02 Dec 2025 And that’s what Christmas is really all about

Posted at 6:14 PMh in Features by

By Vivian Lawson Hogue

Many people become full of pep as Christmas nears. They just had turkey sandwiches a week ago and may be having another soon. There are also Scrooges aplenty because they didn’t get a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun when they were 10. No one had told them the story of the original Magi gifts for Jesus, what they were and who they were for. Gold was for a king, frankincense for wafting prayers upward and myrrh for an embalming process. Truth be known, Jesus was likely 2 years old when the wise men finally arrived, and that container of embalming fragrance remained stored for 31 years. Ultimately, He didn’t even need it after all!

In the Great Depression and World War II years, children didn’t ask for or get much, but that was a normal state for nearly everyone. When you have to fit cardboard into your worn-out shoes trying to extend their use, or make soup from tomato ketchup, water, salt and butter, that was comfort enough. My oldest brother got a Boy Scout hat one year. The rest got a large peppermint candy stick to divide between them. Or so they said. Exaggeration ran rampant among the brothers and they never grew out of it. 

I always had to go with mother to shop, and Christmas was no different. When I was 8, I was sidewalk-focused, looking for dropped pennies, and saw little else except people’s waists. I never whined, had a tantrum or ran inside a store, or there would be you-know-what to pay. Right there in front of everyone. I would also not be allowed to come next time. Speaking of pennies, my favorite stores were Frauenthal and Schwartz’s Mercantile and J.C. Penney’s.

After mother discussed, for what seemed hours, the choice of serge or broadcloth, I rested my chin on the cutting table and watched the clerk cut the fabric just as Moses parted the Red Sea. When it was time to pay at F&S, the clerk put mother’s check into a dual tube system and sent it to the inner office by way of air pressure.  The tube miraculously reappeared containing change or receipts. J.C. Penney, from whence came the best Christmas catalogue, utilized a similar system, but returned the tube by gravitation.

The festive, joyful, and, yes, merry feeling was enhanced by decorations in town. There was the annual courthouse tree and the nativity scene.  Strings of colored lights zig-zagged above Front and Oak streets. Such lights would be expensive for homeowners, but I do recall city lights large enough to possibly strain Conway Corporation’s abilities. The Christmas parade was populated with the college and high school marching bands, horses and floats. All of this, along with Old St. Nick waving and throwing candy, provided the excitement we wouldn’t have had otherwise. During one parade that took place in the late 1950s, I recall a store’s display window featuring a working black-and-white TV.  An entranced crowd gathered to watch, and I’m not sure they even noticed the parade.

According to the thick, 60¢-per-month Log Cabin Democrat subscription, a holiday purchase could include Acme Cowboy Boots for $20. At Biggs Tire Store, you could put a dollar down to purchase tires and pay them off at 1.25 per week. One furniture store had a dresser, bed, bureau and night stand for $129. Kroger had canned vegetables, 6 cans for $1; Jumbo lemons, 39¢ a dozen; 1 lb. bacon, 69¢; and T-bone baby beef steaks, 99¢ a pound. By 1958, you could at least dream of buying a “Rock and cedar home, large kitchen, 3 BR, 2 bath, intercom, custom drapes, and an assumable loan for $59,500.”

Before Christmas, my parents would load up our ’39 Buick for the long ride up to Imboden, Arkansas, where my grandparents Lawson lived. In their late-1800s log cabin perched on stacks of flat rocks, we roughed it for two or three frigid days of winter. Their 3-foot cedar tree was sparsely adorned with handmade ornaments. Lights were not necessary. If God had wanted lights on trees, he would have created them on the fourth day. They had the same attitude toward daylight-saving time, so we grew accustomed to subtracting from or adding to the mantle clock’s hands and chimes.

When you watch Christmas movies on TV, there is always someone who extols the value of holiday gatherings by saying, “And that’s what Christmas is all about!” That’s the secular side of it. The spiritual side says Jesus is King, but he doesn’t need gold to save souls. Instead of smokey incense, He personally handles prayers. After He died, a friend donated his own burial crypt where Jesus’s body was taken. He didn’t need the myrrh because He simply arose, opened the tomb and “went about doing His Father’s business.”

And THAT, dear friend, is what Christmas is all about!

Vivian Lawson Hogue
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