TwitterDec 15 2009
Christmas memories and Christmas is Coming song . . .
I was around five. It was December. The light of day was nearly extinguished. We were in our family car on Main Street. My mom pulled along side the slushy curb and parked. She, my grandma, and I pulled on our hats, scarfs, and gloves that were piled in our laps waiting. We got out together and paused. The wind swirled white snow lightly through the air while we waited for my mom to feed the parking meter with nickels. Click, ziiiiiii, snap, plunk. The street lights glowed warmly and the colorful Christmas lights decorating the poles seemed to twinkle as the snow swirled round them and my grandma sang…
Christmas is coming
The geese are getting fat
won’t you put a penny in the old man’s hat?
If you haven’t got a penny
then a ha’penny will do
If you haven’t got a ha’penny
Then God bless you.
She finished and I asked, “What’s a ha’penny?”
“It’s coin that’s half of a penny. We don’t have them in our country. They had them in England a long time ago,” she explained,
“Oh.” I said. “Would you sing it again?” She did and I listened intently. Then I tried repeating it. She looked down at me and chuckled softly. Noticing that I needed her to sing it again in order to really remember the words, she repeated it. This time I did my best to sing along. I remembered it more that time but needed one more round to have it down pat. By then we were filing through the heavy glassed door, stomping snow from our boots on the black carpet, and walking onto the shiny, creaky wooden floors. The entire time we shopped in the small department store, that vastly pales in comparison to any today, I sang it softly to myself.
This memory and song has stuck with me all these many years. It is a song I have sung every Christmas since. Before my children, I sang it to myself as the excitement of Christmas filled my heart. Then when my children came, I taught it to each one. They all laughed with delight and they all asked, “What’s a ha’penny?” Today we can break out in chorus and all sing it over and over and laugh together warmly as we share a tradition that began so very long ago in a land far far away…
TODAY: my heart filled with the excitement of Christmas. Today I intercepted Grace from boarding the bus as she departed school. I stood, umbrella opened protecting me from the rain that went from very misty, to raining hard, to back to misty. As I waited I twirled the handle so the umbrella spun round and round as I excitedly waited the swarm of children to exit the double doors.
Finally the mob began. I positioned myself very quickly out of the way and turned a watchful eye so as to not miss my daughter. But it turned out not to be hard, there she was, and then she saw me. Excited she ran over to get under the cover of my umbrella. We wrapped our arms around each other and walked off into the parking lot. Squeezing close so we could both stay dry.
“Where we going?” she asked.
To see “The Christmas Carol.”
“Oh, yea,” she bubbled squeezing me tighter. “I really want to see that!”
“I know, that’s why we’re going,” I smiled broadly, pleased that she was so pleased.
And as we pulled out of the parking lot and drove out of sight we sang, “Christmas is coming the geese are getting fat…”
Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who had a most delightful time with my daughter, even though the large chocolate milkshake from Dairy Queen, that we smuggled into the theater spilled, inside my purse and got everything all icky. After the movie we went shopping and this time we found many of the stray items from her siblings list that we hadn’t found yesterday.
I just discovered this video from YouTube. There choice of words is slightly different. But it will teach you the tune if you have no idea what it. Fun! 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mchDHct4Hvs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
