Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: Christmas

  • A little Christmas wish

    My Kindergarten teacher, Edith Coles, gave these little bell ornaments to all of her students every Christmas. She hand-painted the student’s name, along with hers and the year, on each one. She must have made hundreds of them during her teaching career. Can you imagine the hand cramps? I shared these photos on Facebook, where many of…

  • The Christmas bellwether

    This is the third in a short series of stories from 10 years ago. A sad story for Christmas Eve, but with a hopeful ending. Just one more story to go after this, next week. It seemed like a good idea at the time, having Christmas as a family. It was our last. I couldn’t see,…

  • Captured: Reflected in the bulbs

    In the last two weeks of 2013 I shot five rolls of film: two black-and-white and three color; four 35mm and one 120. I shot my Pentax ME, my Yashica-D, my Konica Autoreflex T3, my Nikon N65, and my Nikon F2. Oh, and I also shot half a pack of film in my new old Polaroid…

  • The real value of Christmas

    I first posted this in 2010 and again last year. May this Christmas Day truly bless you and those you love. Even though I’m a Christian, I don’t celebrate the birth of Christ at this time of year. The home in which I was raised followed no particular faith. My parents acknowledged the God the…

  • It’s a wonderful Christmas tradition

    What’s your favorite personal Christmas tradition? Mine is to watch the film It’s a Wonderful Life. It is my favorite movie – and has been for so long that I’ve watched it pass from obscurity to being discovered and well loved. Now I’m seeing it start to be considered cliché and passé. But that won’t deter me from watching…

  • The real value of Christmas

    This Christmas memory was originally posted in 2010. Even though I’m a Christian, I don’t celebrate the birth of Christ at this time of year. The home in which I was raised followed no particular faith. My parents acknowledged the God the Bible described, but their devotion went no further. For us, Christmas was a…

  • Vintage TV: A WGN Christmas

    This Christmas memory was originally posted in 2009. It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time when you couldn’t watch any TV show pretty much anytime you want. There were no videocassettes, no DVDs, no YouTube, no Netflix. After a program ended, that was it, at least until it was rerun…

  • Photographic holiday memories

    This Christmas memory was originally posted in 2008. My grandparents always owned the latest Polaroid cameras, and they passed on that tradition in 1977 when they bought my brother and me Polaroid Super Shooter cameras for Christmas. When I unwrapped the gift, I remember thinking how cool the box was. I liked the box so…

  • The sounds of Christmas

    This Christmas memory was originally posted in 2009. The Christmas season begins for my family when we put up our tree shortly after Thanksgiving. But it’s really not trimming the tree itself that does it – it’s that as we string the lights and hang the bulbs, we listen to the traditional Grey family holiday…

  • Christmas memories

    My youngest son wondered aloud this year why my Christmas-tree decorations are all glass bulb ornaments. I like the way they reflect the lights! I do hang one non-bulb ornament on my tree. When I was in Kindergarten, my teacher gave every student a shiny red plastic bell ornament onto which she painted their name,…

  • Christmas spaghetti

    We started having the big family Christmas gathering at my house when I rented my church’s parsonage after my wife and I split. You’d think that holiday hosting duties wouldn’t fall to the newly single guy, but logistically it just made sense. I was pinching pennies thanks to exorbitant lawyer bills, and that first Christmas…

  • The fastest way to irritate a radio disk jockey at Christmastime

    Call and request “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Every disk jockey in America is sick of that song. It’s not just because the song is so kitschy, but because the phones at every radio station in the nation ring off the hook for it throughout the holiday season. As a public service to…

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