Christmas comes but once a year is what the song tells us. This, of course, is true. Once a year is sufficient, especially when we are willing and able to recall past Christmases.

Memories can warm us on the coldest of winter days. They can brighten a cloudy sky. They can cheer us when we are feeling a little down. I have many memories of Christmases past. I can recall a number of scraggly Christmas trees that shed more needles than a convention of bad knitters. Even the scrawniest tree was magical to me. The tree was part of the joy of Christmas. What other time of the year could we sit around and look at a dead tree while eating candy out of our socks?

Mother and I would argue over what to get my father. She would insist that he always needed socks, while I felt a nice shirt would be the perfect gift. Our arguments would always end in a tie &045; a necktie.

We had a house full of people every Christmas Day. I would help clean the house &045; actually I was looking for loose change. I loved Christmas because it meant that I had made it through the ordeal that we faced every Christmas Eve &045; oyster stew. We had oyster stew on Christmas Eve. I did not like oyster stew. I believe that we are given oyster stew so that we will think that lutefisk is tasty by comparison. Mom would put a single oyster in my bowl. I liked the broth part of the stew and those little oyster crackers were delicious.

My problem was with the oyster in my stew. I knew that it was lurking in the murky depths of my stew. I would eat it. I had to. It was too close to Christmas to jeopardize my standing as a good boy. The brightly wrapped presents resting peacefully under the tree were a constant reminder of the rewards awaiting a good boy.

We would open the presents on Christmas Day right after we finished dinner &045; dinner being what we called our noon meal in those days. We had a lot of folks feeding at our trough in those days. They required lots of food, plates, silverware, chairs and tables. We had a table set up in the kitchen, one in the dining room and often a small table or two set up in my parents’ bedroom, just off the living room. The kitchen and dining room tables had all the leaves added to them that they could handle the people. The small tables were known as the kids’ tables. They were those frail card tables with the spindly, folding legs.

My mother would run from room to room making sure that everyone got his or her fill of mashed potatoes while they were still warm. Us kids would sit at our crummy little table, unable to even see the kitchen; we had to depend upon our noses to tell us what was being served. The smells were always divine. We were subject to the five-second rule. That meant if we dropped a piece of food onto the floor, as long as we picked it up within five seconds, we could still eat it. The same applied to the silverware &045; only we didn’t get to eat an offending spoon. We got to continue using it without replacing it with a clean one.

The food was wonderful, but not always to our liking. We preferred more ham, mashed potatoes and rosettes, and less yams, beets and creamed corn or peas. I would try to get my dog to eat my beets, but she wouldn’t do it unless I bribed her with a bunch of my ham. She was always mad at me for telling my teachers that my dog was eating my homework. I would sit at the kids’ table until one of my younger relative would exclaim, &uot;I’m sick and tired of creamed corn and I’m not going to eat any more of it!&uot; With that, he’d give one of the weak legs of the table a kick and the whole meal would descend onto my lap. One of the biggest events of my young life was the day I was moved up to the adults’ table.

The best thing served at our Christmas table each year was not the mashed potatoes, the ham or even the rosettes. It was love. The greatest gift given each year was not the Tinkertoys, socks or even a nice shirt. It was love. Food is eaten and forgotten. Toys break.

Shirts and socks wear out. But thanks to our memories, love lasts forever.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.