Christmas in America is made for children. It has been that way since the last half of the 20th century. Before that time it was more of a religious holiday. After that time it became a time for gifts also. Gifts were surely given before that time but the showering of stuff took on a monstrous move after World War II and continues to today.
When someone complains about the commercialization of Christmas they usually are referring to money we spend on toys for children. Their numbers and their costs are skyrocketing out of sight, increasing each year. People spend money they cannot afford on “stuff” for people which they do not need. A simpler time of thumbing through the pages of a catalog, a wish book, has given way to “Black Friday,” “Cyber Saturday” and other special shopping days. Shoppers stand in line and rush to be the first through the doors to grab the first “stuff” off the shelf. People have died in the rush!
My memory of Christmas goes back to a small rural community in Western Oklahoma after the second world war. Hext was situated between Erick and Sayre on the old Route 66 and we lived there on the farm my parents had purchased during the war. It was nothing more than a rural community, families living on each quarter-section of land, with one store and a school. A two building school complex built by the WPA, the school consisted of eight grades when I started there in 1950. The previous year had been the last year of their high school program. The one building which had previously served grades 9-12 in two class rooms was now used solely for the lunch program. The building we used for classrooms for grades 1-8 was our primary building. A basketball court with bleachers on one side and a stage on the other was the prominent feature of the building, with two classrooms on either end of the court. Those four rooms were where we got our education, actually a very good education. After graduating the eighth grade we had to go into town for our high school years.
A small community, most everyone got together for dinner, a pot luck dinner, each month. Everyone brought their covered dishes and spread it out for all to participate in a community dinner and fellowship. These meetings, held monthly, were held at the school, utilizing the lunch room facilities. The biggest community gathering, probably outdoing even the PeeWee Basketball Tournament, was the Christmas celebration.
Days ahead of the Christmas program preparations were made. The stage was utilized to put on a morality play which featured not just the spirit of Christmas but the nativity story as well. Those who could sing were organized into a small choir just for the season and were featured during the program. The parents and others in the community came and dutifully sat through the program on the bleachers opposite the stage, some sitting on folding chairs sat up on the basketball court itself. As I recall, we were excellent on stage in both our thespian and musical presentations and the audience surely thought it was a great day to be an American.
Somewhere someone would cut down a large pine tree and bring it in to set it up. Pine trees of that size were rare in Western Oklahoma in those days and we certainly would not have purchased one from a long distance away. That just wasn’t done back then. One year a tree was taken from the shelter belt on the farm belonging to Guy Prather and perhaps that’s where they always got them. They were huge trees set up on the basketball court, on the north end of the floor. While it seemed the tree filled a quarter of the court and reached up into the rafters, that may have simply been my memory from having looked at it while standing under four feet tall.
The tree was decorated. The play and musical presentations were practiced. In the classrooms we focused on the season with morality stories and even stories of the holy family in Bethlehem. Our homes were decorated, not with the extensive decorations of today but decorated nonetheless. Presents were making a slow appearance one at a time. And then we were ready for the celebration.
The entire community turned out for the program. We kids performed our plays and sang our songs. And the parents watched and applauded our efforts. They were just as proud of us and our performances as we would be of our own children’s performances a generation later. Candy was passed out to all the kids. A paper bag with hard Christmas candy, and a few of those chocolate covered mint-filling candies, and there was always a large orange and an apple. We got the same kind of sack at Erick when the town gave them out to the kids on the Saturday before Christmas. And we got them at Hext. Kids today do not understand that this was a special time. Getting an orange was a rarity and the holidays were about the only time we ever saw a Washington Red Delicious apple.
As we were enjoying the program and our bounty, the principal, always the host for the evening, was thanking us for coming. And while he was speaking, giving the people who worked so hard their recognition, he suddenly stopped speaking, cocked his head so that he could hear better from the door to the gymnasium and asked what it was he was hearing. We all listened and we could hear slightly the sound of sleigh bells. They got louder and louder and then suddenly Santa Claus bounced into the room ringing a hand bell and yelling, “Merry Christmas!” He trotted through the crowd yelling his best wishes to everyone, spoke with kids and hugged the women. And he made his way to the tree.
There were presents under the tree, tons of presents. The families brought some if not all of their kids’ presents to the program to given them that night. And the community saw to it that there was something there for every kid just to make sure no one got left out or went home empty handed. The teachers and the principal (there was a total of 3 teachers including the principal) selected the presents one by one and called the recipient’s name. When your name was called you went forward and received your gift from Santa himself. He chatted with you a little, gave you your gift and you raced back to your seat where you ripped open the wrapping to see what you had received that year.
We didn’t get a lot of different things in those days. One or two, or perhaps three, presents were usually the limit. I would later say that when I was a kid all I ever got for Christmas was a pair of socks and that one year my mother was feeling badly about not giving any more than that so she wrapped them individually–that year I got two presents! It’s good for a laugh. But I got more than that. I remember one year getting a neat hatchet and scout knife at Hext. Another year it was a Daisy BB gun. And still another it was a chemistry set with six different kinds of chemicals, test tubes and a bunsen burner.
I would go through the 8th grade and then bus into Sayre for my high school years. Two years after I left Hext the state closed the school. There were simply not enough kids by then to keep it open. When I graduated the 8th grade there were only about 35 kids total in the entire school. The building was sold to a farmer who gutted it and used it for a storage barn. And with the loss of the school the community disintegrated.
The most important thing I ever got at Hext was memories. Memories of a simpler time and a celebration that encouraged me to understand the importance of “peace on earth, good will toward men.”
When someone complains about the commercialization of Christmas they usually are referring to money we spend on toys for children. Their numbers and their costs are skyrocketing out of sight, increasing each year. People spend money they cannot afford on “stuff” for people which they do not need. A simpler time of thumbing through the pages of a catalog, a wish book, has given way to “Black Friday,” “Cyber Saturday” and other special shopping days. Shoppers stand in line and rush to be the first through the doors to grab the first “stuff” off the shelf. People have died in the rush!
My memory of Christmas goes back to a small rural community in Western Oklahoma after the second world war. Hext was situated between Erick and Sayre on the old Route 66 and we lived there on the farm my parents had purchased during the war. It was nothing more than a rural community, families living on each quarter-section of land, with one store and a school. A two building school complex built by the WPA, the school consisted of eight grades when I started there in 1950. The previous year had been the last year of their high school program. The one building which had previously served grades 9-12 in two class rooms was now used solely for the lunch program. The building we used for classrooms for grades 1-8 was our primary building. A basketball court with bleachers on one side and a stage on the other was the prominent feature of the building, with two classrooms on either end of the court. Those four rooms were where we got our education, actually a very good education. After graduating the eighth grade we had to go into town for our high school years.
A small community, most everyone got together for dinner, a pot luck dinner, each month. Everyone brought their covered dishes and spread it out for all to participate in a community dinner and fellowship. These meetings, held monthly, were held at the school, utilizing the lunch room facilities. The biggest community gathering, probably outdoing even the PeeWee Basketball Tournament, was the Christmas celebration.
Days ahead of the Christmas program preparations were made. The stage was utilized to put on a morality play which featured not just the spirit of Christmas but the nativity story as well. Those who could sing were organized into a small choir just for the season and were featured during the program. The parents and others in the community came and dutifully sat through the program on the bleachers opposite the stage, some sitting on folding chairs sat up on the basketball court itself. As I recall, we were excellent on stage in both our thespian and musical presentations and the audience surely thought it was a great day to be an American.
Somewhere someone would cut down a large pine tree and bring it in to set it up. Pine trees of that size were rare in Western Oklahoma in those days and we certainly would not have purchased one from a long distance away. That just wasn’t done back then. One year a tree was taken from the shelter belt on the farm belonging to Guy Prather and perhaps that’s where they always got them. They were huge trees set up on the basketball court, on the north end of the floor. While it seemed the tree filled a quarter of the court and reached up into the rafters, that may have simply been my memory from having looked at it while standing under four feet tall.
The tree was decorated. The play and musical presentations were practiced. In the classrooms we focused on the season with morality stories and even stories of the holy family in Bethlehem. Our homes were decorated, not with the extensive decorations of today but decorated nonetheless. Presents were making a slow appearance one at a time. And then we were ready for the celebration.
The entire community turned out for the program. We kids performed our plays and sang our songs. And the parents watched and applauded our efforts. They were just as proud of us and our performances as we would be of our own children’s performances a generation later. Candy was passed out to all the kids. A paper bag with hard Christmas candy, and a few of those chocolate covered mint-filling candies, and there was always a large orange and an apple. We got the same kind of sack at Erick when the town gave them out to the kids on the Saturday before Christmas. And we got them at Hext. Kids today do not understand that this was a special time. Getting an orange was a rarity and the holidays were about the only time we ever saw a Washington Red Delicious apple.
As we were enjoying the program and our bounty, the principal, always the host for the evening, was thanking us for coming. And while he was speaking, giving the people who worked so hard their recognition, he suddenly stopped speaking, cocked his head so that he could hear better from the door to the gymnasium and asked what it was he was hearing. We all listened and we could hear slightly the sound of sleigh bells. They got louder and louder and then suddenly Santa Claus bounced into the room ringing a hand bell and yelling, “Merry Christmas!” He trotted through the crowd yelling his best wishes to everyone, spoke with kids and hugged the women. And he made his way to the tree.
There were presents under the tree, tons of presents. The families brought some if not all of their kids’ presents to the program to given them that night. And the community saw to it that there was something there for every kid just to make sure no one got left out or went home empty handed. The teachers and the principal (there was a total of 3 teachers including the principal) selected the presents one by one and called the recipient’s name. When your name was called you went forward and received your gift from Santa himself. He chatted with you a little, gave you your gift and you raced back to your seat where you ripped open the wrapping to see what you had received that year.
We didn’t get a lot of different things in those days. One or two, or perhaps three, presents were usually the limit. I would later say that when I was a kid all I ever got for Christmas was a pair of socks and that one year my mother was feeling badly about not giving any more than that so she wrapped them individually–that year I got two presents! It’s good for a laugh. But I got more than that. I remember one year getting a neat hatchet and scout knife at Hext. Another year it was a Daisy BB gun. And still another it was a chemistry set with six different kinds of chemicals, test tubes and a bunsen burner.
I would go through the 8th grade and then bus into Sayre for my high school years. Two years after I left Hext the state closed the school. There were simply not enough kids by then to keep it open. When I graduated the 8th grade there were only about 35 kids total in the entire school. The building was sold to a farmer who gutted it and used it for a storage barn. And with the loss of the school the community disintegrated.
The most important thing I ever got at Hext was memories. Memories of a simpler time and a celebration that encouraged me to understand the importance of “peace on earth, good will toward men.”
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