(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.