Every time I hear one of those good old-fashioned Christmas songs I am reminded of how simple life seemed back in the day. I remember being a child and listening to the songs as I slept on the bed, sofa, or chair while alternating for holiday gatherings between our house and the houses of family and friends. Between the sounds of cards slapping on the table from the Bid Whiz game came the soft echoes from the likes of Donny Hathaway, Otis Redding, The Supremes, Al Green, and more – these were the soothing sounds that made life seem so at ease. I wonder now if it was the peace of being a child or was life so much more simpler for us back then? When I listen to these songs now I am reminded that it seemed like no matter what they may have been going through with Civil Rights, recession, or everything that was thrown at them because of the color of their skin, all of it seemed to fade when you put on a wobbly 45 or album and take that penny or nickel to hold the needle down. Gosh, I wonder if that’s all it would take now – a good old 45 record, an album and a nickel; what have we got to lose - we’ve tried almost everything else. Maybe we just need to play those old songs all day, everyday, in hopes that it would remind us that back in the day even the worst of times melted like butter on a gas stove.
I can’t speak for your family but as for mine I remember when those “tipsy” relatives cried every time they heard The OJays, The Temptations, Otis Redding, or Sam Cooke? Were they crying because of the hand that life dealt or were they crying because they were tipsy, it probably was the latter? Now when I look back on it I remember that it was through them that we found joy; it was those tipsy, crying relatives that gave us a good old-fashioned belly laugh; one that we, as children, would have to sneak and have because back then a child stayed in a child’s place. Yeah, those were the days….I remember everybody jumping up from the card table and doing the “bop”(I think you’d have to be from Atlanta to know what the bop is). The bop – you take the hand of your partner and….well, it’s hard to explain. Men with women, women with women and usually somebody with a child; that’s how I learned to do the bop, I was the extra that always jumped up to dance with my mom. It’s funny but just this week I longed for the good old days of Christmas, one where the holiday was about Jesus and not about which house had the biggest and the best decorations or who spent the most. Christmas then was about parents having fun all night pretending to be Santa Claus and then staying awake to watch the excitement from their children. Christmas then was a time for family & friends; a time when people just dropped by and stayed a while without it being an inconvenience. It was a time when we laughed like crazy when my Aunt Bernice fell into the Christmas tree because she was “tipsy,” or when she would put on her nightgown backwards and the breast cups would be sticking out in the back; yes, when that happened the adults were okay when the children laughed too.
I’m sure you’re probably saying, “What is the message in all of this?” Well for me the message is this - when I look at my children I realize how much they’ve missed; I realize that their abundance has created their lack. I realized that life now has allowed them to grow up too fast and gone are the days when they could sit in the midst of adults but still maintain their childlike innocence. As I think about the good old days the message for me is a reminder that sometimes we have to go back before we can move forward. I sometimes find it rather soothing to use my imagination and pull out an old 45 that has been compressed into a CD and think back to the days when I was curled up on a chair or bed while the sounds of Donny Hathaway drifted into my sleep. 35+ years later when everything around me seems chaotic I have to remember that even in the stress of today's journey sometimes all I need to do is take a walk down memory lane back to a time when all it took for them was a song.TGBTG
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