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My cousins many years later at Smith Mountain Lake 12/20/08.

It's Terrific Tuesday. What's new in your neck of the woods?

Many of you who have followed me writings expect a "column" once in awhile and it has been awhile since I wrote you one. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and a Prospero Anno Nueve!

A Memory of Christmas Past:

I was born a Thomas-- that's my maiden name. When I was a child, my parents held an annual Christmas family gathering on our Fincastle farm that we just called "the Tree Cut." The Thomas Family hailed from Roanoke, but we moved to our farm in Fincastle when I was seven years old. (Anything raucous or stubborn we ever do, we always blame on the Thomas family genes). But they were a great set of folks, even if I say so myself!

For the week or two before, we would lay running cedar and pine and red cedar bespecked with candles and glass decorations around the house. A jolly fresh wreath made by my mother's hands and later mine, hung on the door. The tables were dressed in holiday clothes. Christmas had come to Fincastle. The oven baked cookies into the night-- vanilla wafer sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, Pecan Sandies, chocolate chips, lemon cookies, Mexican wedding cakes, the list goes on! She kept them in what she called "firkins" but today would be like a popcorn tin. There would be lots of cookies in the firkins. She kept me and my brother at bay with and evil eye and stern warning.

All of the members of my father's family would come to the house to get a Christmas tree. A prickly sweet smelling red cedar no less whose needles (if that is what you call them) could still be picked out of the carpet or your bare foot in July. Always it was the last weekend before Christmas. In keeping with old family tradition, our trees stayed up past New Year's Day. Daddy said it brought good luck. We never had good luck, so I shudder to think what may have happened to us if the tree came down early!

Daddy was the baby of the family and he ate that up. He loved it when his family came for a visit. He was the center of attention once again!

Anyway, around noonish the early arrivals would drive into yard and were usually Uncle Johnny and Aunt Sabra Helms. Uncle Johnny was a D-Day vet who was quiet, but one of the kindest men in the world. He'd lock onto my child ears and give me a big kiss. Aunt Sabra was my Daddy's sister. Soon my Aunt Lib and Uncle Bob would arrive. She was also my Daddy's sister and loud with laughter. Uncle Bob worked here at the Roanoke Times as a pressman. He had two Distinguished Flying Crosses from WWII. (No one knew it until I interviewed while I was at Hollins U taking a history class.) Uncle Bill and my grandfather Clifford Thomas would come together. Pa Pa didn't get around too well, but he loved to eat! About the same time cousins from the family including Mary Fannie and Richard Mitchell and their son Charles Richard and his family -- she was an orphan cousin my grandparents raised with my Daddy and his family. The Cunninghams my grandfather's half brother Earl and his family Lewis and Edna Mae, Bill and Anne Lewis and my beloved Great Aunt Lucille who made the coconut cake that rocked the world! The Rakes girls from my great grandmother's second family in Margaret who married and had two girls Bobbie and Beverly came with spouses. They are still two of the most beautiful women in the world.

The room divided soon into the Thomas blood kin-- all loud and full of fun and the quiet, kind folks they all married. Oddly I would choose a quite guy Bobby Benson for my first husband and he would fit right in with the other men folk. My Momma was one of those quiet types, too, but she liked to laugh so she would stay in the room just to hear their stories.

The food laden tables were a banquet fit for a king. My Momma could cook just about anything and Daddy's sisters held their own, but no one could make good old timey things like Mary Fannie. She made the best candy ever. Her Divinity could have graced the tables of the President, not to mention her ambrosia salad and boiled custard. My mother was the cookie lady along side her A#1 fried chicken and green beans. Aunt Sabra could make anything but sometimes arrived with the prize pot roast. Libby came with pimento cheese sandwichs wrapped in wax paper. The Thomases loved pimento cheese. I still do.

After we gorged, Dad would fetch the wagon, a chain saw and an axe and we would begin the tree hunt. He would sing up a storm over the roar of the old Case tricycle tractor. We'd pile on the wagon and o'er the fields we'd go laughing all the way!

Everyone in my generation save a few boy cousins were older than me and I was in awe of these teen aged and college aged girls and even more so after they found their mates and got married. They were so cool. They were the '60s generation, man. Sherry and Debby, Susan and Diane and Anne Lewis.

The debates among family members on just how big the tree would be was always pretty heated. "He wanted a small tree, she wanted a big tree." We would sing Christmas Carols as we bounced across the farm going field to field until finally every one had a tree except us. We always got ours later until I was a teen myself and they knew who would decorate! Often some friends would stop by and go with us like E.C. and Mary Ellen Westerman, Marcia and Curt.

Once we got back home, we'd gather around the old piano in the living room and the Ben Franklin stove with it's little open stove hearth glowing like a Christmas card. Cousin Debby Helms would play the piano and we would sing our hearts out. My dad had a beautiful voice and he would sing and sing. To this day I have heard no one famous ever sing "O Holy Night" any better than my Daddy. He could croon with the best of them.

Other than Santy Claus, no better excitement ever existed than the anticipation of a family get together . After Dad got sick and his family slowly died out, the tradition faded. Sherry and Debbie now have a place on Smith Mountain Lake and our focus has turned that way. Finally he too, passed away in 2007, the last of the Thomas kids in his generation.

Most of us get our Christmas tree out of a box these days and it has been years since I had a cedar tree in the house. Can't anymore-- the 15-year-old gets asthama around evergreens, how ironic. This past Saturday night down on the Lake, we relived memories 'round the table that once belonged to my Aunt Sabra. Memories of Christmas pasts that have lasted me a lifetime.

Merry Christmas and may you make many happy memories this year. See ya next week!