To read from the beginning of Elsie’s Christmas book, click here.
I remember the first real live tree we had, I wasn’t very old then. Mom decorated the high branches and Bill, Walter and I did the lower ones. This was a special event. We weren’t used to such luxuries, but I must say greatly appreciated.
Dad had bought some clip on candles. The candles could be lit. The holders were clipped on the boughs. He had a pail of water handy in case of fire. He saw to it we were all together around the tree. Then he lit the tree. How beautiful we were spelled bound for a few minutes.
Dad didn’t leave the candles burning only a few minutes. The tree was still pretty and smelled so good, we kept it until New Years night. I still like to keep my decorations up until New Years.
Our stockings were filled with a orange in the toe some hard candy and a lot of peanuts in the shell. We liked the evening and shell peanuts and eat them. Once in a while we would get mixed nuts. Maybe a stick of peppermint. A small doll, a cloth book, pictures to finish with yarn, a toothbrush, anew comb, maybe some kind of a book. We got what Santa could afford to give us, but he never forgot us.
One Christmas I got a bake set, the set contained flour, salt, baking powder, and you had to add some water to mix so you were able to roll it out a little thicker than pie crust. The set contain the rolling pin, a cutter and a pan to bake them in. So my brother Bill and I decided to make these crackers. We used Mom’s oven to bake them. We were proud of them, but no one wanted any so we were happy we ate them all. I had helped Mom but not really to bake anything from the beginning, this time was my very first. My brother and I were pretty proud they turned out as well as they did. We used a fork to make the holes in them.
One year my brother Walter got a race horse set. He had been very ill that year, so Santa was very good to him. He shared it with our brother and me. We spent many of hours watching which horse would win. That was one of the joy of sharing.
I always wanted a doll even if it was a very small doll I enjoyed sewing for it and made many clothes for it. Mother never sewed but our neighbors did and I was given a lot of pretty pieces of material. My doll was the best dressed doll in the neighborhood.
Sometimes we got paper dolls that had their paper clothes to cut out They were fun too.
One year I got a big doll with brown curly hair, that went to sleep. She didn’t sleep long My little sister poked her eyes out. Mother fixed the eyes but the doll don’t go to sleep again.
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| I don't know what ever happened to Elsie's childhood dolls, but this one belonged to Elsie's sister, my Grandma Aileen. She has had a visit to a doll hospital in later years, and is thus in tolerable condition despite her age. (Before the doll hospital, she was rather terrifying.) |
One Christmas Santa forgot to bring me a doll. I was unhappy that I cried but no one ever knew. That year Santa brought me a comb and brush set. I was always breaking the other combs my hair was so thick. I guess that was the sign I was growing up.
In Idaho Christmas always seemed to be a beautiful day. There was clean white snow everywhere. On every thing a winter wonderland. It was pretty but very cold. Icicles hanging from the roofs of all out buildings, including the house. The icicles hung from six to twelve inches long. The sun during the day would melt the snow as it ran off the house would freeze making more icicles and adding length to the other icicles there. The warmth of our stoves made the roof warm, which made the snow melt.
Some of the mornings I would get up and seeing my mom looking out the window, I would ask her what she was looking at. She would answer me “Oh, I was just looking out to see if we are going to be snowed in.”
Sometime we knocked the icicles doun and made ice cream, of course we had to break the icicles up and add salt to it. It freezes faster with salt.
We made ice cream in the snow, by using a tin bucket with a clencher lid (so the lid couldn’t come off and let the snow in the ice cream.) We used eggs, milk, and sugar. Of course we flavored with vanilla. We’d find a big drift of snow, then place our bucket in the snow. After a while we would lift the lid and see how it was doing. We took turns, turning the bucket. The ice cream was like our ice milk we have now.
Christmas after the chores were done we could do what ever we liked. We loved to play in the snow, making angels snowmen and making forts. We would have two forts a small distance apart then we would get in one and some of the others would get in the other. One would throw snowballs back and forth. It was fun snowballing but some of the boys would get water soak them, then they hurt when they hit you.
Even with wool mittens our hands would freeze, it was so cold. We had to change clothes when we came in to the house Mom made us soak our hands in cold water first than warm before we went to the stove. She was afraid chilblains. If they got warm to fast they would hurt. Mother never like to have us eat the first snow as she said all the germs in the air was in it.
The description of making ice cream in the snow reminded me of someone I knew years ago. Beginning in high school and on through college, I worked in an old-fashioned ice cream parlour, complete with a soda fountain. We had a number of regular customers, and I got to know some of them pretty well. We would chat while they enjoyed their ice cream treats. To this day I can still remember the usual order of a number of these people—as in, they could come in and say, “I’ll have the usual,” and I knew what to make.
This particular person’s favorite was caramel butter pecan ice cream, but how he wanted it served would vary. Sometimes a cone, sometimes a dish, sometimes a sundae… if he’d ever said “I’ll have the usual,” I wouldn’t have known what to do. We often chatted about many things, but one of the things that has stuck with me through the years is his memory of making “snow cream.” His description of the process was rather similar to the process Elsie described for making ice cream, except for a couple things. Firstly, I was under the impression (whether correct or not, I cannot say) that the snow cream used snow as an ingredient as well as a way to chill it, and secondly, the snow cream was flavored with maple syrup.
Citation:
Elsie Crocker, "Christmas on the Farm when I was a Small Child" (typescript, 1990); copy in possession of Amber Brosius, 2020.
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