Drawing names for Christmas

For the earliest Christmases that I remember, our family was doing Christmas gifts to almost everybody in our extended family. That included my cousins of Uncle Earl and Aunt Sybil’s family, Marvin and Bud, and later Larry Nichols, our California cousins of Uncle Gene and Aunt Evelyn’s family, Barbara and Norma Nichols;

and also my Bentonville cousins, Bill and Don Sisk, Aunt Goldie Sisk, Grandpa Burton Clement and Uncle Charles Clement. We usually didn’t exchange gifts with our Elm Springs cousins, more distantly related, but we might all get together for a Christmas dinner at Grandpa Scott’s and Grandma Ellen Nichols’s house, or at Uncle Frank and Aunt Bessie Holcomb’s house, or at grand-aunt Anna Nichols’s house. Other than ourCalifornia kinfolk, most of our extended family lived close by, at Brightwater, Elm Springs or Pea Ridge.

But as our extended family began growing larger and moved to places farther away, giving a Christmas present to every person in the family became overwhelming. So for quite a long time we turned to drawing names for Christmas. That meant nobody got a large number of Christmas presents, but it was a manageable way of exchanging Christmas presents among a growing extended family. We always kept secret whodrew whose name, so an exciting part of the Christmas gift exchange was to find out “who has my name this year.”

During the 1940s and early 1950s, our larger family gatherings were nearly always in summer.

The California family members got vacation time off from North American Aircraft and almost always came to Arkansas on vacation. The large family gatherings were usually at my grandparents’ house or at the home of Uncle Frank and Aunt Bessie on their Elm Springs farm. Aunt Bessie was my Grandpa Scott’s sister, and Uncle Frank was my Grandma Ellen’s brother, and everybody was pretty close. Because the California kin almost never came home for Christmas, we would take a time during the summerto “draw names for Christmas.” The drawings were managed a little bit so that we children would draw other children’s names, and the adults would draw other adults’ names.

Otherwise the whole drawing thing was pretty wide open. We weren’t supposed to tell anybody whose name we had drawn. Of course we had to share the name withour parents so we could shop for a present. But the secrets usually held pretty well across the family.

Our family Christmas gatherings were smaller than the big summer reunions, but still were pretty good-sized gatherings. Sometimes we held Nichols family Christmas at Grandpa and Grandma Nichols’s house or at our house, or maybe at Aunt Anna’s house. That’s when we did the gift exchanges for which the names had been drawn. For that, someone would play Santa, and for each package would call out who was receiving the present from whom. Very rarely did we ever figure out who had our name, so those presents were fun surprises.

At home, we always separated two types of gifts. There would be the presents being exchanged from person to person; then there would be the presents from Santa. We would always open the Santa Claus presents early on Christmas morning.

Then, later in the day, we might go to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner and for the family gift exchange.

When I was growing up, the three meals in the day were breakfast, dinner and supper. So, Christmas dinner was at noon.

Later in life, I learned that many people do breakfast, lunch and dinner, with dinner in the evening. It still seems strange to me to have dinner at night,but I have adapted, and I can talk in that language, too. But when Christmas dinner is mentioned, or when someone just calls out, “Dinner’s ready,” I still think first of the noon meal. For Arkansas and the Ozarks, it still just seems natural that you eat dinner at noon and supper at night; especially when it is Christmas dinner.

To our family, the Christmas presents were always a fun part of the celebration, even when the presents were few. But we were always taught to remember that the celebration is about Jesus Christ, and that the Christmas presents are just one way of sharing in the spirit of Jesus. Today it is astounding to me how huge are the displays of Christmas goods in the stores; how many things are available for Christmas buying.

So, now, as then, it seems good to be reminded that Christmas is first about the gift of Christ to the world and for the world, and that all our sharing of Christmas presents is to remind us of and to help us appreciate that Greater Gift.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.