It’s not because of the gifts.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas presents. But to be truthful, I could take them or leave them.

I was raised by deepwater fundamentalists, children of Depression-era people. For holidays, we got a generous helping of Jack squat.

When I was 10 years old, for example, I received a pair of khakis, baseball cards, and a can of smoked oysters.

“I don’t care about gifts,” my grandmother would often say as we unwrapped presents. Then she would recount a childhood story about how she had no shoes at Christmastime.

Meantime, Granddaddy would be eating my oysters and speaking with a full mouth. “Speak for yourself,” he’d tell Granny. “Getting presents excites the hell out of me.”

It’s not because of snow. In my part of the world we don’t get much snow. Things are never bright white and snowy. Things are gray and soggy and everyone has seasonal affective disorder. So instead of making snow angels we just consume alcohol.

It’s not because of the food. My people eat

a diet consisting almost exclusively of various cheese products and refined sugar at Christmas. I usually gain, at minimum, 60 pounds every year.

It’s not because of Christmas parties. Although, I do miss parties. I read one study claiming that Christmas parties are down 87 percent from the 1970s.

“Americans just aren’t into Christmas parties…” one study said. Parties in general are becoming a thing of the past. The study even stated that fewer high-schoolers are partying now than ever before in history. “They’d rather play on their phones,” said the study.

It’s not because of Christmas music. Although I do love when the radio plays Bing and Old Blue Eyes. I love Gene Autry singing about what jerks Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen were.

Neither is it because I love household decorations. I love a good balsam fir, and twinkly lights warm my…

Morning. I am seated on a bench in downtown Thomasville with the ghost of someone’s granny beside me. I can feel her spirit, whoever she is. This is her town, where life still ambles slowly. Being here is like taking a trip into the 1950s.

“Not a bad town, huh?” says the ghost.

She wears a bell hat, and a floral dress. Nobody can see her but me.

“It’s nice,” I say.

“City of Roses,” she tells me.

“How about that.”

“It’s changed some,” she says.

The flawless storefronts, getting decorated for Christmas, catch the morning sunlight. Markets and cafés are opening. And the ghost is right, it’s perfect. All that’s missing is Opie Taylor.

“You from around here?” I ask the ghost.

She doesn’t answer.

It’s as though time has overlooked the City of Roses and its elderly patron saint. I look around and immediately travel backward into an earlier age. Her era.

An era when Americans were a little more innocent, and the highest technology we possessed was the KitchenAid mixer. A period before 5G wireless networks, before Netflix, and

before the advent of thong underwear.

On cue, a restored Chevy Bel Air passes us, rolling by slowly. Baby blue. White-walled tires. And I’m three quarters of a century away.

Truman is in office. Flags still wing from every post, pole, and porch. Ninety-seven percent of Americans still read a physical newspaper (whereas today it’s only 4 percent). Hitler’s War is long since over, our boys are home from hell. There are new possibilities in the wind.

The old woman is smiling now. We are back in her heyday.

This is the generation that features both the birth of rock and roll and the “Grand Ole Opry.” A time when mankind will begin producing Fords and Chevys with tail fins tall enough to slice low hanging telephone wires.

This historical period will also include the Cold War. American…