The pregnancy hadn’t been an easy one. Due to her size and his shake, rattle & roll, the King’s mother thought she would have him around Christmas. But she didn’t go into labor until January 8, 1935.
At her bedside were her husband, the midwife, and the doctor whose $15 delivery fee would be paid by the state of Mississippi.
Her husband, Vernon, had just finished building their shotgun shack with a $180 loan. He was a carpenter, a moonshiner and 19 years old. Out in the yard that frosty, starlit predawn Tupelo morning were the family chickens and their cow.
After a long, hard labor, Gladys Presley delivered a stillborn child.
A half-hour later came his tiny live twin, Elvis.
The future King’s favorite day was Christmas, the prelude to his birthday. His parents, on welfare, gave him their all then. The boy, whose hero was Captain Marvel, wanted to give them back all the riches in the world.
“Mama,” he’d say to Gladys as she walked him to school, past fancy houses, “I’m gonna give you a place just like that -- only a whole lot bigger.”
She gave her beautiful boy a kiss, already feeling like the richest woman on earth just to have him.
"ELVIS A MILLIONAIRE IN ONE YEAR!" read the Memphis headines in 1957.
The teen sensation had bought his mother a pink Cadillac and a mansion called Graceland. That season, he released "The Elvis Christmas Album," which included such holiday favorites as “Santa Is back in Town.”
Recalling the first Presley Christmas at Graceland, Elvis’ cousin, Billy Smith, said, “It was like being in fairyland, and Santa Claus was my first cousin.”
But then the grinch arrived. On Dec. 20, an Army officer served the 22-year-old King with a draft notice. Determined to rescue the holiday, Elvis bought $1,800 worth of fireworks.
“What are you going to do?” the salesman asked as he loaded up the star’s Fleetwood limo. “Start World War II all over again?”
Returning home with the ordnance, Elvis staged what was to become a Graceland tradition: the Christmas fireworks war. He rounded up his kin and handlers, chose up two teams and marched them down to the cow pasture in helmets and goggles, where they spent the rest of day blasting each other with cherry bombs, bottle rockets and Roman candles.
Elvis started one other holiday tradition that year: the Christmas cash trick. He laid out a dozen $1,000 bills on his bed and called in a cousin or an aid. Soon he ducked out of the room on an imaginary emergency, then returned after a while to see if all the cash was still there.
The star was inducted into the Army in the spring of 1958. His mother, Gladys, was devastated. She began to drink heavily. She died of liver failure late that summer.
Elvis spent a mournful Christmas off-base in Germany with his father. He bought a BMW and almost killed himself in a car accident on New Year’s Eve.
David Comfort is the author of three popular Simon & Schuster titles, and the recipient of numerous literary awards. His latest title from Citadel/Kensington, "The Rock and Roll Book of the Dead: The Fatal Journeys of Rock’s Seven Immortals," is an in-depth study of the traumatic childhoods, tormented relationships, addictions, and tragic ends of Elvis, Lennon, Janis, Morrison, Hendrix, Cobain, and Garcia.
For details see: http://www.rockandrollbookofthedead.com.
