Beatrice Enters The Temple

Beatrice’s family practiced the most bizarre Appalachian Pagan rituals and traditions especially during Christian holidays.

On New Year’s Day every year, for as long as anyone can remember, families eat roast pork cooked with sauerkraut and dumplin’s. It has something to do with ensuring a good year ahead.

Hangovers cure quicker if one eats pork and sauerkraut so the tradition is kept like Passover for hill billies on Jack’s Mountain.

Beatrice’s family had rituals for Christmas Eve as well.

They gathered in the basement where a fireplace, hand crafted from local rocks and minerals, was lit. The fireplace was only used on Christmas Eve. To Beatrice’s family it was like entering the temple of Christmas.

The fireplace ran the entire length of the basement wall. The stones sparked with hints of microscopic diamonds and had surfaces encrusted with hundreds of fossils.

Beatrice and her brothers took a walk up into Jack’s Mountain on Christmas Eve to cut a few limbs from birch trees which served as cooking utensils.

Uncle Daryl widdled down the points of the sapling limbs to very fine points and the family roasted hot dogs in the fire place on birch sticks.

Family from all ends of the county came to the Christmas Eve party at Beatrice’s house.

It was not uncommon for every guest at the Miller Christmas Eve party to eat at least a half dozen dogs a piece. They tasted so good. Smoke from oak logs and flames of pure gold baked the wieners to pure perfection on rather tasty deciduous wood.

Beatrice believed the excellent taste came from the stones of the fireplace.

Her Aunt Cathy, the spittin’ image of Ann B. Davis, made gallons of macaroni salad that melted in one’s mouth. Aunt Cathy macaroni made the hot dogs go down easy!

She loved Christmas Eve when the fireplace was lit and the fossils came to life. The hicks ate hot dogs, farted and laughed about it in public, in front of their burning Christmas temple