The Holiday Season officially kicks off this week with Thanksgiving, and I hope it is a day of good food and good fun for everybody who celebrates.

I wrote the following piece for a memoir that I am working on called, A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck. This is my gift to all the readers here:

There’s an old traditional Thanksgiving song that starts out, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow….”

When I was a child, we used to sing that song every year that we went to West Virginia to celebrate Thanksgiving. We weren’t in a sleigh, rather a 1957 Chevy station wagon that my dad had converted into a forerunner of the modern van. He took out the back of the rear seat and built a small bed that held my baby sister. Under the front seats were bins that held food, drinks and a can to pee in. Rest stops were barely thought of back then, and a can or a bush was much more appealing than the restrooms in most gas stations.

But I digress, this is not about the long drive to get there, it is about the holiday itself.

When we’d pull up in front of grandma’s house, the first thing my sister and I did was race up the hill so we could then roll down it. The more snow we accumulated on the way down, the better. Then we could go inside and warm up in front of the fireplace where Grandpa sat whittling. He saved the shavings in a little can so he didn’t get wood chips on Grandma’s rug.

He was a rather formidable man, yet I never was afraid of him. More in awe of someone so quiet and focused. If we asked, he would tell us what he was making, and seemed happy that we were interested, but he wasn’t much for instigating conversation.

The rest of the house was full of aunts and uncles and cousins and the sweet blend of spices for pies, stuffing, biscuits and cider. The bustle of dinner preparations in the kitchen barely paused for our entrance, but we didn’t care. We knew there was plenty of time for catching up later. First was the feast. And it was always quite a feast, consumed with much chatter, laughter, and love.

If I close my eyes, I can imagine I am in that dining room again.

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Coming up at the Winnsboro Center for the Arts is a Holiday Gift Shoppe, where local artists and crafters will have items for sale. There will be copies of my book, One Small Victory on sale there. Books make wonderful gifts for people who like to read, so here is an easy way to start checking names off your holiday gift list.

There will also be two concerts at the Art Center early in December. One by the Lake Country Orchestra and one featuring Shannon Monk and other local singers and musicians. "Scrooge" will again be performed the first two weekends in December. Check the ad on our front page for details.

And don't forget the Christmas Parade in Winnsboro December 7th at 6:00. A great parade and lots of activities at the Depot following the parade. What a fun evening for the whole family.

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If you are interested, I do write regularly on my blog so you can always hop over there to catch up with me if I haven't updated this column in a while. I try my best, but gosh there is so much to do.