Christmases Past – Ruth Huber: They called them wish books
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RUTH HUBER
By Missy Klatt
Ruth Huber, formerly Ruth Davis, grew up on a farm just outside of Downing. She was the second oldest of four girls. She can remember pitching hay in the summertime as she and her sisters all helped on the farm.
They knew it was getting towards Christmas when the Montgomery Ward and Sears Catalogs came. They called those catalogs wish books and Ruth said it really was wishing because they never got anything from those catalogs. “We sure did pour over those catalogs and we would put our names on certain things but it didn’t do any good.”
They did most of their shopping at Steffens Hardware in Glenwood City. Her mom and dad would give her and her sisters a little bit of money to do Christmas shopping but she always told them to make sure they got something for the grandmothers, Grandma Davis and Grandma Hayes. Money was short then, so Ruth and her sisters would pool their money together to buy gifts. She remembers that one year they bought cookie jars for the grandmas.
At home they would have a Christmas tree with homemade ornaments, strings of popcorn and tinsel. “I imagine that we made little Christmas ornaments in school but most of the things were Christmas ornaments left from the years before, family things.”
About the tinsel, Ruth’s mother had a specific way she wanted it put on the tree which her and her sisters didn’t quite follow. “Mom bought the tinsel, I imagine at the hardware store, and she told us to put one at a time on the branches and we did that for a while until we got tired of it and then we started grabbing a bunch of it and throwing it at the tree. We did that till she caught us and we had to do it over.” Ruth says they were probably still in grade school when this incident took place.
Ruth said that Santa didn’t bring much and that if they got a doll it was usually from Grandma Hayes. Her mom and dad would often buy the girls each a picture puzzle. Ruth said it was like getting four presents because after they were done with their own puzzle they would trade off.
Ruth and her sisters would hang up stockings as kids-their actual stockings. “We had the long brown stockings because we had to walk a mile to school in the wintertime.” She said their stockings usually contained candy (that her mom would make), a popcorn ball and an orange. Fresh fruit was hard to come by all winter so that was a real treat. One special candy that they would get was a long peppermint stick that as Ruth holds out her hands to indicate the size was probably a foot or foot and a half long and about two inches in diameter. She said they would try to eat just a little bit of the stick at a time and if they were careful they could make it last till the end of January.
Ruth also recalls the School Christmas programs that were held at the Civic Hall in Downing. She said that the whole town was invited. Everybody had a part in the Christmas program. Santa would come at the end and he would give each boy and girl a sack with peanuts and candy. “That was most of the candy that we got for Christmas time except for the big peppermint stick. For the program, Ruth’s mother would make them new dresses out of flour sacks.
After Ruth had kids of her own (Wanda, Chip & Wendy) one of the Christmas traditions she kept was to give her kids an orange and some of their favorite candies in their stockings. She would also put cutouts of the Holy family around the house.
Ruth said her kids didn’t have the patience to make cut out sugar cookies. Instead their favorite treat at Christmas was Rosettes. They wanted a finished product that didn’t take long to make.
Wanda the oldest used to get so excited at Christmas time that she would get sick. Ruth tells of her being so excited and nervous that she threw up all over the Christmas packages. She said to this day Wanda still gets excited opening her Christmas presents but she doesn’t know if she still gets sick.
“Christmas is sure different now than back when I was a kid,” comments Ruth, “but I wouldn’t go back to those days but I think we are better people because of them.”