Painting Christmas morning
By Hannah Ferguson Submitted to Corner Post
As the only living relative of my mother’s sister, I made a point of calling Aunt Judy almost daily and visiting her at least once a week at her home in a nearby town. She never had children of her own, so she always took special interest in me. As a result, we have had a special bond for 52 years.
Although she is still mentally sharp and reasonably healthy, she has reached a point where balance and weakness are sometimes a concern. So, three months ago, she decided it would be prudent to move to a place that required less work, but still afforded independence. Of course, the move required scaling down some possessions.
As I helped her go through closets and drawers, we discovered mementos that brought back great memories for me and for Aunt Judy. But there were some things I had never seen before. In one box was a stack of sheets of thick paper with painted scenes. I asked my aunt about them, and she told me of a tradition I didn’t know she kept. “When I was a girl of maybe six or seven, I started painting Christmas morning,” she explained.
None of the artwork would have been mistaken for the work of a master painter, but they weren’t bad. Page by page, I got a glimpse of Christmas memories through my aunt’s eyes from years gone by. There were, of course, images of Christmas trees, snowmen, scenes of a stable in Bethlehem, paintings of the outside or the inside of a church, and many with family members in various settings. Listening to my aunt’s explanations of the paintings was like peeking through a window to a setting from long ago!
One painting showed a young man and an old man in a car waving goodbye to an old lady and two girls. I learned that one Christmas Eve a soldier returning home to his family knocked at my grandparents’ door. He was stranded, still more than 40 miles from home. Grandma fed him and then Grandpa drove the soldier home to surprise his family. That event made a big impression on my aunt, and she said she often thinks of the joy the stranger and his family felt that year.
A handmade doll and a brown spoon were the sole objects on another page. It represented a treasured gift during a very difficult time. “There was no money to spare, so Grandma made a doll from bits of cloth she had on hand, and Grandpa whittled a spoon for me to feed my doll,” she told me. What made the painting especially poignant to me was that Aunt Judy painted it about 60 years after she received the gift. She said that doll and spoon had more love in them than any others she’s ever gotten.
Spending time with my aunt going through that box and other mementos will be one of my treasured gifts.
