Old Christmas Eve

Here in the mountains they used to celebrate Old Christmas. Other folks know January 6 as Epiphany or Three Kings Day, commemorating the coming of the Wise Men to Bethlehem.

But memories were long in the isolated coves and hollers of the Appalachians -- and the English and Scots-Irish settlers brought with them from Great Britain the tradition of Old Christmas.

Ever since England's Parliament passed the the Calendar Act of 1751 in which the Gregorian Calendar replaced the Julian, lopping off 11 days, the date for Christmas, said the traditionalists, was out of whack. The real Christmas, they maintained, was the old Christmas-- January 6.

Fair and Tender Ladies, Lee Smith's pretty-near perfect novel about Ivy Rowe, was my first introduction to Old Christmas Eve, when the tiny, almost magical Cline sisters skitter over the snow like waterbugs to visit Ivy's family, as was their custom every January 5th, and sit up all night telling stories.

On Old Christmas Eve, says Ivy Rowe, "alder buds will bust and leaf out, and bees will roar in a bee gum . . .'

One of the loveliest beliefs about Old Christmas is told in "The Christmas Miracle" from the Sheila Kay Adams story collection Come Go Home With Me. Sheila is The Real Thing -- born to the seventh generation of a ballad-singing mountain family -- and she tells of going to the barn with her grandfather to see if the animals all really knelt down and prayed at midnight as they were said to do.

Both of these books are absolutely marvelous reads, especially for anyone with a fondness for Southern Appalachia.

And you might want to stay up till midnight . . . just to see what your animals are doing.