Christmas As I Knew It

<p>[Verse]<br/>One day near Christmas when I was just a child<br/>Mama called us together and mama tried to smile<br/>She said you know the cotton crop hadn&#x27;t been too good this year<br/>There&#x27;s not a lot of spending money and well at least we&#x27;re all here<br/>I hope you won&#x27;t expect a lot of Christmas presents<br/>Just be thankful that there is plenty to eat<br/>That&#x27;ll make things a little more pleasant<br/>And us kids got to thinking how really blessed we were<br/>At least we were all healthy and most of all we had her<br/>Roy cut down a pine oak tree and we drug it home Jack and me<br/>Daddy killed a squirrel and Louise made the bread<br/>Reba decorated the tree with popcorn strings before we went to bed<br/>Mama and daddy sacrificed because this Christmas was kind of lean<br/>After all there was the babies Tom and Joanne<br/>And babies need a few things<br/>I whittled a whistle for my brother Jack<br/>And though we disagreed now and then<br/>When I gave Jack that whistle he knew I thought the world of him<br/>Mama made the girl&#x27;s dresses out of flower sacks<br/>And when she ironed them down<br/>You couldn&#x27;t tell that they hadn&#x27;t come from town<br/>A sharecropper family across the road didn&#x27;t have it as good as us<br/>They didn&#x27;t even have a light and it was way past dusk<br/>And mama said, Well I bet they don&#x27;t even have coal oil<br/>Let alone apples and oranges and such<br/>Me and Jack took a jar of coal oil nd some hickernuts we&#x27;d found<br/>We walked to the sharecropper&#x27;s porch and set them down<br/>A poor old ragged lady eased open the door<br/>She picked up the coal oil and hickernuts and said<br/>&quot;I sure do thank you&quot; and quickly closed the door<br/>We started back home me and Jack<br/>And about halfway we stopped looked back<br/>And in the sharecropper&#x27;s window at last was a light<br/>So for one of the neighbors and for us it was a good Christmas night<br/>Christmas came and Christmas went<br/>Christmas that year was heaven sent<br/>And my daddy put on his rubber boots<br/>And paced the floor waiting for the thaw<br/>Back home in Dyess Arkansas