Christmas:

The most important memories of Christmas come from our childhood. The fact I was born into the poverty of the Great Depression made little difference.

We still had Santa Claus, but there was no guarantee of mountains of toys. Those really were days when we tried to be good on the chance that we might actually get something nice on Christmas morning.

And it happened. There were no toy trains or neat pedal cars we saw in the mail order catalogues. We were delighted to find such rare treats as oranges, apples, mixed nuts and maybe even a book, a set of color pencils or a paint box.

Our Prairie farm homes had no hydro nor running water. They were lighted with coal oil lamps. Illumination was the equivalent of a 7-watt electric night light. Yet, we managed to play cards and even read comic magazines at night.

The subdued light was an advantage on a bright moonlit night in December. We could look out through a window and see large white snowshoe hares feeding on left-over cabbage stems in the garden. Great snowy owls watched them from the tops of nearby fence posts, but made no move to try to add them to their diet. The hares were too large, but small barnyard cats, who also hunted at night, had to watch out.

Sleigh bells were especially significant in the winter when the roads were impassable to wheeled traffic and the farmers were obliged to harness their horses. The sleigh bells in my father's horse barn were actually part of a special harness. They were hollow spheres cast in bronze in several notes with loose marble clappers inside. They rang musically with every step when the horses were in a trotting mode.

Stepping outdoors on a quiet, frosty moonlit night was a memorable experience when one could hear the rhythmic snowy crunch of the horses' hooves over the distance. We knew someone was coming when they were still more than a mile away.

The jingle of sleigh bells was an auditory treat that I can still hear when I think of Christmas all these years later.

And those are the things that reel through my mind at the sound of the carols and the more memorable music of Christmas.

Best of all, it was still possible to enjoy such songs as White Christmas without provoking a politically correct reaction from anyone.