A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas

Applause Well, hello everybody. I’m so glad all of you came out here tonight. I know it’s a busy time of year with Thanksgiving just around the corner. But I think it’s always a good idea to stop and think back a little bit about how things used to be. And, I hope you enjoy the program. You are the very first audience to see this program. So, if something terrible happens, just remember that’s part of the fun of live entertainment. Now in just a minute, I’m going to actually turn into Laura and I’m going to be talking as her most of the program tonight - though I am going to make a couple of asides. And when you’re going to be able to tell if it’s me or if it’s Laura is because Laura has a hat. So, when I have that on I’m going to talk as Laura and when I don’t, I’m going to talk as myself. Now, when they asked me to talk about Laura and Christmas, that seemed to be a really big topic because Laura actually lived a very long time. She was born February 7th 1867 near the shores of beautiful Lake Pepin. Mark Twain said it was true sunset country and Bryant said every poet and artist in the land ought to visit. And she lived until 1957. So, she started out with travel by covered wagons and lived long enough to travel on an airplane. So as you might imagine, Christmases changed a lot during her life. And especially because a lot of that, the first half of her life, was during the Victorian period, and it was the Victorians that invented Christmas as we celebrate it today. So, I decided that the best way to handle this subject, would be to pick a time, and sort of go from there. So what I’m going to be doing – in just a minute here while I get on my hat and gloves – is we’re going to be going back to 1939. We’re going to be in Mansfield, and the reason I picked 1939 I hope will come evident in just a minute. Oh, I do like to get Christmas letters – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 – It seems like there are more of these cards every day. Ugh, and I will have to get answers out to them, but – Oh look! One’s from Rose, my daughter, let me see what she has to say. Oh! She sent me a clipping from a magazine article – Woman’s Day, December 1939. “We have asked famous author, Rose Wilder Lane, of Danbury, Connecticut, what she does for Christmas and of traditions in her family.” Well, this ought to be good. “But I do not do anything unusual at Christmas. There is a family Christmas tree trimming all Christmas Eve Day. And I don’t like, or have, smart modern blue and silver trees. My trees are trimmed with the magic idea that the tree itself bursts into magic flower and fruit. I use lots of very fat tinsel and bits as short as the tree’s green furry twigs and glittering colored balls and real candles to be lighted and to be very careful of fire about.” “Christmas Eve is just a family, including any hired help there may be. Lighting the tree is a ceremony. In a dark room with a taper, all the candles are lighted on the tree. It is beautiful. We just look at it for awhile. And maybe we sing or have a phonograph record, “Silent Night, Holy Night.” Then we turn on the lights and open the gifts till the place is knee deep in wrappings and ribbons. And we just have fun. Afterward, at midnight a totally indigestible supper: plum pudding, fruitcake, candy, nuts and coffee. Christmas Day evening is for the young folks’ party. And the tree is lighted again. Do you know, most people to the young people today have never seen a real candle light on a Christmas tree? The tree bears again, this time little gifts. Really party favors, and then there’s dancing and another late supper. I usually serve waffles and sausages for this. Everyone’s tired of sweets by now. That’s all and I’m sorry, there isn’t a scrap of any idea in it.” Well, it does sound like we have quite the time doesn’t it? I think though, if Rose is being honest, the part she’s like the best was this: “We open gifts till the place is knee deep in wrappings and ribbons.” Rose likes to get gifts and to give them. Of course, before we can get to that, we have to get through all the fun of Christmas Eve. At Christmas Eve night, we would gather together, and we’d all hang our stockings. None of these specialized things you can buy from the dime store. They were real stockings that we wore on our feet. And we hung them up and we waited for Santa Claus to come and fill them. Now we’ve got a lot of interesting presents in our family over the years. And I’m going to take that opportunity to step back as Sarah for a second, because I remembered I didn’t say something. Remember what I said about the fun of live entertainment? Santa Claus is going - and Mrs. Claus, are going to be showing up in some of our pictures. So be sure to keep an eye out for them. Okay, now back to Rose’s presents. All right, probably the very first big Christmas present I can remember getting was when Pa gave Ma the china shepherdess. He carved the rack for it to stand on himself. And ever after that we knew a place was really home once Ma got out the china shepherdess. That same year, I got Charlotte. Now before this, I just had a corn cob doll. Her name was Susan. And Nellie – I’m sorry, Mary – already had a rag doll named Nettie. And sometimes she let me hold her, but I only did it when Susan couldn’t see. But this year for Christmas, I got my own rag doll. And she would stay with me until she literally disintegrated. The next big Christmas I remember is when we were down in Kansas. We didn’t think we were going to get a Christmas at all. But then Mr. Edwards showed up with his presents. And he brought us each a tin cup. Now, I’m sure children today probably wouldn’t be impressed with an old tin cup. But back before we had this Christmas, Mary and I used to share from one cup when we ate, so to have our own seemed to be quite miraculous indeed. Then there was the year Mary and I worked together to make a button string for Carrie. Ma had saved up buttons, ever since she was a little girl. And she said we could use them for the button string. So, we were determined to have the most beautiful button string in the world. And we sat and worked hours on it. And we – Mary started on one end – and I started on the other. We put the buttons on. We took some off. A couple of times we took them all off and started over again. It was going to be the most beautiful string in the world. And then Ma told us Christmas was almost here and we couldn’t make any more do-overs. So finally we got it together and made this beautiful button string. Then, there was the year Ma asked us if it would be okay if we just wished for horses that year for Pa. And Christmas morning there they were, Sam and David, the Christmas horses. And then, there was the presents we got from Ma and Pa. We saved up our money to buy Ma a hair comb to put back in her hair. And we had the year that we had the community Christmas tree. I got a little box with a wee china cup and a wee china tea pot. Carrie got a little brown and white dog. And I got a fur cape and *** which was even nicer than Nellie Oleson’s. And, during the long winter, when we didn’t think we’d be able to have much of a Christmas at all, we were able to put together enough money to buy an embroidered set of suspenders for Pa. He said that they were too pretty to cover up with his coat. As the temperature dropped below zero, somehow he found the will power to anyway. And there was the year when my Manly, Almanzo James Wilder, who I was engaged to, went back east for the winter and I didn’t think I’d see him at Christmas at all. And he brought me a pin when he showed up at our house on Christmas Eve. This one. And you can see there’s a little carved house on it, and a lake, and some wheat. I treasure it. Later, after we were married, one year Manly made a sled for Grace. And one of our first married Christmases together, we gave each other a set of dishes from the Montgomery Ward catalog. When our house burned down, this was one of the few things we were able to save. Times were hard in those first few years of our marriage. And one year, Manly got our Christmas present for each other by trading a load of chopped wood and brought us a clock that he would wind every night for the rest of his life. Sarah again, Christmas presents were also strongly connected to Laura because of her fans. For years, much the way Harry Potter books were in our time, children would wait for Christmas to come so they could get the next new Little House book. This year is the 75th anniversary of “Little House on the Prairie.” And every couple of years, for a little over a decade, a new book would come out bearing that magic name, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And even today, Laura fans look forward to seeing what surprises that their loved ones got them for Christmas that have to do with Laura but the loved ones know about it ahead of time or not. And the food of Christmas! Christmas always meant just a flood of preparations for all sorts of different kinds of food. We had *** Bread, or self-rising bread there was all sorts of goodies and pastries and meat. For Christmas morning breakfast, when we were very little, Ma would make us a man out of pancakes. And sometimes, whether either Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, depending on what our schedule was, we always had oyster soup, with oyster crackers. The year Pa was lost in a snowbank on the way home, he ate all the oyster crackers and all the Christmas candy, but he didn’t eat the canned oysters. And oranges were always a big thing when I was growing up because it was still quite the deal to get an orange all the way from Florida or California to the plains of South Dakota. But it was getting to be a little easier with the train and an orange soon became standard fare in a Christmas stocking. Baking and preparations could go on for days. And any help was greatly appreciated. And, of course, everyone pulled up to the table. If there was any relatives in the area, they’d come. And if not, we’d try to invite in friends and neighbors. Ah. And as I mentioned before, Christmas candy was always a big deal. Especially the ribbon candy with the multiple colored layers striped like ribbon but frozen solid in sugar. We used to get some Christmas candy like that only at Christmas. In fact, that was the strongest memories I have of riding the train when we first went to Walnut Grove to DeSmet, was that a boy came along with a tray in his arms and he had sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and little packages of Christmas candy. And Ma got us some, even though it wasn’t Christmas. I was going to eat one of my pieces and save the other one. All of us girls agreed to do that. But after I ate the first one, I thought the other one looked like it should have a lick. Just one. Then two. Okay, I ate the whole thing! Even Mary gave in in the end. It was such a special wonderful trip treat to have Christmas candy. And in later years, once we started to have Christmas trees, especially in town, we’d make little - they’d make little baggies of Christmas candy out of mosquito netting and hang it on the tree. Now, as we think about Christmas we probably think of a white Christmas – and snow. And certainly there were places where we were growing up where there was snow pretty much every Christmas. But, that wasn’t always the case. Pepin seemed to have a talent for attracting snow. And we tended to have lots of it every year at Christmastime. And where Manly was growing up, up in New York State, they too got an inordinate amount of snow. Especially, it seemed, for Christmas. But a lot of places that I lived when I was growing up, and in later years here in Missouri, there wasn’t snow, no matter how handy it would have been. And a lot of times you’d be as likely to have a Christmas Day that looked like this, as you did to have snow on the ground. In fact, the first New Year’s that we spent in Dakota Territory we had the door wide open during dinner and letting the fresh air breezes in because it was so warm. Santa Claus has certainly changed a lot since I was a little girl. You all probably think of Santa as something like this, big, and plump, and jolly. You might have heard of the poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and in there they call him an elf. And that’s because before they got going with Thomas Nast and Coca Cola, Santa Claus looked a little bit more like this, or even more elf like. Rather than the jolly fat man that we know today. When I was growing up I had never seen a Christmas tree at all until I was 9 years old. And then, we saw a community tree. There’d been an ad in the paper asking the members of the community to bring their Christmas presents in. And between that, and the missionary barrel, the whole tree was just covered with presents and little bags of candy. It was something I had never seen. In later years, of course, we started to have our own trees, as Rose talked about. Though always the old fashioned kind, and not one with the modern silver bells and whistles. I always enjoy thinking about Christmas. “Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit to become a child again at Christmastime.” And I think we’re all better off at Christmastime for remembering Laura. And they certainly have not been remiss for reminding us of that in the publishing industry. And I’ll let you all know that the book in the right hand corner there is available in the gift shop. Along with, “The Little House Guidebook,” which I highly recommend; and the wonderful papers to the conference on Laura that was here at the Hoover Library and it’s on sale now for 10 dollars now which is a total steal! So, thank you for spending a little time with me as we talk about Laura and Christmas. And I hope you enjoyed the program. I hope that if you didn’t get your fill of looking at the trees and memorabilia tonight, you’ll come back between now and January 2nd. Also, find Hoover Library on YouTube. You can see footage of the 1995 Laura Wilder exhibit. And you can “Like” them at Facebook and see all sorts of pictures of the event tonight. And you can also find me in all those places under the name “Trundlebed Tales.” Thank you very much. Applause