Living Jackson Magazine

Christmas in Jackson

By Priscilla Daves

How does it happen that Christmas comes so much faster than it once did? I remember it used to take about 40 years to get to this point—now it feels like 40 days.

For those of us growing up in Jackson County, Christmas was going to the farm for a Christmas tree unless your parents bought one from the Jefferson Rotary Club. My family went to the woods here on our farm and my parents tried to give us an experience to remember. I do remember: That’s why I love artificial trees.

My first Christmas as a married woman was my first Christmas with an artificial tree. I’m for freedom to choose what kind of Christmas tree you want, and for those of you who don’t get to hug trees very often, you should certainly go out and buy one already chopped or go chop one on a Christmas tree farm. (Jackson County has some nice tree farms.)

That’s if you have a Christmas tree. You might not want one for a variety of reasons, but for those of us who think a tree is an enhancement to any home, a sacrificial tree is essential to happiness once a year.

Despite your personal opinion, let’s be fair and admit that Christmas is really a time when parents want to make memories for children that will bring them home when they grow up and have custody of the current parents’ grandchildren.

For us, Christmas was shopping at Braselton Brothers in Braselton. The stores were all connected and you could get to the toy store while your mother was in the dress shop and would not get into too much trouble for wandering. I still remember Braselton Brothers for the black wooden floors, the old ramp giving access to those toys and the comfortable feeling I always had there.

Commerce had Harper’s 5&10 and Jefferson had Jefferson 5&10, which became Christmas fairylands after Thanksgiving.

Then, there were the trips to Atlanta every year—actually twice per year: before Christmas and before Easter. The trip involved getting up in the dark (something I have never liked to do) and a long drive to a chilly wait for Davidson’s or Rich’s to open. Then we’d spend the day picking out things that Mother didn’t buy, which was frustrating and incomprehensible since Santa would bring them later anyway.

These were the trips when I instigated the family’s annual hunt after I was lost every year in the Christmas crowds. Always having had a tendency to woolgather, I’d wander among the aisles while the rest of the family would troop into the distance. After a couple of years of real scares, we got a family rule that if you found yourself lost you went to the nearest cash register and stayed there.

Mother later said that might have been a mistake because it seemed to give me a compulsion to stand by cash registers to find comfort. The idea was so entrenched in my family, and told so often about me, that one Christmas when I lost my 3-year-old nephew, he just went to the nearest cash register and waited for us to find him. We’d never told him: He picked up the family lore. Now cash registers don’t make any noise and they are hard to find inside most stores, but I still seem to find them comforting.

We also had to stand in long lines to have our pictures taken with Santa Claus, something my sisters, my cousin and I only discovered years later our mothers did for us. I always believed that those pictures were for my mother and other assorted relatives. I’d have gladly missed the long lines and the pictures.

One memorable year we went home in the dark with traffic bumper to bumper and I remember saying it looked so beautiful. I thought it looked like a diamond and ruby necklace. I then learned you don’t say that to adults who are sleep deprived, tired from standing in lines and exhausted from looking for you. I can offer classes in that lesson.

The other night coming home from Atlanta I found myself in similar traffic on I-85, and this time there was no one to be upset as I enjoyed the strands of “diamonds” and “rubies.”

Once we traveled on an outdated, two-lane highway. It was replaced by the Interstate system, freeing us to travel to the stores in Atlanta much faster. Then the stores started coming our way and the downtown stores closed.

Watch the traffic, be patient with the people looking for parking spaces in front of you and remember that Christmas is fun or don’t do it at all. Your headlights and parking lights give some of us pleasure no matter how dense the traffic, and you can find joy if you just sit back and remember this is the time to build at least one good memory a year so you can blackmail your children forever.