Story and Photographs by Deb Peterson
On Christmas Eve, little Barbara Taggart would kiss her daddy goodbye as he went off to play a holiday gig with his band, Burt Taggart and his Orchestra. Her mother, Alice Belle, would tuck Barbara and her older brother and sister into bed and kissed them goodnight, just like any other night of the year.
But Christmas Eve wasn’t like any other night in the Taggart household. Alice Belle was very, very busy once her children’s doors were closed. In the morning, Barbara and her siblings woke to a Christmas wonderland.
“Mom would do the whole house in one night so she could surprise everyone,” Barbara says. “I felt as though I were the luckiest girl in the world growing up in the Mississippi Delta. My mother made the holidays a huge production.”
The tree held the most fascination for little Barbara, and today, so many years later, it still does. Barbara Williams decorates at least five trees every year throughout the home she shares with husband Danny in Mountain Home, keeping alive one of the best gifts her mother ever gave her—making Christmas magical.
When Barbara was older, Alice Belle started earlier and taught her daughter how to make Christmas magic in every room of the house and on every package she wrapped.
“We didn’t wrap packages with just paper and a bow,” Barbara says. “My mother would say, ‘Oh no, you can’t stop there,’ and she would add all kinds of pretty things, even magnolia leaves. She would sing “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby, and there was always something smelling good in the kitchen.”
That precious time with her mother seeped into Barbara’s soul.
Alice Belle is gone now, but Barbara keeps her mother’s Christmas spirit alive all year long. She starts purchasing new decorations when prices fall after the holidays, and she buys presents whenever she spots them.
“I pay attention to what people say, and I notice the photos my friends put in frames,” Barbara says. She keeps those clues in mind and picks up gifts when she runs across the perfect thing for someone on her list.
“I buy Christmas everywhere I go,” she says.
One of her trees is so full of the ornaments she and Danny have purchased on trips around the world during their 47 years of marriage that you can’t see the tree.
This year, Danny and Barbara have a second home in Hot Springs to decorate, giving Barbara a place for the extra boxes of decorations stored away.
Decorating starts the day after Thanksgiving if she has Thanksgiving guests coming. If not, boxes and boxes brimming with treasures come out of the Chrismas closet (yes, there’s a closet just for Christmas), the week before Thanksgiving.
“I tell Danny he has to be out of the house by 7,” she says. “I put on my coffee and turn Michael Bublé up real loud, and I get to work. It puts me in the best mood. Christmas was, and still is, my favorite time of the year.”
One of Barbara’s oldest and most cherished treasures is three wise men she found in a shop in Jonesboro when her sons were young.
“They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and were rather pricey,” she says. “I told Danny I just had to have them, but that was a lot of money for us back then. That Christmas morning I opened up a huge box and inside were my wise men. I still have the card that said: with love from all your boys.”
When the family moved to Mountain Home for Danny’s new job as Chief Executive Officer at Integrity First Bank, Barbara insisted the wise men go with Danny in his car rather than with the moving company. En route, Danny was in an accident that totaled his car. Once she knew Danny was okay, Barbara asked about the wise men.
“They’re all out in the middle of the highway,” Danny said.
“I insisted he go get them and bring them to me,” Barbara recalls, laughing. That gift from all her boys, slightly broken, still appears on the dining room table every year. Danny has tried to replace them with new wise men, but for Barbara, there is no substitute.
With every year that passes, Christmas becomes even more wondrous and sacred for Barbara. She has cheated death twice.
At 22, pregnant with her first child, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer of the placenta. She spent four months in the hospital on a floor devoted to patients in clinical trials. It was 1969. Barbara was the only patient in the studies who survived.
Thirty years later, she survived breast cancer.
“I think because of my medical history,” Barbara says, “I wanted to become involved in cancer related causes.”
She has been a volunteer for CARTI, sits on the advisory board of the Peitz Cancer Support House, and considers herself “a fortunate member” of P.E.O., an organization that provides scholarships for women.
“I am truly blessed and extremely thankful for my life,” Barbara says.
Alice Belle would smile to hear her add, “and I’m looking forward to another Christmas with my family.” M! DJ 2013
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