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| Brandon, Scott and Colby 30 years ago |
As we get older we look back and remember the fun of being
a kid and the wonderful things that happened then. Christmas was the best time of the year
because people made it so for us. It
was a do-it-yourself celebration that brought families and the neighborhood
together to celebrate the birth of Christ in a mixture of religious, secular
and commercial events. The homecoming of
family and friends, the wonderful seasonal meals and cookies, the reaffirmation
of religious beliefs, the gifts for the kids and vacations are what made the
memories so strong for all of us. While
growing up in the old days was fun and is great to remember, it should remind
us that what we do now with Christmas is making memories for our children and
grandchildren. Are we doing as well as
our as our own parents and grandparents did for us?
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| Mom enlisted the boys to tie a quilt--not their favorite job! |
Christmas season began in earnest for us four Hanson boys
on the farm when at school and Sunday school we got our “parts” for the
Christmas programs. Both were big events in the neighborhood. Local schools and churches were the glue that
connected the community.
The
Sunday School Program was always a reenactment of the story of the birth of
Christ. We boys worked our way up from silent
(emphasis from the teacher) cows, donkeys and sheep to “Shepherds
watching their flocks by night” and “Wise Men following Yonder Star” (we
figured it was near the North Star). We
never made the big parts of Joseph or the Innkeeper because our tryouts were
weak (“Try the emergency room lady!”).
We learned that all men in the Bible wore bathrobes and towels wrapped
around their heads. Of course on the farm
we never had any bathrobes instead preferring long johns for winter and short
johns for summer so these were borrowed from the sophisticated ladies in the
church. “I don’t think a Shepherd would
wear a pink bathrobe” complained Marvin to non-listening ears.
The
reward for both school and church programs other than the fame of performing in
front of the whole community was the small brown paper bag with Christmas
treats. Dad said that the school board
bought and packed the bags out of their own pockets. A good bag of treats was likely to get the
board reelected next spring. In the bag
would be either an apple or an orange, a handful of salted peanuts in the
shell, a few soft Christmas candies and a few hard candies—bright reds, greens
and white colors. I never got used to the
candy flavors of the era—anise, horehound, rootbeer and liquorish, so traded
them at great loss to my brothers.
One Saturday in December the Cushing merchants would have a
Santa Claus day. We kids filled the Little
Hall above the north tavern or the Big Hall above the grocery store to see some
cartoons and a short movie and to get some candy and trinkets and visit with Santa
Claus.
Cutting a Christmas tree meant a trip to the woods. Early years we went to the big “Christmas
Tree Swamp” near the St Croix River where spruce
trees grew in abundance.
We got our Christmas presents on Christmas morning after
Santa Claus had put them under the tree.
We didn’t hang stockings because we knew Santa was not so dumb as to
come down the chimney, through the furnace and up the heat registers when the
door was never locked anyway.
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Scott makes a snowman |
Grandpa and Grandma Hanson (Eugene and Nettie) always had
us over for Christmas dinner. Grandma’s Jack Pine tree was special! She had some really old decorations that she
brought out and put on the tree. Tinsel
loaded with lead, candle holders for real candles and balls and ornaments that
had been carefully packed and carried through many moves. The most fascinating decoration was the
string of bubble lights. When they first
came out in the late 1940s Grandma had splurged and got a set. We boys were fascinated that they never
boiled away the water in them.
Grandma raised geese for the traditional cooked goose. All of her food was home grown and home made
and home cooked in the wood stove. As a
special treat she might have us help her make popcorn balls and pull
taffy. Our gifts were home knitted
mittens or socks and homemade candy and cookies. Grandma was a school teacher before getting
married. If the snow was fresh she would
take us out and tramp a fox and geese circle and get us started playing the old
schoolyard game. Indoors she would bring
out her favorite board game “Bringing Home the Bacon” and we 4 boys played it
with her. Grandpa liked to sing so would
have grandma play a song on the piano and sing with us.
After months of school it was time to get out and really do
hard core sliding down the big hill by the house. We had accumulated skis, runner sleds,
toboggan and skates as previous Christmas presents or passed on from neighbors
and relatives whose kids had outgrown them.
The hillside by the house had to be prepared for the runner
sleds. We cleaned the summer rust from
the runners by hooking on the back of the tractor and trailer and riding them
up the road and into the woods to haul a load of wood back to the house. We made a careful set of ruts in the deep snow
by pulling a sled and rider down the hill.
We hauled pail after pail of water from the pump to ice the tracks,
following the example of the old time loggers icing their roads. Halfway down the hill we built a jump – a
carefully packed, flattened and iced pile of snow that dropped an amazing
amount—larger each year. After a cold
night the hill was ready! The sleds
whizzed down the hills, crashed over the jump finishing in the cattail swamp
below.
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Jed at Grandma's |
Ernest Swanson plowed and flooded a skating rink on Bass Lake
Some evenings we started a fire and skated late as the full
moon lit up the area bright as day. We
boys found “hockey sticks” out of the woods and banged chunks of ice or wood
around valuing speed and crashes above all.
We knew true disgust when an older boy left the hockey group to skate with someone’s sister!
All too soon Christmas
vacation was over and it was back to school preparing to be adults by copying
pages out of the dictionary, getting used to the taste of the soap bar and writing
our faults 25 times on the blackboard.
