This is the 20th Christmas Eve since the passing in August 1994 of my maternal grandmother, Myrtis Virginia Hamilton Moore, whom I called Mammaw. Still, it is her I think of each Dec. 24, especially after everyone else in the house has gone to bed.
I’m not sure when it began, but sometime after I moved away from home, I started calling Mammaw late on Christmas Eve. It seems like it was before I had children, but I can’t be sure.
When I was 7 or 8, our family acquired one of those now-parodied aluminum Christmas trees, complete with color wheel.
I’d lie for an hour or more on the hardwood floor of our living room with the only light the revolving red, blue, green or yellow thrown on the metallic branches from the segmented plastic screen of the light wheel. Chances are that Elvis Presley’s Christmas album or a holiday collection by the Lennon Sisters was playing on the stereo console at the back of the room.
