The Christmas Doll

My name is Minnie. [ 1 ] I am a little girl living in a small house in the out-skirts of our town, with my parents and my eleven year old brother, Wayne. The section of the town where we live is called Hyde Park. My brother says we live in the "boon docks".

Our house consists of four rooms. The two rooms on the front of the house are bedrooms. The larger room is mamma and Papa’s bedroom. It has two windows and a door which opens onto a small narrow parch. In this room is a folding-bed. When it is closed it looks like a wardrobe. It is black walnut with a full length bevel edged mirror in the front. I like to stand in front of it and look at myself. This room is used as a sitting room, also. The other bedroom has one window, and has a three-quarter bed in it. This is Wayne’s room. Both bedrooms have doors opening into the dining room.

The dining room has two windows on the west. In this room is our organ, my day-bed where I sleep, mamma’s Domestic Sewing machine, a big sideboard, a dining table and chairs. There is a big Round-Oak heating stove in this room. A door opens into the kitchen. In the kitchen is an iron sink with a pail under it to catch waste water. There is a disk cabinet, a kitchen cabinet, a coal cooking range, and a gas stove where mamma cooks on hot Summer days. There is an outside door in the kitchen, on which hangs a roller towel for drying hands. Were we crowded? I didn’t think so. I had lived here all my life, since I was two months old, and now I am almost five years old.

Today is Christmas Eve, and I was awakened very early, when it was still dark, by sleigh bells. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window to see if it was Santa Claus. The little glass panes in our windows had been decorated by Jack Frost during the night, but I was able to find a spot that I could see through. I discovered it was only a bob-sled pulled by two big farm horses with sleigh bells hanging around their necks. Mamma told me it was just a farmer coming into town for supplies. Because of the heavy snow that had fallen during the night, it was a nice morning for bob-sleds.

It was now breaking day, and I could hear papa shoveling snow, making paths to the barn, where he had to water and feed Old Jack, our horse, and to the privy, and to the pump and the cistern. I could hear him carrying hods of coal from the barn, and well water, and cistern water into the kitchen for the day. Mamma was bustling around in the kitchen, frying bacon and eggs for papa’s breakfast. There was coffee steeping on the back of the stove, along with oatmeal or corn-meal mush, in the double boiler. When papa finally came in for breakfast, I could in my mind hear him saying, as he did almost every morning, "Jenny, this coffee is so strong it could float an iron wedge." Mamma had already baked batches of cookies, Mamma had already called Wayne to get up, and now she went in to pull him out of bed. She had chores for him to do and errands for him to run. Papa had pet names for us children, he called Wayne, Buster, and he called me toodles.

A few days before Christmas, papa had cut a large limb that was full of small branches, from one of our apple trees. He brought it up to the house and he and Wayne set it up in a corner of the dining-room. Papa made a hold in a wooden box for the trunk of the "tree" to fit into and braced it with string or cord to spots in the wall to keep it from toppling over. This was to be our Christmas tree. Of course I had never seen a real pine or fir tree trimmed, except in the newspaper or a magazine.

After Mamma and Wayne and I had lunch, she told me that as soon as she finished what she had to do we would trim the tree. So, what did she have to do? She had to go to the chicken yard, catch three fat hens, wring their necks, bring them up to the lean-to, which was next to the kitchen, scaled them and pluck them. Then she brought them in the kitchen, cleaned them, and wrapped them in wax paper and put them in our ice box, ready to stuff them tomorrow morning.

We had had our light lunch, Wayne had finished his errands, and now we were ready to trim our tree. Mamma cut thin strips of cotton and laid them on the limbs and branches and put little wads of cotton in the forks of the tree. We strung popcorn, cranberries, made paper chains, and little lanterns. She had a few colored balls left from a previous Christmas that I had never seen. Of course, we didn’t have electricity, so we had no lights. We didn’t have candles as they would be dangerous. Mamma set a kerosene lamp on the organ for light. To me it was a beautiful tree. We strung bits of cotton on thread and hung them from the highest limbs, to make it look like it was snowing. We had oranges, grapes, nuts and hard Christmas candy.

Papa would be coming home late tonight as his shop would be closed Christmas Day, he would stay late tonight. Mamma sent me to bed early but I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. I was going to see Artie and Vina. They were both married during the Summer and I had not seem them since then. Of course I missed Artie, but I missed Vina more as she had been my constant companion all my life.

Christmas Day had finally arrived. No one had to call me in the morning. I heard papa bringing in the coal and water and stoking the fires. Mamma was in the kitchen, had pies baking in the oven, was making dressing for the chickens that would go in the oven when the pies came out. She was peeling potatoes and shredding cabbage, and I was making a nuisance of myself following her around.

The first to arrive was Artie and Maggie, who had rode a trolly from East Galesburg, where they were living, to Galesburg, where they would board a street care that would bring them to a half mile of our house. They walked through the snow the rest of the way. Then my Aunt Serelda (I called her Aunt Freddie) came with her two children, who were my cousins, seventeen year old Arthur and Twenty-one year old Ora. They walked over two miles through the snow. Uncle Jim could not come, as it would be too difficult for him to walk with one leg and crutches.

Finally Vina and Dell arrived. They had taken a local train from Middle Grove to Abingdon, took an interurban car to Galesburg, and a street car to the end and walked the rest of the way.

Mamma served the big dinner and I sat by Vina and wished everyone would hurry so we could get to the presents. We did just that. We gathered around the tree, and Papa said, "Jenny please play Annie Laurie on the organ and sing it for me." It was his favorite song. Then Papa said, everyone has to sing or speak a piece. Arthur, who was very talented in music played a couple of pieces on the organ, Ora spoke a poem, one that she had written. Papa spoke "The Barefoot Boy", Wayne said a little ditty, "When I was going through the garden gate, I met a little garter snake, he ate so much jelly cake, it made his little belly ache." That brought a laugh. Then I spoke my little poem, "The baby’s first Christmas."

About this time we heard stomping on the front porch, someone opened the door, and in walked Santa Claus, Red cap, white hair and whiskers, Red boots and all. (borrowed from Artie’s club). He came into the room, Ho, Ho, Ho, ready to hand out the presents. I took one look and started to cry, and cry and cry. I buried my face in Vina’s shoulder and went into hestericks. Artie had to remove his white hair and whiskers and when I finally quieted down he handed out the gifts. I spotted a box under the tree that looked like a doll box and I pointed it out to Artie. Artie ignored me and handed the box to Dell. I cried, "No-No" but Dell opened the box and it contained a pair of bedroom slippers for him. I was crushed. But Artie pulled a stuffed pillow slip from behind the tree and gave it to me, Vina helped me to pull out lots of stuffed newspaper, and we found a beautiful blond blue eyed doll, about eighteen inches long, with a "kid" leather body, and black patent leather slippers. Now I cried again, but this time it was for joy.

Most of the other gifts were home made, doilies, scarfs, pot-holders, towels and books for Wayne. Papa had bought black lysle stockings for the ladies. I don’t remember what else was on the tree, I only remember my Christmas doll. I named her "Margaret

Mamma called everyone to the table for pie and coffee. Artie and Maggie had to leave early to make their long trip home. And Aunt Freddie and my cousins had over two miles to trudge through the snow to get home, so they prepared to leave also. Mamma had a basket of food and an extra pie for them to take home with them. This was so Uncle Jim would get some Christmas dinner too.

This was the very first Christmas that I remember. It was December 25, 1899. And tomorrow would be my birthday, five years old.

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