I was born in Louisiana in 1937. Christmas for me was very different from most children living in the United States at that time. The French/Cajun traditions of those days did not include Christmas trees, wrapped presents and definitely not, jingle bells in the snow. On Christmas morning, momma would wake us early while it was still dark. We would then set about hunting throughout the house for our one present. In our shoes, that we had set by our beds, we would find, apples, oranges and sometimes a variety of nuts. Santa was referred to as a woman, "La Sante Claus." After we had found our present and played with it for a while we would be fed breakfast. The family was then loaded into a horse powered wagon or later an old car and we would go to my maternal grandparent's house for a dinner and a lot of running and playing with my cousins. There were a lot of those, my mother had nine siblings and my dad, thirteen.
The first Christmas tree in any home I lived in, was after I had grown to adulthood. I suppose because France had the Yule Log instead of the tree, no tradition for decorating firs was ever established in Louisiana till much later, in perhaps, the fifties. I attended movies where people sat around huge, brightly decorated trees and ripped open packages and often wondered why they were doing this. We didn't. Scenes of snow filled yards and shovelling of snow always made me wonder how that would feel. I saw a few hours of snow perhaps twice in my life while growing up in Louisiana, and as I said, no trees or wrapped presents till I married. But, don't feel sorry for me, I enjoyed Christmas and all of the other holidays immensely. I had a loving family and scores of close relations to spend these days with. It was all wonderful.
Lionel A. LaVergne, author of Houston Beast and Innocence Lost.
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