There have been many holidays on the calendar for decades — even centuries — and some have been removed or added over time. Separate holidays honoring presidents Washington and Lincoln, but these have been combined. Confederate Memorial Day is gone. Martin Luther King Day has been added.

People in rural South Georgia “back in the day” paid little attention to most such holidays because farm work dictated the content of their days. Some even grumbled because “the mail did not run” on holidays that were meaningless to them.

The Fourth of July was seen as significant to most folks, but might be ignored if it fell on “putting in” (harvest) day for a tobacco farmer. A network of families and laborers worked out a pattern of harvest days that took up every day of the week except Sunday and usually Saturday. If the Fourth fell on one of these days, it was ignored unless that farmer served some refreshments after the work was done.

Coming after crops had been gathered, Thanksgiving was more widely observed. However, Christmas was beloved to almost everyone. It knit up tattered places in the fabric of communities, churches and families. 

Even when crops were fruitful and prices were good, months of hard labor and other challenges frayed social bonds and personal contentment. Christmas was the individual and social “balm of Gilead” that “made the wounded whole.”

Christmas was widely celebrated in schools, churches and communities but especially in family gatherings. The focus on separation of church and state had not begun, so most schools had Christmas programs, sometimes as community events. 

I can almost still hear Harry and Larry Lane and Marion Jordan singing, “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” as they did on the stage of Lyons High School nearly 75 years ago.

Many country churches dressed up youngsters in something resembling the apparel of Mary,