The values and traditions that are ingrained in me from growing up in rural America, more specifically, rural southern Mississippi, are something I don’t think about every day, but they are never more apparent than when I travel back home to Lucedale for the annual family Christmas gathering.
It’s not just a family gathering. It’s a reminder of the things that are most important in life – faith, family, community, tradition, roots. Things that are not just found at my childhood home but are scattered all around the rural world I grew up in and would trade for nothing else this world has to offer. Things such as….
The annual Christmas parade that brings out half the county, anchored by none other than Santa Claus himself! It cruises slowly down Main Street which is once again alive and thriving. Lit up like a Hallmark movie set from one end of town to the other, just as it has always been.
The Methodist church at the edge of town where I first remember hearing about Jesus as a small child. The same place I went for communion with my grandmother every Christmas Eve night for over 30 years, even when it took the grown man version of me on one arm and my brother on the other, to help her up the stairs, and to the alter.
The Coffee Pot restaurant where we would all squeeze into booth seats with a view of Main Street. Indulge in a cup of whipped hot chocolate that came out of this magical hot chocolate machine that sat beside the homemade cakes and pies. To this day, I am certain that every home in Heaven will be equipped with one of those hot chocolate machines. At least mine will be!
The huge star made of lights atop the towering grain silo at Roger’s Farm. It stood out then and it still stands out today, from miles away, shining brightly against the night sky as if it were pointing the way back home. Symbolic of the star that led the Wise Men to the baby Jesus.
Then there is the house I grew up in. Always decorated for Christmas like Southern Living is showing up any moment for a photo shoot. The same stockings hung from the mantle, the antique buffet in the living room covered with mom’s baked goods, the wood floors still creaking in the same spots, the heater in the hall still the place to warm up.
We’ll most certainly eat too much that day, mix in a nap, throw a football around out front, and then before I know it, the sun will begin to set far too soon behind the old barn in the backyard. I’ll stop to watch it as I always have, and I’ll get a little sad like I always do that Christmas day is coming to an end, again.
I may have grown up, left home, did all “the things,” but I can tell you this. Everything out there has fallen short of adding more to my life than I learned in a map-dot town in southern Mississippi, and that is this….
Faith in God, through Christ, is everything. Family, community, and tradition, round life out. Roots run deep.
Nothing else in my life comes close to gathering those things together in one spot and putting them on full display, like a Christmas gathering in the Mississippi map dot-town that I will always call home.
