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Gone South
up. In general, I'm against this. I come from a tradition where Christmas decorations don't appear until the turkey has become hash and they disappear before the big bowl games ring in the New Year. In general. Which is sort of a mealy mouthed, fuzzy-reasoned, exception-laced way of saying that though I wouldn't be caught dead doing it, there are some circumstances where it is OK, and I'm gonna tell you one. I live in a college town. Jacksonville, Alabama. Seat of Jacksonville State University. And in a college town there are college students, many of them living out on their own for the first time. As a father who has already raised one through this and who has two more to go, I can speak to the uneasiness a parent feels at the prospect of a child being out in the cold world without parental supervision. (I got a chill when my 14-year-old son relocated his bedroom to the basement - the "man cave," he calls it - which gives him more space, his own bathroom and a door leading outside to the great unknown. Does anyone know where I can get one of those electronic monitoring devices to clamp on his ankle?) But I digress. College students arrive in the fall, amid all the hoopla of football, fraternities, sororities, clubs and (yes) classes, to set up house in what sociologists call "a high-context culture" - one you have to live in to understand. Students live in it and understand it. Parents don't. To parents it all seems so, well, independent. Dorm rooms, apartments, houses are "decorated" in new ways, accessorized according to tastes picked up God-knowswhere. Clothes and books and papers are perilously spread in piles according to some calculus neither Mama nor Daddy can grasp. Near-empty refrigerators contain evidence of past meals of little nutritional value and remains of past parties the details of which are vaguely remembered, if recalled at all. Not that parents see any of this, for unless there is a surprise visit (not recommended), when Mama and Daddy arrive the décor will be sanitized, the books and papers will be arranged to suggest something resembling study, the clean clothes will be put away, the dirty ones bagged to take to the laundry, and all evidence of unwise eating and drinking will have gone out with the garbage. But even in its more "acceptable" state, any parent recognizes the imprint of independence that marks the break with home and family that is so hard for Mother and Father to accept. Such as a Christmas tree. Not every student puts one up. But riding around town, into the enclaves and ghettos where students live, I see in windows tiny lights on tiny trees. They represent one more broken chord, one more student statement of how I am now on my own, I have my own place, my own friends, my own routine, my own responsibilities, my own traditions, my own tree. There's also something else to this. Despite parental fears and misgivings, most students have no desire to break free from home and hearth just yet. College is limbo, that region between childhood and adulthood. It can be liberating for it frees students for the future, but at the same time frightening for it takes them out of the warm womb of family, to which as the years pass they will return as relatives, relations, visitors. Back home, back in their previous life, Mama, Daddy and siblings are getting ready for Christmas. Their tree is going up. Their decorations are coming out. Their halls are being decked. Without their college student to help. And the student can't go back to be part of it - not just because of term papers due and finals to take, but because getting ready for Christmas is an incremental thing, done in stages that are enjoyed in stages: getting the tree, trimming the tree, hanging the greenery, putting out the yard decorations. Those involved savor every stage, every step of the way. You can't just drop in and get the full effect. So students try, as only students can, to replicate those stages where they are. A little tree, likely artificial. Lights. A few ornaments, which will be saved and in years to come will be taken out to hang again and remember. Perhaps a wreath for the door. And Christmas cards, sent to and from their new address, evidence that the U.S. Postal Service now considers this their home, proudly displayed on a table along with the manger scene from Wal-Mart or Dollar General or Big Lots. And they will keep Christmas in their homes and hearts until finals are over and they journey to where they once lived to visit, to find out how the family is doing without them. Then, a few weeks later, they will return to their new home. And take down their tree.
Harvey H. Jackson grew up in Grove Hill. He is a professor and chairman of the history department at Jacksonville State University.
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