Each year we visit with some of our senior citizens and relate their tales of Christmases long ago. Here are four stories from years in the past.
Judy remembers celebrating the same Christmas traditions each year with her family. There was a bustle of cooking going on in the kitchen and her mother would suggest the kids go decorate the tree as a way to keep them distracted and out of the kitchen. They always had a short needle evergreen tree and all the kids would help to put the decorations, old fashioned light bulbs and icicles on the tree.
They celebrated with their extended family of thirty plus people. They would eat supper consisting of turkey with all the fixin’s including rice pudding for dessert, starting at 6pm and afterward do the dishes before singing carols and opening gifts. The fun lasted until bedtime around ten pm. Judy would play the piano while the family sang Christmas carols. Her cousin even wrote a poem about the family event. She usually received clothes but one year she recalls that she and her sister both got the same kind of doll. The kids would play games like canasta, cards, puzzles and board games.
Elaine was the oldest of three and they were the only grandchildren of her mother’s parents so they were doted on by the grandparents. Her parents were very Lutheran so she remembers being very involved in the Christmas program and church service. One Christmas eve she played piano and organ for the church program.
Her dad worked for a butcher and also had his own smokehouse where he made sausage and smoked hams for the holiday meals. There was always a big delicious ham for Christmas dinner. In their house they had lots of cookies and her siblings helped make the cookies, decorate the cookies and best of all help eat the cookies.
One year her mother was able to get them a piano for a Christmas gift and their pastors wife gave them all music lessons. The other memorable gift she recalls was when her grandmother gave her a new watch.
Rosie was one of six children in her family. They lived on a farm in Iowa but her dad was a preacher. Her grandma and grandpa always spent Christmas with their family. They would decorate the tree three days before Christmas. When her mother wanted to get the kids out from under her feet, she would tell them to go in and decorate the tree.
She still has memories of the wonderful smells of holiday cooking coming from the kitchen. The menu was the same each year. It included turkey, a roast, rolls and pudding.
She can remember Christmas programs at school and church full of music and Christmas plays with kids acting out Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. Her parents didn’t have lots of money but they each received a gift. A couple years it was a puppy, and she has done the same for her own children. Some years they all received a new outfit of clothes to wear for the Christmas program. Her siblings and cousins would play outside whenever possible and enjoyed board games like Monopoly when they couldn’t go out.
Don grew up on a farm with his sister. He recalls when he was a young boy and they would be bad, that someone would dress up in a Santa mask and pound on the side of the house to get the kids attention. Then they would shake their finger at them as if warning them to behave. It always worked and they would be good until after the New Year. One Christmas when he was about six years old the kids were outside making snow angels when a Santa came around the house yelling Ho Ho Ho. He was so scared he ran for the basement.
During the winter of 1968-69 there was so much snow drifted around the house that he helped put up the Christmas lights without using a ladder. One winter when he was about ten years old, he heard sleigh bells and Santa showed up by his house and asked if he had been good. His father said, “yes he had”. That year he received a bicycle.
The family always put up a Christmas Tree around the first of December where it remained until after New Years Day. His mother would tell them where to put the decorations, tinsel and the bulbs. They would just throw the tinsel on, but his mother was very orderly and would make sure it was perfect. They didn’t have a fireplace so the hung their stockings on the window on either side of the tree. He would hang a large wool work sock while his sister hung a small dress sock. Don figures she must have been a better child because her sock was always over flowing with stuff, while his had only a few things.
His dad managed the coop and his mom worked nights at the hospital. A high school girl would come and baby sit for him and his younger sister. On Christmas Eve the baby sitter and her boyfriend would join them and his parents to celebrate the holiday with a meal of chicken. The boyfriend also drove bulk truck for his dad.
On Christmas Day all the extended family would gather for a meal of turkey and home cured ham with mashed potatoes. His sister played the organ and the accordion while they sang Christmas carols.
Beside Christmas memories, Don recalls farming with a tractor and a team of Clydesdales. His dad would plow with the tractor and a two bottom 14” plow. Don drove the work horses and a one bottom sulky plow. It was so much quieter behind the team than the tractor.
