Deck the Halls: Hoover-Randle Home's Christmas memories
Much has changed in the Hoover-Randle Home since Jane Hoover Parrish and the city’s founding family lived there.
She was 15 when her father, William Henry Hoover, moved the family to the colonial-style property in 1950. Built in the rural woods south of Birmingham, the Hoovers had no neighbors, aside from a sawmill, on its 160 acres of freedom.
But while the house and property have evolved to suit their current owners, Edmond and Barbara Randle, celebrating the holidays in Hoover’s first home has seen little variation over the years.
When it comes to Christmas, the Hoover-Randle Home has always been about family.
Modern traditions
Step through the front door during the Christmas season, and you’re immediately greeted by a green Christmas tree. Sitting center in the home’s spiral-stair foyer, its welcoming branches are dressed in tinsel and ornaments. Traditional décor dead-ends here though, as the rest of the home exudes its owners’ style — a seamless blend of thoughtful creation and eclectic beauty.
“In my home, I hope you see warmth, and I hope you see color,” said Barbara Randle. “Art is a big part of my life, and I’m into art in many forms. I hope this is a happy place that speaks to you in some way.”
Inside the large dining area is a table that seats more than 20. Its chairs are covered in bright colors all matching a paper-wrapped tree as the centerpiece.
Souvenirs from Randle’s life as an artist and seamstress can be found among the decorations. For the past 15 years, she’s had a business creating textiles from other fabrics. She’s taught classes on her technique all over the world, and the room tells the story of her journey.
Hanging from the windows are paper prayer flags from Kathmandu, Nepal, that were handmade by refugees. Two elephants march away from one another on the long table. In the corner is a thin red pine that almost touches the vaulted ceiling from its perch on a coffee table. It serves as the family Christmas tree.
“Christmas for me is a holy holiday,” she said, “but to me it also means color. I’ve never been one who likes a one-color Christmas tree.”
The holidays in the Randle home are filled with familiarity. Friends come by for an annual open house shortly before Christmas, and on Christmas Day the family arrives.
“We always have a very big celebration on Christmas evening,” Barbara Randle said. “It’s wonderful to have a place that accommodates everybody. There’s always lots of laughter and happiness, presents and good food.”
The Randles moved into the home in 1989, and Barbara refers to its transformation as “evolution.” But not so long ago, its purpose during Christmas was much the same.
Past lives
“It was always about family,” Jane Hoover Parrish said of her Christmas celebrations in the house.
Although Parrish only lived in the home for about four years, leaving at age 19 to marry, she fondly remembers the scenes during the holidays. Her mother, Helen, threw a Christmas Eve party every year and cooked most of the food. Her father, William Henry Hoover, would sit in the living room and read as her two brothers and sister sat around the tree, a large, live conifer decorated with round ornaments.
The party brought with it the promise of coconut and chocolate pies and ambrosia — all annual traditions. Then, in the morning, Helen would prepare the Christmas Day meal that featured turkey and dressing.
“She’d be cooking, and we’d come in with her presents,” Parrish said. “My sister [Helen] and I still laugh about this from time to time. It was so inconsiderate. She would be really busy cooking, and we’d say, ‘Here’s your present! Open it! Open it now!’ We could kick ourselves for doing that.”
Around the house, traditional decorations dominated.
“We always had either a wreath or big bow on the door,” Parrish said. “There was a beautiful tablecloth, and we had Christmas napkins, and she lit so many candles. It was just really your old-timey Christmas.”
Familiar feelings
The Hoover-Randle Home now sits on six acres, but when it was built in 1950 it was the centerpiece of 160 acres. There were no paved paths in the Tyler Road area, as there was no City of Hoover. Helen Hoover drove her Cadillac to downtown Birmingham to do her Christmas shopping.
In 1954, after buying 682 acres on U.S. 31 south of Vestavia, William Hoover founded the community of Hoover. It was around this time that Parrish left home to start her own life. The City was later incorporated in 1967 with a population of 406.
When the Randles purchased the property in 1987 after Parrish’s mother passed away, they spent two years redecorating and adding on to the house before they moved in.
“I don’t ever think about owning a piece of history, but I do feel like we’re the caretakers,” Randle said. “Mr. Hoover was a visionary.”
Randle said she stays in touch with Jane and her sister Helen and invites them over from time to time. Parrish said she happily accepts the invitations, as she’s sentimental about the house. She said she noticed that the Randles didn’t change several of the doorknobs and kept the dining room chandelier.
With the addition of Randle’s style — as well as steady development throughout her father’s city — many things are now different from Parrish’s time in the Hoover-Randle Home. But peek through the windows Christmas Day and it’s easy to see what’s the same.
“Christmas is family,” Randle said.
“It was always about family,” said Parrish.