Christmas As I Knew It

Lyrics

[Verse] One day near Christmas when I was just a child Mama called us all together and mama tried to smile She said "You know the cotton crop hadn't been too good this year There's just not a lot of spending money and Well, at least we're all here I hope you won't expect a lot of Christmas presents Just be thankful that there's plenty to eat and we're all healthy And that'll make things a little more pleasant" And us kids got to thinking how really blessed we were At least we were all healthy and best of all we had her My brother Roy cut down a pig apple tree And we drug it home, Jack and me Daddy brought home some hickernuts and Louise made the bread Reba decorated the tree with popcorn strings before we went to bed Mama and daddy sacrificed because this Christmas was lean But after all there was the babies, Joanne and Tommy And babies need a few things I whittled a whistle for my brother Jack And though we fought now and then When I gave Jack that whistle he knew I thought the world of him Mama made the girls dresses out of flower sacks And when she ironed them down You couldn't tell that they hadn't come from town A sharecropper family across the road didn't have it good as us They didn't even have a light that Christmas night And it was way past dusk Me and Jack took a jar of coal oil and some peanuts we'd found And walked over to the sharecropper's porch and set it all down A poor old ragged lady eased open the door She picked up the coal oil and hickernuts and said "I sure do thank you" and she quickly closed the door We started back home, me and Jack and about halfway we stopped and looked back And in the sharecropper's window at last there burned a light So for one of the neighbors and for us It was a good Christmas night Christmas came and Christmas went Christmas that year was Heaven-sent Then daddy put on his gum boots and we waited for the thaw Back home that year in Dyess, Arkansas Merry Christmas, mama