There's so much to remember
No wonder I remember
Christmas Eve in my home town
'Cause there were carols in the square
Laughter everywhere
Couples kissing under the mistletoe
I can't help reminiscing
Knowing I'll be missing
Christmas Eve in my home town
Those familiar footprints upon the snow
There's so much to remember
No wonder I remember
Christmas Eve in my home town
I'd like to be there
Trimming the tree there
And there's a chance that I might
I can hear singing
Steeple bells ringing
Noel and Silent Night
Wise men journeyed far, guided by a star
But though I'm not a wise man, this I know
Through dreams and just pretending
I'm there and I'll be spen-ding
Christmas Eve in my home town
As I sit in the semi darkness my living room, surrounded by the warm glow of the lights emitting from the Christmas tree, my world is all at peace. Truly, it is my most favorite night of the entire year. It is Christmas Eve, that magically enchanting time when the world lies in stillness on the eve of our dear Savior's birth. With my kid safely tucked in bed dreaming sweet dreams of what Christmas day will bring, I once again savor the moment that I possess to steal a few hours of quiet solitude. With the fire going in the fireplace and my faithful little dog curled up in my lap, my soul is at peace, at least for this moment. Although many claim Christmas Day as their favorite time of the year, for me, Christmas Eve has always been that special moment that I look forward to all year, and savor when it finally arrives. As a child, I never really paid much attention to Christmas Eve. But as an adult, I eagerly look forward to the time when the nightfall approaches on that special evening each year. With the television playing in the background, I briefly close my eyes and store this precious moment safely within the depths of my memories, held there to look back on for years to come.
When I was growing up, I had a great childhood but there was not a lot of stability in my life when it came to putting down roots and staying in one place for an extended period. Due to the nature of my dad's job, we frequently moved around quite often and never seemed to stay in one location more than a few years.
When I was a kid, my parents owned a few LP records (left over relics from their teenage years in the 1970s) that I found myself fascinated with. One set of records that they owned was a six volume Christmas collection produced by Reader's Digest records in the 1970s. I have always loved Christmas music, and to this day, I still find myself playing Christmas music in in my office at work all day long beginning on the first of November. As a kid, I dearly loved that record set because it contained all the Christmas staples such as Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas" and being Crosby's "White Christmas." Now, you must realize that this was in the time before Sirius XM, Amazon Music or Spotify. No, if I wanted to listen to Christmas music, this set of records presented my only opportunity to do so throughout the Christmas season. Sure, there might have been a radio station or two that played Christmas songs, but if I wanted Christmas music on demand, this was it.
As a kid, I remembered one song that caught my attention and I found myself listening to it over and over through the years. The song was Kate Smith's "Christmas Eve in My Hometown." I remember being fascinated by Ms. Smith's hauntingly beautiful contralto voice. I grew up in a day and age where there was no Wikipedia or even the Internet as we now know it. If you wanted to find out something, your only option pretty much was to go to the local library and look it up in the World Book Encyclopedia. As a result, I grew up never knowing who this woman with the magical voice was. I just knew that every Christmas I looked forward to hearing her sing of a place that I longed for in my heart but knew would never exist for me.
This October marked the 15th year of my wife and I living in what I now consider to be our "hometown" of sorts. Neither my wife or I had a stable childhood, and we seem to both have developed a sort of "PTSD" when it comes to moving as an adult. Perhaps that is why we have never left our town after 15 years (our entire married life)? We have been in our same house for 12 of our 15 years of marriage even though many of our friends have bought and sold, and are now in their second or third house. We have had the same dog for 14 years. I have had the same old Ford truck for 12 years. Are you seeing a pattern here? Stability. Hanging on. Putting down roots. Finding a hometown.
But a strange thing happened a few years ago. I began to realize that people and places change, and nothing stays the same. To think that everything would stay the same forever goes against the very law of nature. When I was growing up, my late grandparents lived down in Crystal Springs, Mississippi. My grandmother's house, built in 1890, was the one constant in my life. I spent every holiday there as well as much time each summer. In fact, my aunt still lives in the house to this day, so it remains in the family. When I was growing up, some of my happiest memories were centered around that house and that town. Even though I never physically lived in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, it was such a constant in my life that it became sort of a pseudo-hometown of sorts for me. In fact, my wife and I were even married in that town in my late grandmother's home church. After my grandmother passed away in 2010 and my late grandfather moved in with his sister at her house in Terry, Mississippi (where he lived until his passing in 2015), I never went back to my late grandmother's house much, if at all. It was just not the same and it was too difficult for me. Many years passed and I did not go back down to Crystal Springs Mississippi at all. The one or two times I did go back down there to visit, nothing seemed as I remembered it. People had died, and places were gone.
Life is a strange thing. After my mother finally retired a few years back, she and my dad found a house that they wanted to buy down in Crystal Springs and decided to move back to my mother's hometown. Ironically, it is right around the corner from my late grandmother's house. Life had come full circle and I now had more of a reason to visit the town that had meant so much to me growing up.
Like life, memory is also a strange thing. When you go back and attempt to revisit places and scenes from your past, you find that they simply do not exist anymore. Indeed, the only place that they exist anymore is within the dim, cobwebby recesses of your imagination. Although we are making new memories down in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, it will never be the same as it was in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
As I sit back in my chair, I turn my attention back to “A Christmas Carol” playing on the television. Sadie adjusts herself as she nudges closer and sighs before drifting off to a doggie dream. My wife is sitting close by, drinking hot cocoa. And my son is fast asleep in his bed, dreaming happy thoughts of what tomorrow will bring.
The Christmas Eve of now looks different the Christmas Eve of my past. And in the future, I’m sure that it will look different than it does now. But no matter, what, Christmas Eve will always be my favorite night of the year. It’s that magical time where the past, present, and future all collide together. It’s the eve of my savior’s birth, and a time where I am blessed and happy to be alive.
You can never physically go back to a moment in time. Even if you were blessed to have had a stable, steady hometown while growing up, it will not be the same when you’re 42 as it was when you were 12. But Christmas Eve in my Hometown still exists. It exists in all the happy moments in time, which gather and come rushing forth in unison to greet me on that most special night of the year. Christmas Eve in my hometown is NOW. It is going to the candlelight service at church with my family. It is coming home to eat taco soup as we watch a Christmas movie before putting my son to bed. It is staying up with my wife to watch television in the dark on Christmas Eve.
One day, these joyful moments of the present will also be gone. And I’ll long for them with as much fervor as I do for the years spent at my grandmother’s. But they’ll be safe. They’ll be a part of the memories stored in those dim, cobwebby recesses of my memory. And I’ll sit back and smile once more. Christmas Eve in my Hometown exists. It exists my in my heart. As Ms. Smith sings:
“Through dreams and just pretending
I'm there and I'll be spending
Christmas Eve in my home town”
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