December Voices
December has always carried weight in our family.
Not just as the closing of a calendar year—but as a gathering place for memory.
Over four generations, December has been our dominant birthday month, as if time itself paused to bless us repeatedly before turning the page.
December is where beginnings and endings have always met us.
December 22.
It was the last conversation I would ever have with my father.
But it was not the last time I would hear his voice.
I have come to believe that ancestors speak to us in ways both ordinary and profound.
For me, they arrive in the thunder—each clap reminding me of the afternoons when they pulled me close during sudden storms at family picnics in the park. Storms of rain and lightning, yes—but also the unseen storms of life they quietly shielded me from.
I hear them when Motown drifts across the radio.
When a song from the 1950s sneaks up on me in a grocery store aisle.
Memory doesn’t ask permission. It simply enters.
Yet it is my father’s voice that remains most present.
That mellifluous sound—the steady cadence of advice, care, and encouragement—still echoes in my heart, my soul, my spirit. He was the voice that told me I could. The voice that stayed when doubt knocked. The voice that never wavered, even when I did.
Christmas was my parents’ favorite time of year.
After my mother passed, the first Thanksgiving without her felt unbearable. I went to my father’s home in New Jersey, and as the family packed the car to return to Georgia, he insisted I take all the Christmas decorations with me.
I protested.
“Dad, you’re going to need all of this for Christmas.”
In his most serious and reflective tone he said,
“No, dear. I want to start spending Christmas with you. And I don’t want to spend another Christmas without your mother.”
My father died on Christmas Eve the following year.
But the Christmas Eve that lives most vividly in my memory happened when I was seven years old.
That night, I woke in the middle of the dark, overwhelmed with excitement about Santa Claus. I looked out the window beside my bed and was certain I saw him—Santa and his reindeer moving across the sky.
I called for my father.
When he came into the room, I pointed wildly into the night and said,
“Look! There he is! There he is!”
The sky was full of stars.
And my father—without hesitation, without correction—said,
“Yes, dear. There he is. There he is.”
That was who my father was.
My biggest cheerleader.
My deepest source of encouragement.
The man who met wonder with affirmation instead of explanation.
I may never speak to him again in this lifetime.
But I hear his voice—always.
In moments of courage.
In moments of fear.
In December.
And in every season that asks me to keep going.
Danne Smith Mathis
Elegance is an Attitude.