It was Christmastime.

Mama and Daddy had taken me with them to Milledgeville to pick up my sister,

Martha, who was in training to be a registered nurse. She was coming home

for Christmas and to return to regular nursing training at the old Columbus,

Ga. City Hospital. I must have been in the fifth grade.

It's a long

drive to Milledgeville and we were after dark getting back home. As Daddy

turned into our drive on Benning Road in Columbus, I could not help but

to see through the front window a lighted Christmas Tree. For my 10 years

of life, we had always had Christmas Trees, but never one with lights.

Those lights,

that night and the feeling I experienced in just seeing the lights all

were forever burned onto my memory as a warm, wonderful, and joyful times

in my life. My sisters, Brenda and Nancy, had walked that morning about

two miles to a five and dime to purchase a strand of series lights. We

all spent the rest of Christmas checking individual lights to find out

which one burned out in order to replace it in order to get the lights

ablaze again. It was a wonderful Christmas.

I really don't

think my sisters know how much of a loving impact that strand of lights

made on me. But it rings true. It's the simple things that mean the most.

From that point on, we always had lights. But that first lighted Christmas

Tree will always mean the most.

I believe it

was that same Christmas or one either side of it that I had enough spending

cash to buy an expensive gift for my Mama. It was a 50-cent milk glass

plant holder. To Mama, you would have thought I had given her a vase from

the Ming dynasty. She privately told me that it was her favorite Christmas

gift that year. I will always remember that milk glass plant holder. Mama

kept it for years and years.

Then, there

was the Christmas when my sister Sue was crowned Miss Perry School of

Business and she made me feel like I was crowned king. There were those

Christmases when my sister Martha would always have a check in the Christmas

card.

This will be

the first Christmas I will not receive a Christmas card from my mother's

first daughter. Alice grew weary of me introducing her as my oldest sister.

She graduated from this life earlier this year. But as I remember Christmases,

I remember Alice always came bearing gifts for her four half-sisters and

her one half-brother (my mother was married once before marrying my father).

Even when times were tough, she came bearing gifts. I remember the Christmas

she gave me two of the cheapest undershirts I had ever had. They were

the kind that upon first wash no longer had integrity around the collar

or sleeves. Cheap. But it was just that which makes me even now tear up.

She and her husband, John, didn't have enough money to buy their daughter

any gifts much less extended family. But that cheap gift will forever

stand as a testimony in my heart and mind of her great love for me.

The day before

she died last January, I was reading some Scriptures to her. She said,

"You are my preacher and my brother, but first my brother."

That's right, sister! Brother first!

And at this

Christmas, we remember the little things and our mamas, daddies, sisters,

and brothers. Thank you, Nancy, Brenda, Sue, and Martha for all the Christmases

past! Without you and Mama, Daddy, and Alice, they would not have been

the same.

The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor

of River's Edge

Community Church in Fayetteville.

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