From the 'Christmas Past' File
Recalling a long-ago article when my grandmother & great aunts told how the holiday was celebrated when they were young
From left, my grandmother Ila Mae Horton and my great aunts Lucille Clark and Doris Haire.
One December afternoon, a good many years ago, I got together with my Grandma Horton, Great Aunt Lucille Clark, and Great Aunt Doris Haire for the purpose of interviewing them on how Christmas was celebrated when they were young. The ladies were in their 80’s when I did the newspaper article. They had grown up in the years before, during and after World War I.
I'm not sure exactly when we did the story, but I'm guessing around the mid-to-late 1990's. They've passed away since then, Doris being the last one in 2007 at age 93.
Grandma was raised on a farm on the western edge of Webberville, within an easy walk to the village school. Lucille and Doris, along with their sister Thelma Finlan and my Grandpa Lloyd Horton, lived on a farm on West Chase Lake, about three miles from Fowlerville. They attended Randall School which was at the corner of North Fowlerville and Allen Roads.
All of them said that getting an orange in their stocking was a treat, explaining that this fruit was not too readily available back then. Of course the gatherings of family was another of their recollections.
Another highlight, they said, was the Christmas program and party at the school. In the one-room country schools, like Randall, the invitation to attend this celebration was extended to all of the residents in the district—parents, grandparents, and even those who did not have children in school.
The main entertainment was a program put on by the students and, as my grandmother and aunts recalled, these could be quite elaborate. The teacher rehearsed them on their various parts in the days leading up to the big event.
Refreshments were served and, at the conclusion of the event, the teacher would usually give each student a small gift. Or they enlisted Santa to do the job—usually some gentleman from the neighborhood. Often the kids exchanged presents, and I’m guessing either the parents or the school board that oversaw the operations did likewise for the teacher.
While the three ladies cited these holiday parties as a highlight of their younger, schoolgirl days, my grandmother and Doris had the added perspective of being teachers at those country schools when they were in their early twenties—before they were married. This would have been in the 1930s. My grandmother returned to teaching in the early 1950s, after her children were grown, and continued in that profession for another 25 years.
An older friend of mine, and one-time neighbor, recalled having Grandma as a teacher when she had first resumed her career—at Randall—and that my grandfather had been enlisted as Santa Claus. He would have been a skinny one, so he probably needed a pillow to adequately play the part.
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Rose Hamlin Tennis, a contemporary of my grandmother and aunts, also taught in various country schools in the area from 1934 thru the 1940’s. In her book The School That Was, she wrote: “We had a lot of fun in the rural schools, but our best time was at Christmas.”
“Around Thanksgiving, I would choose the play, monologues, poems, and songs for the Christmas program,” she said. “Everyone would participate. The primary grade children each recited poems and usually sang a song. Older students would be in plays and monologues…If there were four-or five-year-old children in the neighborhood, I would send poems of four or five lines home to them.
“On the Friday before the program, we would put up the stage,” she continued. “It was made of board or plank, or the flat rack from a farm wagon and placed on sawhorse. School board members and willing fathers would put it together. We would hang curtains or bed sheets on a wire, so that we could pull them open or shut by hand, or with an attached rope.
“Santa Claus always came,” she noted.
Rose said that the gifts she gave to her students during those years included pencils with their names on them, books, or pencil boxes. “I also bought decorated boxes and filled them with hard candy and peanuts,” she added. “Often I would make popcorns balls. There were always enough treats for any small child who came with their older brothers and sisters.”
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As it happened, despite growing up on a farm in rural Fowlerville, I never went to a country school. My schoolboy days were spent in town with the city slickers. My classmates who did attend a one-room rural school, even now these many years later, say the experiences they had were among their favorite memories.
Hard to believe that once upon a time, not so long ago, a kid was happy to get an orange in their stocking or a popcorn ball or a pencil with their name on it from the teacher. Truly, a time of simpler pleasures and entertainments.
Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the Fowlerville News & Views.
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Great article on how life was like back then in one room schools and what made you happy. I was fortunate enough before I left Maui 'for good' to videtape both my mom and my dad. I had them reminisce about growing up in small town Lahaina back in the 30's through the 90's. Not the same as in middle America, but very interesting none the less following in their footsteps. My most vivid memory is of my mom describing how they would take a stick to pull the tar off of the road on a hot sunny day and chew it like gum! How they took the flower of the ulu (breadfruit) to smoke like a cigar! My dad use to catch strawberry finches or linnets (2 invasive species among others brought to Hawaii by haoles who missed the singing from home in the mainland). He would make a sticky glue like substance from other trees, put on branches he knew they frequented and capture them for birdhouses to hear them sing for his family. What it was like during WWII also had some funny and scary stories as well being quarantined and nights blacked out. Great and fond memories I at least have for my and hopefully my sons' to reflect on.
Mele Kalikimaka Steve to you and your family!
Love reading about them ladies. And I’m a proud city slicker who is also a proud Randall Rascal. Went there in 7th grade.
Enjoyed this!