Happy holidays all!

I found this story that my grandmother wrote about Christmas when she was a little girl back in the early 1900s in Yadkin County, North Carolina. The events in this story would have taken place around 1918. I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I do.

Merry Christmas!

The following is a true story, written by Edith Beamon Hartle, November 26, 1989

When I was a young girl, I couldn�t wait to get to Grandpa�s house before Christmas. Mama had two young sisters still at home and the youngest one was only three years older than I. My daddy had died when I was ten years old and Mama, my brother and I lived in town. Christmas was at Grandpa�s.

The week before Christmas, the yards were cleaned with brush brooms, weather permitting. The day before Christmas Eve, the cakes were baked in the big wood stove. On Christmas Eve morning, the house was cleaned and the pies were baked. We had a hurried lunch, which I couldn�t eat for the excitement. Most often, it would be cloudy and very cold outside as we went into the woods looking for the Christmas tree. We would come back by the old saw mill down on the branch to get holly with berries and running cedar. As we came out of the woods, it might begin to snow. We would all have our arms full, dragging the tree behind. We would go to the well to sprinkle water on the tree and the throw flour on it to make our snow. While it dried in the kitchen, we popped corn, stringing it on long white thread. We then looked in an old Sears catalog to find the few pages in color and cut out pretty pictures. We also cut strips of paper from a school tablet, all the same width and length, and then colored them with crayons. These were pasted together in circles with flour paste and linked to make chains. While we were doing all this, we would miss Grandpa and the horse. We didn�t ask any questions, though. We put the running cedar on the mantle over a large fireplace made of flint stones with logs burning in it. The holly was put in large vases on the organ and on little tables. By then, Grandpa was back and had fixed the tree so that it would stand and set it up in the parlor. Finally, we would get to put our paper chains, strings of popcorn and pretty pictures on the tree.

When everything was decorated, we hurried to supper, which had been kept in the warming oven of the wood stove. Afterwards, we went into the parlor and one of my aunts would get out a song book and begin playing the pump organ. It wasn�t long before we would hear a knocking on the big wooden door of the old log house. Opening the latch, we would find friends waiting on the stone steps. More friends would come, all gathering around the organ to sing. There were some very good singers in the crowd. Popcorn was passed around and peanuts that had been toasted. When friends began to head home, there would be a little snow on the ground. All of them were walking, so the snow didn�t bother them. Then the lamps were blown out and we went to bed.

Christmas morning, we got up early, went out to break the ice in the bucket at the well to get water for breakfast coffee. After breakfast, we found out where Grandpa had been while we were making the pretty things for the tree. He had been to the store about three miles away and had a box of stick candy and an orange for each of us. That was our present for Christmas.

We would sit down to dinner of home-canned beans, tomatoes and corn. We would also have fried apples and turnips, which had been saved for Christmas by storing them in a deep hole in the ground and covered with straw. If all of the chickens that could be spared hadn�t been traded at the store for sugar and coffee, we would have chicken for Christmas dinner. These Christmases at Grandpa�s were the best of all.

I wonder what the children and young folks of today would do if they had Christmas like we did. With everything at their fingertips and the rush and bustle of the times now, they can�t even know what Christmas is all about. Now it seems that Christmas begins in October. When I was young, we had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We didn�t get tired of the word �Christmas.�