Editor’s note: We’ve met and visited with a lot of wonderful people in the bluegrass world in the past couple years. We asked a handful of some of those memorable people we’ve visited with over the past year and invited them to share a favorite bluegrass Christmas memory. Larry Stephenson kicks off the holiday season here on BluegrassJournal.com with his favorite Christmas memory.

Larry Stephenson

“All of my Christmases were great as a child, but the one that’s the best was in 1974.

“I was 17.

“My dad, who taught me how to play the mandolin when I was 5, always told me if learned how to play ‘Raw Hide’ he would buy me a Gibson F-5 mandolin. At the time I was playing a Gibson A-50 (that I still have) but that wasn’t a bluegrass mandolin like Bill Monroe and Bobby Osborne was playing. So I went to work on ‘Raw Hide.’

On Christmas day, I opened a big present and it had a little note in it saying to go next door to our neighbors’ house. When I got next door, there was another gift that ran me back to our house to open another gift.

“They ran me all over the neighborhood, and when I made my last trip back to our house, there was that brand new Gibson F-5 mandolin under the tree.

“It’s still to this day the best Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten. I know that money was hard to come up with for my mother and dad in 1974, but they knew how much I wanted it and it made me work on the mandolin that much harder.

“What a great mother and dad I had, I miss them very much and will always love them for all they’ve done for me.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Larry Stephenson

www.larrystephensonband.com