As a little boy, I was always a bit ambivalent about Christmas. I loved it, just like any kid, but, since I was born on Christmas eve, I came to blame the holiday for my never--not once in my childhood--having a birthday party. Instead of a real birthday cake, someone would stick a candle on a fruitcake and say "happy birthday."
Worst of all, I seldom received a separate birthday gift, most people claiming that my Christmas package was also my birthday gift. My grown sister Blanche, one of my six siblings, regularly acknowledged my birthday; she once gave me a pair of spurs, the best gift a 6-year-old boy ever received. I wore those spurs every day for months, and while there were no horses on our small farm, I was always ready in case an opportunity arose.
Christmas gift-giving has changed a great deal over the past century or so. Today, Christmas gift exchanges usually take place in the home, but Arkansans before World War II often tell of community events being their main gift exchange.
A family often had a Christmas tree at home and children would certainly hang their stockings with anticipation, but a Christmas eve social at the local school or church was warmly recalled too.
Fred Starr, a Washington County teacher, legislator, and writer on Ozarks topics, described a rural north Arkansas Christmas eve when his family rode by wagon to a one-room school "where the cedar tree will be decorated with holly berries, mistletoe, strung popcorn and red crepe paper ..." The children had to wait through a Christmas dinner before, finally, Santa appeared on the scene and distributed "the sacks of candy, nuts and apples into eager little hands that seldom grasp such luxuries ..."
While affluent families might give their children an array of toys or other presents, children usually expected their gifts to appear in stockings. The late Peg Newton Smith of Little Rock once described her Christmas stockings from the 1920s as "lumpy with surprises." Peg's stocking "always contained an orange, which was then a great treat." If she had been good--and the economy was robust--Peg could expect "a shiny silver dollar in the toe."
Tropical fruits and nuts--especially oranges--were not readily available in rural communities before modern times, and they meant a great deal to children. Peg Smith recalled that even though she grew up in Little Rock, an orange was a thing of wonder: "During Christmas week you'd savor each segment of your orange, carefully taking the thick peel to the kitchen where it would be minced to flavor some delicacy or made into marmalade ..."
I suspect cooking and feasting has always been a part of celebrating Christmas around the world, and it certainly was in Arkansas. A few 19th-century Christmas dinner menus exist, almost all from restaurants or high-end parties.
An example is the 1896 Christmas dinner menu from Mrs. Blocker's Boarding House in Little Rock. Oysters with brown bread and butter topped the menu, followed by roast pork with applesauce, baked turkey with chestnut stuffing, rice, and mashed potatoes. "Sweet bread pates" were listed, as were various salads, "Old Virginia egg bread," as well as cheese straws, olives, celery, and salted almonds.
Desserts consisted of English plum pudding with brandy sauce, black cake, white fruitcake, layer cake, bonbons, and fruits and nuts. As a boarding house owner, Mrs. Blocker would not have had a liquor license, so the only drinks were tea, "café noir," and chocolate (milk?).
Christmas traditions could be quite different among immigrant groups, such as Germans and Italians. I had the pleasure of knowing Miss Pauline Hoeltzel of Little Rock, the descendant of German-speaking immigrants who arrived in Arkansas before the Civil War. Pauline, who was born Jan. 1, 1900, recalled that Christmas in her family home on Welch Street was a month-long affair, beginning on Dec. 6 with St. Nicholas Day and continuing through Twelfth Night and ending with Epiphany on Jan. 6.
Pauline recalled in her old age how tantalizing aromas wafted from her mother's kitchen. Her mother--a pioneering suffragette--did not strictly follow family traditions. She experimented with Karo corn syrup and gladly served Jell-O when it came on the market. But, it was the first Christmas dinner when she tasted the newly-created Waldorf salad which Pauline found especially memorable.
Pauline's family celebrated the holidays with a strongly alcoholic eggnog. I suspect that was not unusual. Newspaper advertisements in 1825, for example, noted that Nicholas Peay's new tavern sold a fine eggnog which included six dozen eggs, vast amounts of sugar, and from one and a half to two quarts of whiskey. Helpfully, the cup was topped off with cream.
In December 1867, Clara Dunlap of rural Ouachita County had much more than eggnog on her mind. She had recently buried two young children, stolen away overnight by an unknown illness. She was saving eggs for eggnog, Clara wrote her relatives back in Alabama, and was doing her best to reassure her remaining child that Santa Claus would still visit their home.
The consumption of too much eggnog probably factored into the not infrequent rowdy behavior associated with Christmas. In the antebellum years gunfire often sounded across Little Rock, and one year in the 1840s a cannon was shot in the early hours of Christmas day, breaking windows for blocks.
A 1918 Christmas eve party near the quaintly-named Scrub Grass community on the lower White River resulted in a drunken brawl which left Mrs. Asa Hubble dead. While deaths were not common, petty crime and property damage were. The growing popularity of Christmas fireworks after 1890 brought more problems, especially runaway carriage accidents. In 1911 the city of Argenta outlawed all fireworks on the "main streets."
One particularly outrageous fireworks event occurred in Pine Bluff in 1912 when streetcar employees at a Main Street tavern divided into two groups and began warring with Roman candles.
"Time and again the linemen hurled fireballs from 20-shot Roman candles into the ranks of the insurgents," one reporter wrote. The insurgents "held firm and returned the fire with deadly effect. Coats were spotted where the fiery balls stuck and the battlers were forced to duck and dodge to prevent facial disfiguration."
Tom Dillard wishes a Happy New Year to all his readers. He is a historian and retired archivist living near Malvern. Email him at [email protected].