Lexington, KY - How the wearing of the red socks began, no one remembers - like many customs it just came into being. Sometime in the late '40s my father (Pop), my Uncle Clarence (Monk) and I began to wear red socks on Christmas Eve. And we wore them in public. Late in the afternoon we put on our socks and walked downtown to Lexington's Main Street, which had about a mile of stores and was as busy on Christmas Eve as the malls are now on the day after Thanksgiving.
We did our tour systematically, starting at the far end of the business district and working our way, store by store, both sides of the street, back to the end nearer home. Along the way we kidded with sales girls - they were mostly "girls," and in the first years, my early teens, I was practicing my flirting. We bought a last-minute present or two, stopped for a root beer, wished people along the way merry Christmas, and ended at the largest department store. There I had one last, lingering, lustful look at the great Lionel train layout that I had visited almost daily for a month. Then we walked the four blocks home, arriving in the early darkness tired, happy and hungry.
The church we belonged to in those days had its Christmas celebration on the Sunday before the holy day, and so we were at home on Christmas Eve. After supper my mother lit the two candles she had placed earlier in the day on the living room mantle. She played Christmas carols on the piano and all who were living in the rambling, old, out-of-plumb house sang. Pop, an intelligent man, able to do mysterious mathematical problems in his head and design remarkably complicated machinery, never grasped the basic concept of music - that there are a number of tones that go up and down in a pattern. He sang loudest of all.
We sat near the tree - always a cedar with strings of lights that took turns failing - and we opened presents. Other family members and friends dropped by for Mom's fruitcake and a cup of eggnog. Old stories were retold and there was more singing. Late at night we unplugged the tree, put out the candles and went to bed. I lay happily awake in what Dylan Thomas called the "close and holy darkness" until sleep overcame me.
I don't remember when we stopped our annual walking tour. Sometimes as the years passed Monk was absent, away in the Air Force. Then I was away in the Air Force. The last times we were together downtown, my son Robert was big enough to go with us - wearing red socks. Then, little by little, there was no downtown.
Now on Christmas Eve, Robert, my daughter Ginny, their children and various inlaws carry on the socks tradition. And so do I, over the years giving countless acolytes moments of high glee when, as I knelt in the sanctuary, my alb slips aside revealing a flash of red.
There is no real point to this story - just red socks, a remembrance and a symbol of thanks for shared joy and love, then and now and to the ages of ages, all the legacy of Mary's child.