The Christmases I remember all occurred in the nineteen-thirties. I don’t remember any before that and I don’t remember the Christmases of my teen years, except for the small gifts given to me by the young man I later married. I do remember one toy from pre-school days: a small old fashioned cook stove like the ones you see in old pioneer/western movies. It had a small coal bucket and tiny shovel. I had it for many years.
Nearly everyone has heard of the depression years, when most people didn’t have a great deal of money, and sometimes none. But, as I have expressed earlier, Dad did have a job all during those years, for which I am thankful. Our Christmases and the gift-giving of the time no doubt were shaped by economics and our parents own beliefs and backgrounds: something for everyone, but non-extravagance. I doubt if they would have been much more extravagant in gift-giving, even if they had had less children and more money.
As children usually are, we were all excited about Christmas, and awaited it eagerly. We didn’t hang stockings at our house, but during the year we each saved a new shoe box. On Christmas Eve, we set the boxes, with our names on them around the tree.[The names really weren't necessary as we all got the same thing, but afterward you would definitely want to know which box was yours.]
When morning came, the boxes had been filled with hard Christmas candies plus bon-bons and haystacks, nuts, an orange, and a whole pack of gum. Except for a special treat like this, gum was usually divided up by the stick, except when we could save up our pennies and buy it for ourselves.
We each got one special toy, with perhaps some smaller items of the 5 & 10 cent store variety, and maybe a game or two that we could all play. I got a doll until I was age seven. That year my mother said that if I didn’t play with this doll, she wasn’t buying me another one. I loved the dolls, but I thought they were so pretty, I didn’t want their beautiful clothes and themselves to get mussed up. I just wanted to enjoy looking at them. Apparently my mother didn’t understand that. Even so, I enjoyed that pretty doll, and kept her for many years. My mother was true to her word; I never got another one.
My one sister during those years was several years older than I, and apparently had decided she was past the playing with dolls age, by the time of my memories. The boys usually got a truck of some kind, with other small items. When they got a bigger toy, such as the famous “big red wagon,” a sled, and later a bike; those were share playthings. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that there should be one for each.
A week after Christmas came the New Year holiday. The shoe boxes were pretty much, if not all, emptied by that time. On New Year’s Eve these same empty boxes were set out again. They were once more filled with much the same thing as they had been for Christmas. In this case it was “Granddaddy Long Legs” who filled them. It seems that Granddaddy Long Legs, or Daddy Long Legs is the name for a mysterious giver, but I don't know the exact origin of this. [Perhaps I'll try to find out one day soon.] I believe this custom came from my mother’s family, where she, her brother, sister and widowed mother lived with their maternal grandparents until my mother was age nine. Granddaddy Long Legs in this case being Pa Ivie, her grandfather.
I didn’t know anyone else who practiced this custom until about 15 or 20 years ago I wrote about our Christmas custom for a newsletter. The publisher of the newsletter shared the custom with a group she met with, and one of the women told her that her family had done the same thing when she was a child.
You might wonder why I only mention the one doll I got when I was seven, if I tried to keep them looking the same way I got them. It’s like this: in addition to my older sister when I was growing up, I had two older brothers, and SIX younger brothers. Those little boys didn’t mind at all dragging the dolls around, if they could get hold of them when no one was looking. It didn’t take long at all for the dolls to look bedraggled.
After I was married, my parents had two more girls, for a total of twelve children. The older kids and the younger ones are a generation apart.
Mig I enjoyed reading about the past Christmas's and New Year's Day. I didn't know about the shoe boxes or about them on New Year's Eve. Dad never said any thing about them, but you know dad, he didn't talk alot.
ReplyDeleteI can't see Johnny and Danny carry dolls around or the other ones.
Grandma gave me a wooden truck and I still have it. Nancy tried to tell me that grandma gave it to her, but you know how sister are. Love them alot. I told Nancy she can have it later.
Have a great New Year. Love you Mary Ann