Published: December 23, 2008 10:51 am      

Journeying to Christmas past

Christmas isn’t what it used to be according to a group of Gainesville residents.

Interviewed recently in a common area at Gainesville Health and Rehabilitation Center, five residents of the care center shared their holiday memories.

Some of their stories were surprising.

Others were sweet.

Margaret Lindsay, who was born in 1915, said Christmas was not the huge, gift-giving, food fest that it is today.

“We didn’t have Christmas,” Lindsay said. “If we got a candy cane that was it. Nobody had a big Christmas. You’ve got to remember this was during hard times. Things were completely different. It’s hard to tell people that.”

Lindsay grew up in Olney, between Graham and Wichita Falls.

“Back then there wasn’t a large population in west Texas —just hard-working people from Georgia and Alabama.”

Communication in the small Texas community was mainly by word of mouth.

“We didn’t have cars or phones. You learned about things at church and places like that,” she said.

She does have one special Christmas memory.

“My first Christmas that I really remember knowing it was Christmas was when I was three or four years old and we were staying at my grandmother’s. My sister and I were sitting in a big rocker and a man came in with Santa Claus. I don’t even remember who he was or what happened after that. It was just the first Christmas I remember,” she said.

Lindsay’s other holiday memories involve an usual type of Christmas tree.

“Of course, there weren’t any trees in west Texas. Just mesquite,” she said. “You know how you make those paper chains at school? We used to make long chains and take them outside in the pasture and put them on those little, scrawny mesquite trees.”

She also recalls her family had no big turkey or ham feast on Christmas Day. But there was at least one holiday treat the whole family loved.

“We always had mince meat pie,” Lindsay said. Her friends, sitting nearby, agreed with her.

“I’d still like to have a mincemeat pie,” she said, smiling.

Lindsay said she got just one doll during her childhood.

“I never had but one doll. I got it when I was seven years old, first doll and only doll,” she said.

Lindsay’s only doll met with an untimely end.

“One day, my sisters and I were out playing with our dolls, and my brother tried to pretend he would run us over with the mules. My doll fell on the ground and broke,” she said.

Dolls were made of ceramic or china or some other delicate substance. Their bodies were fashioned of fabric and stuffed with cotton.

Little boys, apparently, wished for other things at Christmas.

Benny Meador was born in 1925, and lived most of his life east of Collinsville.

His family, like many others, struggled financially, especially during the Depression years.

Meador said he wanted to share one special Christmas memory.

“My daddy was a farmer. When I was ten or twelve years old, Daddy told me to get the mules hooked to the wagon. He had seed corn in the wagon, and we brought it to Collinsville to sell. Daddy sold his seed corn to give me and brothers and sisters a Christmas. I was one of ten kids. I remember that Christmas morning in front of the fireplace was my Daisy B-B gun. After that, things were harder, but I never forgot how my Daddy got me that B-B gun,” he said.

Resident Martha Johnston said families didn’t spend much money on Christmas presents and other holiday treats.

“Everybody was in the same pot,” she said.

She grew up in Guthrie, Okla., and remembers the Christmas she got a doll.

“I will never forget the first doll I can remember having. I got it Christmas morning. My cousins came over and they were playing with it — swinging it back and forth and they dropped it and broke the head. It had a cotton body, but the head was made out of something like ceramic and they broke it. I can’t remember having another doll until after I got married,” she said.

Earnestene Bryant said her family’s traditional Christmas meal included chicken and dressing and plenty of pies and cakes.

“Every year we got dolls for Christmas and our mother made us share with the other children. My doll would end up kind of worn-out looking, but my sister got to where she’d hide her doll and it stayed nice and clean,” she said.

Bryant recalls traveling to her grandparents house for holiday visits.

“They had a big, old two-story house with a fireplace and it was usually cold and bad. We’d stay several days. I always thought it was funny that my grandparents got up at 4 (a.m.) and went to bed at 8 (p.m.),” she said.

Fancy handmade dresses were another certainty at Christmas, she added.

“Momma used a Singer sewing machine to make dresses for us. I remember wearing those pretty little dresses,” she said.

She was born in 1935 and spent her youth in places such as Marietta, Okla., Gainesville and Valley View.

Christmas season meant her mother would select and fatten up a holiday turkey, said resident Willa Dean Leeper.

She grew up in Hagerman near Lake Texoma.

One of her memories involves coming back from a trip with her family in 1936 to find their home underwater.

“Lake Texoma was being built back then,” she explained, “and we knew it could happen.”

She said, like many of the other women, her most vivid Christmas memory involved a doll.

‘My sister wanted a big baby doll and I wanted a small one,” she said.

“I got a little baby doll made out of rubber or something like that. I still have it,” she said.

Leeper said she remembers having a large family dinner each year.

The residents seemed to agree that Christmas isn’t exactly like it was when they were children.

Sitting around the Christmas tree in one of their living areas, each of them was thinking of Christmases past and looking forward to spending time with their loved ones this year.

Each said they had plans to see family and friends during the holiday.

Lindsay said no one felt deprived at Christmas.

Back then, small treats were something to be treasured.

“If we got hold of some money, we’d buy each other a candy cane,” she said. “That was a treat to us.”