from New York would send packages every year with explicit instructions to be opened on Christmas Day. They were the kind of toys and books that can’t be found in normal stores and heightened the anticipation for my three girls. My wife and I had a lot of fun watching them stare at the packages and occasionally give them a shake. An ongoing Christmas memory began in 1982 while on a trip out west with my in-laws. My father-in-law picked up a fresh and perfectly formed buffalo chip. He carefully packed it in a large zip-lock bag and when we returned home, he dried it and mounted it on a plaque. On Christmas Day, he wrapped it up and gave it to his father (grandpa) as a joke. A few short years later, grandpa passed away, and the chip has become an annual Christmas gift, given randomly to family members accompanied with a newly created poem written specifically for the recipient. It has been fun and the tradition continues to this day.

Christmas past
By Marilyn Fosburg

The Christmas season is a time to look back on what we did to celebrate the holiday in the past. I have two boys and one thing we did when they were young was to take a “field trip” to Grand Rapids to see the decorations and store windows. In the 1970s downtown Grand Rapids had three large department stores, Herpolsheimer’s, Wurzburg’s, and Steketee’s. The windows were decorated with moving drummer boys, sugar plum fairies, skaters, and toys. All of the windows were animated and colorful. Christmas music was piped into the street. There were strolling musicians singing carols on the streets. The inside of the stores were decorated with snowflakes, trees, and tinsel on every counter and in the aisles and nooks and crannies of the store. One of the stores had a person playing a grand piano. The basement of Herpolsheimer’s had a train with a track on the ceiling that took children for rides around the store and a large playland. We shopped, enjoyed the day and I am sure we ate lunch in one of the stores. If we bought something, it was gift wrapped for us if we wanted. At one store a clerk suggested to the boys that if they went into the jewelry store next door we could see an old fashioned pay system that when you paid for your item the money and bill was put into a small container that went on a wire, into the air, and up to the cashier, where a person made change and sent it back to the clerk who sold you the item. We watched a couple of sales go back and forth and enjoyed the ambience of the old store. The entire experience was one of beautiful music, artistic creations, and a celebration of the beauty of the Christmas season.

Glimpse of Christmas past
By Ed Fisher

My Christmases in Connecticut were always surprising. I must have been 10 or 11. At that time Springhill was not densely populated. Our street had a few houses. To the north and east were hilly woods. To the south was a mellow swamp and to the west was the Peck farm. What a great place to live for a kid that age! A few days before Christmas we had finished dinner at 5:30, as usual, so I had two whole hours to be outdoors. I decided to visit my friend, Dominic. I climbed Farmer Peck’s stone wall (properties then were outlined by piles of rocks dug from the fields so crops could be planted). I crossed the south field, passed the farm house and walked down the drive. Two blocks west, one north and two more west brought me to Dominic’s house. He had a BB-gun and we shot at cans set on piles of snow. Where the time went is a mystery, but all too soon is was dark and I had to go home. It was then I saw what to the mind of an unvarnished boy was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. There in the darkness glowed a house outlined entirely with pale blue lights. Outdoor lights were for city folks so this was startling. And the lights I had seen there had many colors, like those on a Christmas tree. Blue was so serene. The quiet night made the magic real. The rest of the Universe appeared above as diamond dust on velvet but couldn’t compete with the simple majesty of what was before me. Whenever I want, I can return to that street, that night, that house and relive the wonder of simple blue lights at Christmas.

Jack's sprat could be a brat
His alewife could be mean
Each morn, with them he'd sat
And kept their fish tank clean
They spurned him in their fishy ways
They both gave Jack the moon
Of them Jack made a bouillabaisse
And ate them with a spoon

*** To the non- ichthyologists among you: Sprat: a small herring-like marine fish, Clupea spratus, of European waters; also, any of various other small fishes, mostly resembling this. Alewife: a North American fish, Pomolobus pseudoharengus, resembling a small shad but inferior as food.

Twelve entries in the Morey Foundation High School poster contest can be seen at the Art Reach Gallery, at 111 East Broadway in Mt. Pleasant. Below is one of the walls of the Christmas Collection at the gallery. There are gifts for the entire family and friends.

For store hours got to http://www.artreachcenter.org/.

November had started wet, and ended unusually mild. The trees, as best they could, had shed their leaves, strewing crinkled tawny debris on the lawn and gardens of the Chipmunk Estate. At the tempting change in the temperatures, the chipmunks appeared from their lairs to gather still more supplies for the inevitable onset of the frigid season.

Skipper bounded effortlessly across the golden yard, filling his growing cheeks with sweet morsels. At one point, a young red squirrel slithered up behind him to rob him of his treasures. But here! Skip turned on his now fuller haunches, and sprang, chasing the marauder up a tree. Ah, how nature takes care of those evolved to fill a niche.

The wicked temperature turned colder, and hoary frost began to dominate. The last of the flowers shrank, and shriveled, their remains falling to earth to join their ancestors. Nothing wasted here, their stems, and leaves, and limp blossoms became, through time the soil for their successors. The last sweet days of temperate autumn disappeared. Proud cardinals still returned daily to the feeder in the last moments of light. Natural selection gave them sharper eyes then their stalkers and they flourished.

Below ground, the chipmunks knew their day would soon arrive: that day when their earth, though nearest the sun in its perigee, by its tilted axis enfeebled the light striking their part of the world. Winter was the most fearsome time for them (and all their neighbors and enemies). Stark oblivion faced those without the means to persist. They, the chipmunks, had set themselves tasks, to collect enough nourishment to last until the coming of spring.

Now there would be the test. Had they done enough? Unlike some creatures, chipmunks do not hibernate. Yes, they sleep a lot in winter’s grip, to conserve energy, but they must awaken from time to time to eat and drink. The snow would provide moisture (though Those Above did provide a warmed pan of water near the entrance to the Palace, but who could trust them to remember to fill it regularly?). Only the trove of seeds, carefully collected from many sources would insure their safety. It was thus that Mom Chip, after surviving her ordeal with the Red Monster, called her clan to the Palace.

 December 21 was the day of the Winter Solstice and all were invited to share the round year’s last feast of Mom’s special seeds. There were games, such as pin the tail on the Red Demon, and Bob for Peanuts. The high point was when Mom gave out gifts, packets of extra seeds for each child. Willow helped distribute the parcels, insuring each got one and only one of the precious stashes. Mom looked weary, and Willow worried whether or not Mom would see the Spring Equinox. But this was for the children and nothing would spoil it.

Granted the “children” had grown during the autumn, and would be fully fledged when the ice disappeared, and would be sent on their various ways to find suitable locations, to build nests of their own. Skipper was everyone’s prime example. He had started early in the year, finding a logical wonderful spot beneath the Hawthorne tree. He dug one, two, at least three entrances (one had been dug up by a great, marauding black cat), and filled its galleries with enough food for a small army of chipmunks.

“Now, my dears,” started Mom Chip slowly, “It is time that you knew about Chip Krinkle.” The games ceased and all the tiny heads swung toward Mom. “A long time ago,” she continued, “When the world was even fiercer than it is today, a terrible Winter struck this land. Many, who had not prepared vanished. Those Above did not live in the warren beyond the Palace, indeed, there was no Palace then. There was no easy way to gather provisions. No idle times then, all were in a frenzy to gather food for the time of darkness. October and November were dreadfully barren. Chill winds and temperatures cold enough to freeze the Red Demon’s tail stalked the province, holding all in a dreadful grasp.

“I was a child then, as untutored as you, and I clung to my mother. She gave me the name Tinsel, and that is what I was called until I moved into the Palace. We lived between some drafty logs in an abandoned woodpile. Mother had found leaves and bits of tattered cloth to block the unceasing winds a bit. Each day we two went out to find seeds and insect eggs (they taste vile, but contain some nourishment when you are truly hungry). December came, but the pile of food was very small for what we knew would be a long, dreary, sunless season.

"In the evening of Solstice Day, when I was asleep deep in a pile of gingham scrapes a strange thing occurred. I felt mother move from her place beside me. Someone was in the lair! Mother bristled and placed herself between the entrance and where I lay. Laughter, deep and oily as shelled walnuts came from beyond. Shivering I moved deeper beneath the nest.

“Mother called to me, ‘Tinsel, quick, come here!’ At first I dared not move. She called again gently, ‘Come on, it’s perfectly safe.’ I rubbed my sleepy eyes and crept quietly to her side. There in the entry was a large sack that smelled of nuts and sunlight. In the doorway, for just a moment, I caught sight of a large, jolly chipmunk. ‘Happy Solstice to you both,’ he cried. He was dragging a great sled made of stout sticks, upon which was a mound of similar sacks. Before I knew it, he was gone.

“‘Who was that, mother’, I asked, my eyes wide with wonder. ‘That,’ she responded was Chip Krinkle. When times are sad for needy chipmunks he delivers parcels of food to help them through the winter.’ “And that is why Mom Chips give children gifts of fragrant seeds on Solstice Evening. Remember Chip Krinkle will be there to help.”

The children chirped with joy, and so the party ended. All went home and dreamt of Chip Krinkle. Peace to all who believe.