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One day near Christmas when I was just a child |
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Mama called us together and mama tried to smile |
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She said you know the cottoncrop hasn't been too good this year |
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There's just no spending money and well at least we're all here |
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I hope you won't expect a lot of Christmas presents |
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Just be thankful that there is plenty to eat |
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That's quite a blessing that'll make things a little more pleasant |
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And us kids got to thinking how really blessed we were |
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At least we were all healthy and best of all we had her |
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Roy cut down a pigapple tree and we drug it home Jack and me |
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Daddy killed a squirrel and Louise made the bread |
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Reba decorated the tree with popcorn strings before we went to bed |
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Mama and daddy sacrificed cause this Christmas was lean |
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But after all there was the babies Tom and Joanne babies need a few things |
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I whittled a whistle for my brother Jack and though we fought now and then |
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When I gave Jack that whistle he knew I thought the world of him |
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Mama made the girl's dresses out of flower sacks |
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And when she ironed them down you couldn't tell that they hadn't come from town |
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A sharecropped family across the road didn't have it as good as us |
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They didn't even have a light and it was way past dusk |
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And mama said well I bet they don't even have coaloil or beans to boil |
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A log apples cranges and such |
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Me and Jack took a jar of coaloil nd some hickernuts we'd found |
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We walked to the sharecropper's porch and set 'em down |
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A poor old ragged lady eased open the door |
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She picked up the coaloil and hickernuts and said |
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I sure do thank ye and quickly closed the door |
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We started back home me and Jack and about halfway we stopped looked back |
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And in the sharecropper's window at last was a light |
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So for one of the neighbors and for us it was a good Christmas night |
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Christmas came and Christmas went Christmas that year was heaven sent |
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Then daddy put on his gumboots waited for the thaw back home in Dyess Arkansas |
