Myrtle Emma -- Christmas Stories

Six of the Morris kids, c.1930

Just in time for the Holidays, I have a few Christmas-themed excerpts from our memoirist, Myrtle Emma White. Christmas was certainly a big deal then (1920's/1930's), but definitely not the all-out commercial extravaganza that it is now. And for a rural family with eight kids and limited resources, Christmas was less about getting lots of stuff and more about family, making things as special as you could, and enjoying what you did have. As a parent myself, I feel confident in saying that Frank and Elizabeth Morris did everything they could to make it as special as possible for their children, while secretly wishing they could do more. I also feel confident in saying that their children were raised well enough to appreciate what they had and not to be upset that they didn't have more. It probably helped that likely none of their friends or schoolmates had much more than they did. Again, the experiences of the Morris family are noteworthy not because they are unique, but because they aren't. Their story is the story of countless other rural families of the time.

The first of Myrtle's stories is about Christmas breakfast. It's a short segment, but in it you can really feel how much the family looked forward to this time together. The second passage is actually an excerpt from a larger chapter entitled The Seasons. We'll see the rest of it another time, but here I've included Myrtle's remembrances of the Fall/Winter holidays -- Halloween, Thanksgiving, and of course, Christmas. I find interesting Myrtle's takes on the first two, and how different they are from ours now. For her, Halloween was far from being the fun/candy/dress-up time that my own four year old looked forward to for months this year. Instead, she was so scared that she hid away, not participating at all. And Thanksgiving was "just a day home from school". They had a nice meal, but it was not the big, get-together-with-family holiday we know. I feel like that may not have fully formed until after WWII, when car travel was more universal and more easy. (Granted it was a few decades earlier, but in a previous post we saw that John W. Banks threw a party on Thanksgiving night in 1884, never even mentioning that it was Thanksgiving.)

Myrtle's recollections of childhood Christmases tell of joyous, though not extravagant, affairs. I don't know how many of today's kids would find it sufficient, but it sounds pretty good to me.

Christmas Breakfast

We were all up early. Our father had the kitchen cook stove fired up with the split wood. The room was warm and cozy. We had opened our gifts of things we needed. Then we found games, books, and candy that we all shared.

Mother put on her Christmas apron, trimmed with red binding, and looked very festive. She got the griddle from its sturdy hook on the back of the pantry door. It showed an arc on the door from swinging back and forth when the door was opened and closed. The griddle was long and black, with handles molded on both ends. Mother used the stove lid lifter with a wire cage handle to slide the griddle to the heat of the stove. We were happy to be eating breakfast together and enjoying the smell of pancakes.

I stood by the stove with my elbows on my hips and held my plate rigid to get my pancakes. We had syrup and blackberry jam. The berries we had picked on a warm summer day, still glistening with the morning dew.

My father liked dried beef gravy on his pancakes. He liked to tell a story about our neighbor Lizzie B., who made gravy with the dried beef tied to the spoon. We laughed about the idea, but did not think it was true.

We had cups of hot Ovaltine and talked about our Christmas day that was just beginning.

The Seasons (Winter Excerpt)

Halloween was a scary time for us. We never participated in it. Neighbors would come, but I had my hiding place and was never interested in who came. 

Thanksgiving was just a day home from school, but Mother always made a special dinner with turkey, pumpkin pie, and her canned vegetables. We all liked soup and Mother could make the best from almost anything. Of course, her soup with vegetables from the garden made us pick out things we liked best, but we ate it all. Potato soup was also very good. We weren’t so keen on eating onions but we ate them too.

My brothers worked in the mushroom houses in Avondale, Pennsylvania. They wore head lamps to see the mushrooms. They would bring home mushrooms not good enough for shipping. Mother would cream them and we liked them over toast. You had to acquire a taste for them, for that was dinner.

The snow would come in winter and cover everything. It would pile up until we would be walking over fence tops and, when the lane was dug out, the snow was piled over our heads. School was closed so we would sled and make things in the snow, knowing we had a warm house to come home to. Mother made snow ice cream. I never knew how she made it, but it was a winter treat on a snowy day.

Christmas was a time to get excited, but we never knew just why. We had a small cedar tree that sat on the round living room table. It had shiny balls and tinsel but, of course, no lights. Our presents were more like what we needed than special gifts. Mother cooked a goose, guinea hen, or maybe a pheasant and, of course, sweet potato pie and vegetables from the cellar, and maybe Jell-O from the icebox. Everyone was happy and well. Candy came in a five-pound box decorated with holly and Santa. We were eager to have some and could have our choice of what piece we wanted. When the box was nearly empty, we would ruffle through all the empty papers and were happy to find a last piece.

Wintertime kept us indoors a lot, but the cozy heat from the stove took the energy from us and we played more quietly.