Radio Script #1105

Little Talks on Common Things
December 19, 1976

This is the 29th consecutive year that Little Talks has presented on Christmas Sunday a special program recognizing Christmas. This year will be no exception.

So I devote this broadcast to some recollections of my own childhood Christmas – recollections of the turn of the century 75 years ago. When Christmas was celebrated in 1900 I was nine years old, old enough to be skeptical about Santa Claus, but decidedly young enough to be eager for childhood gifts and all the fun of Christmas. Our family celebration began on Christmas eve, when we all attended the Christmas tree function of our village church. Most of the children of the Sunday School recited pieces or performed in tableaux, and young and old sang Christmas carols.

Then Santa Claus appeared, a very realistic character to the small fry, including my brother who was not quite five. My sister, whom many of you listeners know as. the wife of Rev. Arthur Durbin of the local housing authority, had not then been born.

Taking packages from all around the tree, Santa distributed them to the children whose names were on them. Most families saw to it that they brought for their children only a few gifts, reserving the major lot for home on Christmas morning. But a few parents, wanting their children to get a lot of attention by being called again and again by Santa, would have all their presents distributed from that church tree. Naturally that imbalance was noted and caused some ill feeling, but the kids themselves soon forgot the apparent discrimination. The church people saw to it that the poorer children were not neglected. Every child who attended that function received not only a colored, meshed bag of candy and popcorn, but also some more lasting gift.

I wonder if anyone now decorates a Christmas tree as we did in 1900. Even then there were a few ornaments factory made, but a common decoration was strings of cranberries and popcorn, placed alternately on a long thread. Electric lighting for a tree was then unknown, but tiny candles were sometimes put on a tree at home, but never on that church tree. With so many children around the fire danger was too great.

That Christmas eve function was held not in the church itself, but in an adjoining building called the vestry. After the distribution of gifts, dancing was enjoyed. At other churches in the village, they sometimes indulged in square dances like Virginia reel and Lady of the Lake. But our church was Universalist and not bound by the behavior pattern of the stricter sects. In our vestry round dances were allowed, which then consisted chiefly of waltzing, two-step and schottische. By ten o’clock the evening came to an end. Of course, some of the little tots had been taken home earlier, and my parents insisted that both my brother and I leave with them by nine o’clock.

In 1900 our home had no electricity, and it would be unthinkable to let a nine year old light a kerosene lamp. So my brother and I had to wait for daylight, or enough of it to see one’s way around before we could go downstairs on Christmas morning, and that meant at least as late as half past six. But you may be sure we had been awake long before that.

The first task was to empty the stocking that had been hung the night before on the wall near the big Round Oak parlor stove that heated our living room. In the top of each stocking would be a big navel orange, and those long black, above-the-knee hose would be stuffed full of small toys, candy and nuts.

After breakfast, we sat near the big stove and opened our presents: games, toy vehicles, books and goodies. But in 1900 the best gift of all was not in the room. Father took my brother and me out into the stable, where the two grocery team horses were getting a day’s rest, and there he uncovered the first double-runner bobsled we had ever owned – a joint gift for my brother and me. And of course we tried it out immediately.

In fact we lived at the foot of the best sliding hill in town. When sledding there was at its very best, not only children but middle-aged couples as well, came from allover town to make the half-mile slide down that long hill. In the daytime we had to beware of teams, but on certain evenings the whole street was reserved for sledding. As for the teams, they were by no means a total nuisance. A mill village such as ours, with three big woolen mills, had sufficient population to demand an immense amount of cord wood, which was always cut and delivered during the winter, piled in the door yards, sawed, split and put into sheds in the spring. The transportation of that cordwood caused big wood teams to be constantly on the village streets. A team from a farm in the southern part of the town would come down our hill with its load and go back empty.

Now everyone who has gone sledding as a child knows that all the fun is in getting on the sled and sliding down a hill. It is quite another story to get back again to the top of the hill for another slide, and pulling a big bobsled up the hill is no fun. What a joy to us, therefore, to encounter some friendly teamster driving his empty woodsled up our hill, who would let us hitch a ride to the top. Even if he would only let us hook on our bobsled while we still walked, that was a privilege. But very often kids and sled both got the ride.

Our Christmas dinner in 1900 was up the same street at Grandma’s. Loading on a sled the presents for Grandma, and my two aunts who lived with her, we all arrived there well before noon, and sat down to a large feast of roast chicken and all the fixings, and huge wedges of at least two kinds of pie. Then all gathered around the piano in Grandma’s parlor. By 1900 my maternal grandfather had died, and Grandma was keeping a boarding house for millhands, all of whom would be with some of their own relatives on Christmas Day.

It was later than 1900, about 1907 in fact, before I had any active part in the family store, and then I became aware of what the Christmas season meant to a business man. A grocery store is little affected by Christmas business except for fruit, nuts and candy. We would always sell a good number of fancy boxes of chocolates, but the big business in the candy line was hard Christmas candy and the better, more expensive ribbon candy.

Today, when almost nothing comes to a store in a barrel, it is astounding to recall how many articles arrived in barrels at a grocery store in 1900: kerosene, molasses, vinegar, flour, sugar, crackers, lard, and many other items. It was even true of Christmas candy. That hard, rock-like crystallized sugar that sold for ten cents a pound, came in barrels containing about 100 pounds each. And for many a Christmas we would sell the contents of ten to twelve barrels.

But the deluxe Christmas section of our store was not the grocery department. While ours was not a general store, but one primarily devoted to foods, my father used about a third of all the space in the store for his favorite side line, china and glassware. A favorite Christmas present was a big, ornate parlor lamp with flowered globe shade, fueled of course with kerosene oil. A good one could be bought for $5 and $10 would buy the best, even a hanging lamp suspended from the ceiling over the dining room table by a chain. Sets of dishes were also common gifts. A standard set consisted of 112 pieces, and you could get one for as little as $5. For $15 you could make a present of a superior set, and you could even go into the luxury of Haviland china for $25.

Other crockery gifts were large single pieces, like soup tureens, big platters, and various covered dishes. And individual cups and saucers of various designs were always in demand. Seldom seen today was something that was a big seller in 1900. Then about every man wore a mustache, and the larger and more flowing it was, the more fashionable the man was considered. To keep this mustache out of his coffee, every man wanted a mustache cup – a large cup with a bar across the top. And to match it he had to have a shaving cup in which he mixed lather for his shave. Often those shaving cups were not left at home, but were left at the barber shop, where many men were shaved once or twice a week. That is why those shaving cups were usually ordered in advance, so that the man’s name could be lettered on the cup.

In 1900, the leading Christmas fruit in a Maine village store was the orange. All winter we would sell Florida oranges of various sizes, costing from 15 to 30¢ a dozen. But for Christmas we would get two or three boxes of the largest California navels that sold for five cents each. If you think 15 cents a dozen was an excessively low price for any oranges, I can assure you that I remember one winter, some weeks after Christmas, when Father got twenty boxes of small Florida oranges that we sold for ten cents a dozen.

In this last quarter of the century when so much of charity is done by huge government agencies on an impersonal basis, some of us like to remember how it was done when this century was new. People were neighborly then. Gifts were often exchanged between families, but what we like best to remember is the way people remembered those in need. Every church in town saw that the honest families got a good Christmas dinner. Business men provided gifts to those homes, and professional men saw that many a family got a load of wood.

And how appreciative those receiving families were. Though they could give no gift in return, very often they saw to it that their free labor was offered for some task to the giving church or the giving home. To be “on the town” was considered disgraceful, but to accept food, clothes or fuel for which some labor could be returned was Christian decency.

There are lots of other memories that come flooding over the past three-quarters of a century, but this must suffice for today. So we now say Merry Christmas and goodbye until next week.

Year: 1977