We like to ride around and look at all the Christmas lights, decorations and such when its Christmas season, and this year Jewel got to go with us. It was me, Shady, Jewel and Mamaw, since Uncle Muddy doesn’t usually gawk at ornaments and light shows. He prefers to stay at home “and be the Grinch” is what he says, but that is just him.

I will list off some of the more unusual “decorations” we saw this year. One of the houses had a deer blind, several deer decoys connected with rope, and a big stuffed Santa wearing hunting camo. He had a BB gun for a rifle, and the “sleigh” was painted camouflage. Country music was playing on a PA speaker, one of them little round cop car jobs. The tinsel was even camo, except the tinsel was purple and gold like Mardi Gras.

OK, well that was original. Next we came to a house with an inflatable snowman, which was partially deflated. A cat was sitting on a pile of logs; the cat was real. The pile of logs was dressed up to look like a fire, with a real tree that had no leaves in the front yard. That tree was decorated with Christmas lights. Fake snow was around the base of that tree, and a block of wood was painted up to look like a Christmas present. There was a banner across the front porch that just said “Merry” because the Christmas part had fallen down.

In another part of town, one of the houses had a stack of old tires, stacked from biggest to smallest, and they were all painted white. The stack of tires had a big red bow in the middle, and the tires were fixed up to look like a snowman. There was an old timey broken down tractor, with a fake Santa Claus in the driver’s seat, waving to everyone. One big yard light was aiming at the whole scene. That was pretty much it for that house.

There was another house in the city that went overboard with it. The Christmas lights were bright, and everything had Christmas lights on it, which made it look like an airport at night. Lights on the dog house, lights on the garage, all over the entire house, every tree in the yard and spotlights in about ten places in the yard. It was decorated with a nativity scene, and that nativity scene was perfect. The mailbox even had lights on it.

We saw a few other creative and make do Christmas decorators on the drive; afterwards we went through the Christmas village they set up every year. That village was something to see; they had a light tunnel, every kind of nativity scene, even a trolley you could ride on, which was a spiffed up electric hunting buggy pulling a fake trolley car you can actually ride on. Good food, good fun and great fellowship.

Back home we started decorating the tree, and Mamaw let me put out my miniature antique nativity scene. I have this little nativity scene that is made entirely of cat characters. Mary and Joseph are papa cat and mama cat; the baby Jesus is a tiny white kitten in a manger. The three wise men are all different colored cats, and these critters are all made of ceramic. There are other critters, like a little golden retriever, and other cat characters.

I forgot to tell y’all, I love cats by the way. Shady asked me if I could put his little dragon on the cat nativity, to be the devil! But the devil wasn’t in no Nativity so I said “No!” He did sneak his little NASCAR toy car in there, which I promptly removed. I had to explain to him nobody had a car back then. But he whined and said God can do anything, so I want Him to have a NASCAR! Sometimes his imagination is TOO MUCH!

Shady likes to pick out which star we are putting on the tree, since that falls to the littlest member every year. So he picked out the star, which is the white one with the light bulb “candle” in the middle with an angel. It looked really nice on top of the tree. Every year we get ornaments, most every year that is, from places made custom for us. Shady had a see through ball with little army men inside.

My ornament of course, had a tiny white cat inside like a snow globe. I shook it up for fun and hung it on the tree. Jewel brought a red bell, a white bell, and a blue bell ornament and rope tinsel. We hung those on the tree, then Uncle Muddy hung his favorite ornament; that one was a tiny whiskey bottle that just said “Love” with a heart on it. He doesn’t drink whiskey at all; one of his military buddies gave him that one long ago, and he hangs it every year.

Shady always begs for a popcorn string, so Mamaw popped some popcorn and sowed it together in a long string, but did not add salt or anything to it first. She simply told us, “Santa Claus starts retaining water if he gorges on too much salt of a Christmas Eve; I ain’t trying to send him to an early grave, he is old enough like it is!”

Every year, Uncle Muddy gets the popcorn string from the tree, and tries to eat some of it. That’s why it always gets put on last. Shady will NOT go to bed until Santa’s sewed together popcorn string is wrapped around the tree. And Shady HAS to be the one to put the very last ornament on the tree, no exceptions or he pouts for a week after.

The very last ornament was a greeting card from Double Mamaw’s late sister from twenty years ago, wrapped in a plastic protector. That thing was yellow with age, and dog eared from the many times kids wrangled it to get it hung in time. For some strange reason, Mamaw ALWAYS keeps a bunch of tiny, fake presents wrapped and placed just at the base of the tree. Empty boxes, nothing in them but air. She does that to make it look “fuller.” I think she does it because they didn’t have much growing up, and it makes her feel little again.

She always puts our main presents under the tree a week or two before Christmas. You know the ones from Aunt Myrtle, Aunt Flossy and Cousin DumDum (I am making up names but hey its fun). Then her and Muddy wait until me and Shady are fast asleep in bed to put the other ones under there. Mamaw makes me stand guard, and listen out for Shady, so he doesn’t try to get up before everybody else and raid the gift stack on Christmas Eve.

For the final touch, Uncle Muddy always gets his fancy speaker, and makes sure its charged. He sets it on the mantel (it looks like an old fashioned radio), and puts a USB drive in it full of Christmas songs. The old ones we all know of course. There must be a thousand songs on that drive, I declare. He sets the volume on low, and plugs it in on the mantel to keep the battery charged, and he lets it play softly during the last three weeks of December.

Its always an almost perfect Christmas at our house. You can literally feel the spirit of Christmas in the house. “Mamaw always says, “Now everybody, don’t forget the real reason for the season, bless God. Its his beloved son Jesus come to us in the form of a man!” Yep, its Christmas here in Belle Binford, MS and I would not change a single thing.