Even as a child, I knew fully well I was being bribed. Santa would bring me nothing but ashes and switches if I didn’t act right in the weeks and days prior to Christmas. That included not whining, not fussing with my sisters and not fidgeting in church.

Nobody needed to remind me Santa was coming to town. He’d know, all right, if I’d been bad or good, if I’d cried or pouted. He’d know because my own mother would tattle on me. This is the same mother who loaded the bottom of our Christmas stockings with oranges so they would appear fuller. But I didn’t complain; oranges were better than ashes in my book.

I totally agreed with “Little Women” that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without any presents. So I did everything right I could think of, dancing around the house with jingle bells tied to my shoelaces and smiling angelically at supper when told only once to eat my vegetables.

For hours, I glued paper rings together for the longest garland ever to drape our cedar tree. For more hours, I helped pick pecans for my mother’s fruitcake, and I became the champion at using one side of the scissors to spiral ribbon into green and red curls.

Above our mantel was a cross-stitched sampler taken out of the closet each December and hung on the nail usually reserved for the clock: “At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.”

That was all I had to remember, that I could be my regular self most of the time but once year it did pay off to be on one’s best behavior.

Even little Willie knew that, so said the poem by Eugene Field that my daddy used to read me with the most perfect dialect and the familiar twinkle in his eyes:

“For Christmas, with its lots an’ lots of candies, cakes an’ toys,

was made, they say, for proper kids

an’ not for naughty boys;

so wash yer face an’ bresh yer hair,

an’ mind yer p’s and q’s,

and don’t bust out yer pantaloons,

and don’t wear out yer shoes.

Say ‘yessum’ to the ladies and

‘yessur’ to the men,

an’ when they’s company,

don’t pass yer plate for pie again;

but thinkin’ of the things yer’d like to see upon that tree,

jest ‘fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be.”

That’s what I’m aiming for right now,

when jest ‘fore Christmas,

I’m as good as I kin be.