Heart In The Hills-Head In The Clouds

A Simple Christmas Tradition When I was a kid, I’d often receive a “treat bag” at church around Christmastime. Occasionally, I’d get one somewhere else too—maybe while visiting another church to watch their Christmas play, or at the Masonic Lodge’s Christmas dinner, which I’d sometimes attend with my grandfather and his brother. Inside the Bag These treats wouldn’t be considered spectacular by today’s standards. The bag itself was simply a brown paper lunch sack. It would contain a couple of pieces of fruit, a candy cane, a pack of gum, and maybe a couple of walnuts. Sometimes there’d be a piece of chocolate too. I enjoyed receiving these simple treats, but it was only recently that I learned they are deeply rooted in Appalachian tradition. The “Christmas Poke” The proper name for these “treat bags” is actually  Christmas Poke . Don’t mistake the use of “poke” here as the verb that means to jab someone with your finger. In this case, it is a noun—a Scottish term for a paper bag. Gi...

Every December of my childhood, there was one thing I looked forward to almost as much as Christmas morning itself: the Christmas play at Flemingtown Church. I loved it. Every bit of it. Most years, my role was pretty predictable. I was either a shepherd or a wise man—not because I was especially holy or particularly wise, but because I owned a robe! In a small country church, wardrobe logistics matter! If you had a robe, you were cast. And I had one—so there I stood, year after year, clutching either a staff or a box meant to represent gold, frankincense, or myrrh, trying to look reverent while scanning the congregation for my parents and grandparents. The play was directed by my great aunt, Rita South. While the script varied slightly from year to year, the structure was always the same. It began with the birth of Jesus and ended with the resurrection. Looking back now, that was incredibly powerful. It wasn’t just a Christmas story; it was the whole story . The manger made sense...

A Boy Who Loved the Woods—Just Not the Hunt Given the culture I grew up in, anyone would assume I’d be a devoted hunter. But truth be told, the bug never bit. Fishing, though—that was my world. I spent countless hours on the lake with my great-uncle, Jimmy South, catching bluegill and heading straight back to his house for a feast of fresh fish,  vegetables from his garden, and a hot pone of cornbread.  That was heaven. But in this edition of “Something I’ve Never Told Anyone,” I must confess: at sixteen, I decided to give hunting one honest try. The Thanksgiving Morning Experiment Armed with my dad’s Winchester single-shot 20-gauge, I headed into the sprawling woods behind our house. I was determined to bag a squirrel and prove I could be the kind of hunter my friends bragged about being. The woods were familiar—quiet, peaceful, full of memories—but absolutely devoid of squirrels that morning…until I turned back toward home. Half a mile from the edge of the woods sat my fami...