I thought you might enjoy this. It's a chapter from a book I wrote about growing up in Wisconsin, quoting a letter my Mother wrote for me about Christmas on the Waterman's farm where she grew up. My grandfather Holliday rented the farm from Mister Waterman. I suppose that I should have started the chapter with:

"Come you ladies and you gentlemen and listen to my song
I'll sing it to you right, though you may think it wrong
May make you mad but I mean no harm
It's all about the renters on Waterman's fFarm
It's hard times in the country, down on Waterman's farm"

Christmas on The Waterman Farm

From a letter from my Mother

I would like to give you a glimpse into the past, Christmas as I knew it when I was a child. By society's standards we were poor: eight children living on a farm, but Mother and Dad always made a wonderful Christmas for us. Many of our gifts: tables and chairs, cradles for our dolls, high chairs and beds for them too, my brothers and my Dad made for us. Every Christmas we got a new doll and Mother made clothes for them, and there were books, games, crayons and coloring books. My Aunts, A.E. and A.A and A.G. saw that we had warm coats and mittens, stocking caps and warm underwear, and living in an old farm house with only one wood stove to keep us warm, believe me we needed warm clothes.

The day of Christmas Eve, the house was full of the aroma of cookies baking, fresh bread, cinnamon rolls and pumpkin pies. We all helped to get things ready for Christmas. I especially remember one Christmas, we lived about 3 miles from our church and most of the time we had to walk. If it was below zero, Dad would let us use the horses and wagon. It seems there was always a full moon and as we walked, the bright moon sparkled in the snow and it crunched under our feet as we walked. We sang Christmas hymns and with eight "Holliday" voices and Mother's, we made quite a chorus. Mother always made our clothes. A store dress was unheard of. This particular Christmas, Mother made me a red velvet dress with a lace collar. I'll never forget how beautiful it was. We always had new shoes for Christmas. Mine, the toes and around the heel, they were black patent leather (so shiny.) They were shoes that came above the ankles" shoes, not oxfords. The tops were white leather. On the outside of the shoe were 8-10 shiny black buttons. We had to use a button hook to fasten them. With long white stockings and my red dress, I thought that I must surely be one of God's angels (I'm sure my Mother didn't think so!) and that was what I was in the Christmas program at church, in the manger scene. Ruth and I sang together (She had a red dress too!) Mother dressed us alike for a long time, we used to sing together a lot!

We always got a bag of Christmas candy and a gift from our teachers. After the program, we started home, not quite so full of enthusiasm as when we came. The older brothers took turns carrying Evelyn, as she must have been about three, but the rest of us trudged along, happy and tired. When we got home, we had cocoa and cookies and then headed for bed. Mother put large stones in the oven in the cook stove in the kitchen and wrapped them up and put them in our beds so we wouldn't freeze. We had a hard time staying awake to hear Santa Clause. My brothers would go up the road a ways with jingle bells and we knew Santa was coming, and soon we'd hear a commotion down stairs and we'd know that everything was under control and we no longer could stay awake. But, we'd be up early to go down to open our gifts. We had hung stockings up the night before. We always got an orange: the only one all year. There wasn't money for fruit. We had lots of apples from our trees. Dad would put them in big barrels. We always had to eat the ones with spots on that might spoil first. It seemed like we never ate a good apple!

When I was a little older, I learned there wasn't a Santa Clause. That just about shattered my world! But soon I realized it was Mother and Dad that made all the great Christmases we had, and I had a chance to say "Thank you."

From my Mom.