Estil Barb Bible

Article Twenty – three
by Estil Bible (1880 – 1976)

Some of my friends have asked me to relate some of my early childhood Christmas experiences. From early childhood I was taught that Santa Claus came down the chimney on Christmas night and if I would hang my stocking up beside the fire place, Old Santa would come down the chimney and fill it with presents.

In those days most every family, especially the farm families, had large wide fireplaces usually about three feet wide and two feet deep in which wood was burned exclusivly. In those days, most every housewife had a set of knitting needles and would knit socks and stockings for the entire family. After the boys outgrew their three cornered panties they were dressed in knee pants and long woolen stockings that reached well above the knees and were held up by either a strip of cloth or an elastic band if the elastic was available. The long woolen stockings were for winter wear exclusively. We wore neither shoes not stockings from May to September, and were allowed to wade the creeks and mudholes to our hearts content, stopping occasionally to pull the leeches off the bottom of our feet.

The long woolen stockings were fine for hanging by the fireplace for Santa's convenience. We were also told that we would never get to see Santa, that we might sit all night and watch for him, but if we close our eyes in sleep only for a few minutes Santa would be in and out so quick that we would not be able to see him. I and my two sisters would hang out stockings up and go to bed and be up again and down the stairs long before day light to see what old Santa had left in our stockings. I usually found my stocking filled full of peanuts or chestnuts (this was before the blight killed all the chestnut trees) also a few sticks of barber pole mint candy, some apples and possibly an orange or two and a pair of home knit woolen mittens but never a toy of any kind.

There was a family who lived just above us who had children near my own age who would buy their boys all kinds of toys, mostly noise making toys such as whistles, tin bugles, cap pistols and other noise makers. Two of the boys and I played together most every day and I wanted a bugle and a cap pistol just about as bad as a boy ever wanted anything.

When I was about eight or ten years old I got the awfulest shock of all my life. My father and mother came straight out and told me that there was no such thing as a Santa Claus. That they were the ones that had been filling my stocking all the time. Right there I wish to say that I had never known my father nor mother to tell me an untruth, neither before nor after that time. I remember that I disputed with them and told them that I knew there was a Santa Claus and if they would stay from my stocking next year that old Santa would bring me a bugle and a toy pistol, but they proved it to me the next Christmas. There was absolutely nothing in my stocking next Christmas. And I will add that if each and every one of us had as complete and abiding faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as I had in Santa Claus at that time, there would be no lost sinners. There were no Christmas trees brought in and decorated by the family in those days.

My big brothers and even my father and mother would turn their hats up side down and place around the hearth for old Santa to put their presents in. I never even saw or heard of a Christmas tree until I was almost a grown man. The first one I ever heard of was gotten up by the neighbors in the Trantham Hollow in Uncle Tommy Trantham house. On this occasion, the boys persuaded George Smith to drink a few swallows of whiskey and George put his religion on the out side and got out on the floor and began to dance and told his Preacher "Darn a religion that won't let a man have a good time at Christmas."

I have related this story about George and the Preacher in a previous column and some of you may remember it. Another amusing incident that occurred when I was a very young boy was the Sunday morning that my father shaved his whiskers off. My father always wore his white beard complete with mustache how long before I was born, I do not know but with the exception of this one time he wore them until his death in 1920. On this occasion, I was outside playing one Sunday morning and came in about nine or ten o'clock and there was an old man sitting in father's rocking chair clean shaved and I didn't know him. In fact, he looked pretty darned ugly to me. and he began to call me by my name and beg me to come to him. Finally he got up and started toward me and I got out of there in double quick time. My mother ran me down and finally persuaded me that it was father with his whiskers shaved off.This was the only time that I knew him to shave.

==================================== These articles were written between 1972-1975 by Estil Barb Bible for a local newspaper (the "Greeneville Times" in Tennessee). He wrote these articles after he was past ninety years of age, and they appear just as he typed them.

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