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Christmas season is a special time at historic theater

A Chili Country Christmas is the best kind of Christmas.

For the many who have made productions at the We Piddle Around Theater a part of their Christmas tradition, there's no better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to sit down to a bowl of hot chili on a chilly, winter night and enjoy the songs and stories of the Christmas season.

Each Chili Country Christmas event celebrates the merriment of the season and also brings renewed awareness to the real reason for the season.

The Brundidge Historical Society offers a smorgasbord of seasonal selections.

The cast of "Come Home, It's Suppertime" came back to the stage to tell of Christmases long ago, when stockings were hung with hopes of oranges and hickory nuts.

Nationally acclaimed storytellers, Sheila Kay Adams, Kathryn Tucker Windham and Andy Offutt Irwin have shared their Christmas memories with audiences on Chili Country Christmas nights.

Sheila Kay Adams shared a Christmas miracle she experienced with her granddaddy in the barnyard on Old Christmas Eve. Andy Irwin took the audience with him and his Aunt Marguerite to the Cracker Barrel at Christmastime.

"Miss Kathryn" brought along combs and conducted a Christmas concert of carols. Those memories will be cherished always by those who were blessed to be "at home at Christmastime."

This Christmas season, Barbara Bates Smith will return to the We Piddle Around Theater in "Deck the Halls in Southern Style."

From Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, the fireside storytelling tradition in the mountains is featured when the lady sisters retell stories.

Allan Gurganus' Oldest Living Confederate Widow tells of "The Christmas Spectacle" when many a teetotaler gets knee-walking drunk, accidentally, and the closing of the pageant surprisingly turns more poignant than ever.

Truman Capote's "Christmas Memory" issues a heart-warming invitation to "Imagine a morning in late November in a country town in Alabama" when it's "fruitcake weather."

These stories are woven into Barbara Bates Smith's own comical, often frustrating, search for the true spirit of Christmas. The program closes with a Kay Byer poem about a pregnant mountain woman who reflects on the Mary story from the Bible. Jeff Sebens will accompany Bates-Smith on the hammered dulcimer. He will also be the featured entertainer for the pre-show.