Let's join the Ingalls family for an old fashioned Christmas.
Each book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic series has a chapter devoted to Christmas. I thought it would be fun to revisit each of these chapters as we continue being "Safe at Home." Let's take a step back in time and join four year old Laura in Pepin, Wisconsin
Chapter 3 in Little House in the Big Woods begins with Pa shoveling a wall of snow as tall as old Laura. According to Google, the average four year is 40 inches tall. Laura, as an adult, was on the short side and measured in 4'11". So lets round down to 36 inches and say Pa shoveled three feet of snow. He didn't have a snow blower and Mr. Edwards didn't swing by with a plow. (Mr. Edwards helping is impossible since he didn't meet the Ingalls until they moved to Indian Territory.) Pa shoveled a path from the house to barn, where the animals were all snug in their stalls.
Laura hooks her readers early in the chapter with amazing icicle descriptions. "Icicles hung from the eaves of the house to the snowbanks, great icicles as large at the top as Laura's arm. they were like glass and full of sharp lights." As a child, I remember eating breakfast and looking at massive icicles outside the kitchen window. In January and February, I watched the icicles grow. In March and April I observed icicles steadily dripping until crashing to the ground. (Update: There are no icicles outside my kitchen window, but there is still time.)
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| Dorris Ettlinger drew this bracket representation in her lift-the-flap book, Laura's Christmas. |
Dear Pa carved Ma a decorative bracket as a Christmas gift. LIW wrote multiple paragraphs describing both process and product. While I was on a Zoom meeting, I tried drawing the bracket using Laura's description. It made no sense. What I do know is the bracket consisted of three pieces. Pa carved delicate moons, flowers, curlicues, stars, and vines into the wood, and then sanded the wood until it was "smooth as silk." When the bracket was finished, Ma placed her beloved China Shepherdess on the shelf.
Sadly, no one knows what happened to the bracket. Although some speculate that the bracket never existed and that Rose Wilder Lane (Laura's literary daughter who "helped" Laura write the Little House books) saw the bracket on her travels and thought it would be a cozy addition to the book.
It will come as no surprise that Ma was busy in the kitchen cooking holiday food. Here is a partial menu: salt-rising bread, Swedish crackers, baked beans, vinegar pies dried apple pies, and cookies. The family made candy by pouring boiled molasses and sugar over pie pans of fresh snow. (What girl hasn't warmed up some Log Cabin syrup in the microwave and poured it over snow to sad, sticky results?)
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| Yay. Double cousins to play with. |
Unlike us, during this COVID Christmas, family came to visit the Ingalls. Uncle Peter, Aunt Eliza, and three cousins (Peter, Alice, Ella, and baby Dolly Varden) arrived on Christmas Eve. (NOTE: There were three marriages between the Quiner and the Ingalls families. Uncle Peter was Pa's old brother and Eliza Quiner was Ma's younger sister. Which means, Peter, Alice, and Ella were Laura's double cousins. Got that?)
Once the relatives arrived the kids began running around the cabin. As a mother of three, who dislikes play dates, I can feel Ma's blood pressure rising. The five older kids were quickly bundled up and sent outside to play in the snow. Cousin Alice created a game called "Pictures." The cousins would fall off stumps, flat on their faces "Then they tried to get up without spoiling the marks they made when they fell." What fun! I wish I hadn't had the stumps ground out of my yard, so I could try Alice's game on Christmas Eve.
With six extra people in the snug cabin, Ma had to decide where everyone would sleep. Laura was thrilled she could sleep in a pile of buffalo robes on the floor with her girl cousins and Mary. Before they snuggled under the robes, the children hung their stockings above the fireplace.
Crazy Aunt Eliza did nothing to lull the children to sleep. She told the adults a riveting story about their "savage" dog, Prince, protecting her from a puma while trying to get water at the creek. Ever practical Ma asked Pa to calm the children down with some fiddle tunes. He regaled the family with Christmas favorites like: "Money Musk," "The Red Heifer," and "The Devil's Dream."
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| Laura only had eyes for Charlotte. |
Laura and the children woke up to full stockings. What a haul! They received red mittens and a stick of peppermint candy. This was the Christmas Laura received her rag doll Charlotte. "She was so beautiful that Laura could not say a word. She just held her tight and forgot everything else." Pa and Uncle Peter got new mittens knitted in checks of red and white. Aunt Eliza gave Ma an apple studded with cloves. Ma gave Aunt Eliza a little needle book she made of flannel pieces.
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| It seriously sounds SO fabulous when you read about the Molasses/Sugar candy in the book. |
For Christmas breakfast Ma made pancakes in the shapes of little men. Laura was so enchanted by the pancake that she ate the pancake in little bits while Cousin Peter bit off the men's head. This year I am going to make homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Hopefully it will become a tradition, but if the rolls aren't a success I can resort to "Little Men" pancakes and molasses/sugar snow candy next year.
It was too cold for the children to go outside and play "Pictures" so they spent the day looking at their new mittens and at illustrations in Pa's big green book. The family sat down to a bountiful Christmas dinner where only the adults talked. "Alice and Ella and Peter and Mary and Laura did not say a word at the table, for they knew that children should be seen and not heard." (If I enforced that rule at my house, I would be talking to myself.)
After dinner, Uncle Peter and his family headed home. Ma slipped hot potatoes into their pockets and hot flatirons under their feet. Laura summed up the day perfectly by ending the chapter with this sentence: "But what a happy Christmas it had been!"
What Would Laura Do?
- make homemade gifts
- play outside in the snow
- eat good, homemade food quietly
- closely inspect Christmas presents
- eavesdrop on adult's stories
- be happy
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