Dinner was the great event that followed. Every leaf had been put into the old mahogany table, and another table added at each end. A turkey which had been penned up for weeks to fatten and become tender, stuffed with pecan nuts, lay in delicious brownness on a china platter. Opposite was a roast pig with an orange in its mouth, "kase pigs kin have apples every day, but come Christmus 'course even pigs must have sump'n extra," my mammy explained. On one side of the table was a huge dish of fried oysters, on the other an old Smithfield ham, baked as it could be only by one born to the art. Sweet and sour pickles and preserves, for which Aunt Dilsey was famous, were scattered about among all the vegetables known to a Virginia plantation. On a side table were a saddle of mutton, a round of beef and a bowl of chicken salad. On another table was the dessert—sillibub, tipsy-cake, charlotte-russe, mince-pies, plain cake and fruit cake, to be followed by the plum pudding, flaming with magic fires which must be left to burn out of themselves, lest some of the glow they held in their fiery hearts should fail to be diffused throughout our lives in the coming year. The sideboard glistened with decanters and glasses and great bowls of apple-toddy and egg-nog.
All the good things left were sent to supplement the feast of the servants which they had spent days in preparing. It was spread in the wide old weaving-room, the loom being hidden by decorations of holly and mistletoe. We went in to see their table with its beautiful ornamentations, loaded with goodies, 'possum and sweet potatoes at each end. The 'possums had been caught early and fed in a lavishly hospitable manner, that they might wax fat and juicy for the feast.
After dinner papa and the uncles, followed by the boy friends and cousins, went out to the office in the yard a short distance from the mansion house and soon such mirthful peals issued therefrom that curiosity called us all out and the house was deserted while we sat listening to such stories and jokes as we shall never enjoy again. Then they talked of fox hunts, of the prancing gray and the good old red that had carried them to victory, the music of the horns, the baying of the hounds, the laughing girls, all eager for the brush. Crouched by my grandmother's side, I heard about last year's crops, the condition of the roads, the neighborhood news, the latest styles in collars and stocks, politics, bits of history and appreciations of literature.
At night "Fiddling Jim" was called in, and in the room where the Yule-fire burned there was a dance, opening with the minuet and winding up with the Virginia reel. In all the dances my grandmother joined with a lightness and grace that would have done honor to sixteen. Youth no more than age served as a bar to pleasure, and I danced the Highland fling and other fancy dances.
Then the sandman came by and mammy took me up to my little trundle bed. Half lost between waking and sleeping, I heard the crunching of the snow beneath the tread of horses and the roll of wheels and knew that some of the guests who lived near were returning to their homes. Melodies, dance-songs and the shuffling and pattering of feet, mingled with the thrum of the banjo, bones and fiddle, floated from the negro quarters.
Soon old mammy and her turban, the black faces, the hand-fed lamb, the goats and dogs, the coons and the rabbits, the peacocks' gorgeous big-eyed tails, and long-whiskered Santa Claus, my grandmother, my mothers lovely eyes and the Blessed Babe in the manger, all got mixed up in a tangle of shadows and came sliding between the peeping, twinkling stars on a moonbeam into the room and danced around my trundle bed.
With my tender little heart full of child love and unwavering faith, my wee soul borne on the higher sentiments of adoration, faith and spiritual sympathy, my Christmas dolly clasped close in my arms, my lips wreathed in mysterious smiles, I laughed and—a-n-d—a-n—Christmas was over.