Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Children look forward to Christmas differently than adults. They see the gifts under the tree, imagine what’s inside, and hope it’s what they hinted or not so subtly hinted that they wanted. At least that’s how it used to be. But much like the change from getting up early Saturday morning to watch a few cartoons, to today’s absolute inundation with children-based programming, the magic of Christmas presents has faded a bit with the indulgence of many children today.
That’s not the case for everyone, there are still many children, sadly a growing number in our wrecked economy who won’t celebrate the joys of the holiday as they once did.
For adults, Christmas is about family. If you’re older, it’s a thrill to get the kids and grandkids all in one place. For grandchildren, those memories with their soon departed grandparents will remain forever.
I don’t remember my first Christmas; I was just five weeks old, but I remember my dad telling me it was the worst one of his life. Just two weeks after I was born, he was flown to a Royal Air Force Base in Chelveston, England, for a three-month deployment, working jointly with the RAF. He was on a B-47 ground crew.
He’d spent Christmas away from home a few times before, but never as a new father. From 1951 to 1954, he celebrated Christmas with 2,700 other men on the USS Iowa. Christmas with your fellow sailors, or in other cases, Marines, airmen, and soldiers, isn’t the same as being home, but it’s better than the conditions men faced in the late 1800s and early 20th century.
My grandfather Eugene Gasser’s first Christmas in the United States was spent alone in a sheep wagon on Beaver Rim in 1921. He had just a couple of dogs and his horses for company that holiday.
Elinore Pruitt Stewart came to Wyoming in 1909 from Denver with her young daughter, Mary Jerrine. She lost her husband in 1906 and was barely surviving as a washerwoman in Denver when she saw an ad in the Rocky Mountain News for a housekeeper on a ranch in southwest Wyoming near Burnt Fork.
She traveled on the Union Pacific and then another 40 miles by wagon to the ranch of Henry Clyde Stewart, a Scottish rancher. She later married Henry and had four more children.
As Christmas 1911 approached, Elinore wrote in her diary that she planned to be homesick for the holidays. She shared that sentiment with an older neighbor who lived about a dozen miles away, Mrs. Louderer.
“That will never do,” Mrs. Louderer said. “We’ll spend it together.” They didn’t exactly spend it together entirely, but spread Christmas joy around them.
In early December, Elinore began secretly stockpiling butter. She milked up to 14 cows twice a day on the Stewart ranch, so concealing the butter from her husband wasn’t that difficult.
Henry Stewart was a cattleman, and in western tradition, didn’t care much for sheep or their owners. Mrs. Louderer and Elinore kept their plans from Henry.
Cowboys stayed in a bunkhouse near the ranches where they worked. Depending on the size of the ranch, that could mean anything from five to 25 men living together. Sheepmen were different; they stayed in sheep camps, sometimes just a single man like Eugene Gasser, but most often two men.
Elinore had 13 pounds of butter and six pints of gooseberry jam she had canned a few months before.
On December 23rd, she and Mary loaded the butter and jam into a buggy and drove to Mrs. Louderer’s home.
“We found her up to her ears in cooking,” Elinore wrote, “Such sights and smells I could never describe.”
Mrs. Louderer had been busy. She sent one of her hired men out the week before to locate and count all the sheep camps surrounding the area. The man reported a dozen camps and 24 men working them.
Elinore helped Mrs. Louderer with the final preparations. They had six roasted geese, three chickens, three hams, several meat loaves, and many pounds of link sausage. They baked a dozen large loaves of rye bread, made several dozen doughnuts, and a dozen fruitcakes.
With only six pints of jam, Elinore and Mrs. Louderer heated it and poured it into eight-ounce jars, one for each camp.
They set out early Christmas Eve morning on a sled pulled by four horses. One of the hired men heated some rocks to keep little Mary warm and packed the sled with straw. The “12 Apostles,” as Elinore called the packages, were firmly tied in place.
Mrs. Louderer drove the sled at a precarious pace.
“No one else in the world could have done it unless they were drunk,” Elinore wrote. “We went careening along hillsides without even slacking the trot. Occasionally, we struck a particularly stubborn bunch of sagebrush, and even the runners flew into the air.”
The sheepmen were ecstatic at the unexpected Christmas Eve surprise. The connections they made to the two women and the little girl bringing gifts had them commenting that the ladies were Santa Claus in disguise.
“It would have done your heart good to see the sheepmen,” Elinore wrote to her friend in Denver, Mrs. Coney. “They were all delighted. When you consider that they live solely on canned corn and tomatoes, beans, salt pork, and coffee, you can fancy what they thought of their treat.”
They were too late to go home but spent Christmas Eve at the home of their mutual friend, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, an Irish widow.
As they sat to eat Christmas dinner the next day, there was a knock at the door. A young sheep herder who had just arrived from Boston was lost. The women gave him directions but refused to let him go until he’d eaten with them.
My stories of Christmas generosity pale in comparison, but I can remember Christmas Eve 1963 as if it were yesterday.
We were living near Blytheville Air Force Base in northeast Arkansas. The sergeants on the base had a “Toys for Tots” drive every Christmas. I had a green “John Deere” pedal tractor that I’d outgrown. My mom suggested I donate it to the drive, but I didn’t want to give it up. She had a wise plan.
We loaded up some Christmas presents in the back of our 1962 Chevy Nova station wagon and drove into a poor section of Blytheville. I didn’t know Dad had placed the tractor in the back of the car.
We pulled up to a ramshackle house with the windows covered in plastic and peeling asphalt siding. Dad walked to the door with the presents, and I saw a kid about four years old standing by his mom in the doorway.
“Don’t you wish you could give that little boy your tractor?” Mom said. “If you want to, it’s in the back.”
The kid had nothing. I said yes. I walked to the door with my father, carrying the tractor.
It’s not about lavish gifts, outrageous dinners, or elaborate celebrations. Sometimes the best Christmases come when you give rather than receive.