A Christmas Past: The Wild West Part II

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

Although the New York Tribune would comment on how charitable American cities were during “Christmastide,” in the late 1800’s, things in the west were obviously far more bleak. Cyrus Townsend Brady remembered having Christmas dinner during the 1880’s with a poor family who had no presents. Afterwards, Brady went to the local church and filled a basket with items from his own sewing kit, plus his penknife and a bit of candy for the two children at the house. Brady’s gifts aside, Christmas charity was largely relegated to the public in the east. One New York department store, Best & Company, placed an ad reminding Christmas shoppers to choose from their “marked-down goods” for gifts for the poor. That differed from the west, where in 1895 the San Francisco Call reported that local schoolchildren were asked to bring one potato and one stick of wood for Christmas baskets for the poor. The sympathetic kids brought not only these items, but also canned goods and clothing in large quantities.

Survey your friends as to whether they open their presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, and you’re likely to get an even mix of answers for each. But in the olden days, Christmas Eve was the time to give and receive gifts. One 1880 account told of a child in Nebraska who wrote of visiting a Christmas tree the night before Christmas, and receiving a red calico dress, and “strings of candy and raisins” for she and her sister. Other festivities included lighting bonfires. In New Mexico, the bonfires were eventually replaced by paper lanterns or sacks holding candles called luminarias, a tradition that is still carried on today.

Many Christmas Eve fires centered around the Yule log which was traditionally large enough to burn through the night to bring luck to the family. As the log warmed the house, loved ones would gather around the fireplace or the Christmas tree to sing carols. And then, as now in certain households, someone might read “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Better known today as “The Night Before Christmas,” the epic Christmas Eve poem was penned back in 1823 by Clement Clark Moore for his own children.

A typical Christmas in the west also included singing around the Christmas tree or fireplace. The tradition extended to various military forts around the country, where soldiers sang carols that, at the time, were relatively new to America. “Silent Night,” for instance, was written as recently as 1818. Even newer were “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “Joy to the World,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” all published during the 1840’s. More songs would come during the wild west years beginning in the 1860’s, including “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Up on the Housetop,” and “What Child is This?”

Interestingly enough, the tradition of caroling was still rather young during the wild west era. Perhaps many houses were too far away from each other for groups to traipse along to each one. But by 1878, Oliver Ditson & Company of Boston was advertising their “Holiday Music Books” in western newspapers like The Canton Advocate in South Dakota, as well as other western periodicals. At Eureka, Nevada in 1879, the Society of the Methodist Church threw an “English Tea” which included Christmas carols. Indeed, by the mid-1800’s, Christmas carols had become a staple of the holiday all across America. And by the turn of 1900, folks lucky enough to have a phonograph could bring recordings of Christmas carols into their homes.

In the west, pioneers clearly celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways. But the one thing nearly everyone had in common was attending church on Christmas. As early as 1865, a Christmas midnight mass was held by Father Joseph Giorda in the wild boomtown of Virginia City, Montana. Families typically went to church on Christmas morning before going home for their Christmas meal, and visiting with their friends and folks in the neighborhood. Diehard church goers also spent time at church before the holiday, attending a Christmas pageant or some other program.

But churches offered more than religious services at Christmas. They also provided comfort, empathy, sympathy and help for those longing for their old homes or loved ones, and also those less fortunate. At the raucous mining town of Sonora, California in 1871, the Union Democrat announced that the St. James’ Episcopal Church’s Christmas tree could be used for “a means of conveying gifts” to the poor. Flagstaff, Arizona’s Christmas Eve issue of the Coconino Sun in 1898 reported that the Presbyterian Church would consist not only of entertainment but also “the usual treat for the little folks” and “the giving of gifts by the Sunday school and its friends.” In larger cities like Seattle, Washington, the Post-Intelligencer of 1899 devoted an entire page to where one could attend Christmas services and which churches were doing what.

Unlike most Christmas dinners of today, ham or turkey wasn’t the only meat at the Christmas tables in the west; sometimes there was also venison, or even grizzly bear steak! California pioneer Catherine Haun recalled paying $2.50 for grizzly steak for her Christmas dinner. Things were a bit fancier for William Kelly, whose mining camp provided bear meat, venison and bacon, but also apple pies, “fancy breads,” and plum pudding. When it came to Christmas dinner, folks gathered what they had on hand, too. In 1884 Mrs. George Wolffarth joined others in a “watermelon feast” in Texas, while Evelyn Hertslet of California and her party dined on meringues, mince pies, plum pudding, “tipsy cake” and “Victoria sandwiches.”

In preparation for the holidays, just about everyone traditionally stored away preserved fruits and dried vegetables throughout the year to be brought out at Christmas. The ladies of the house sometimes baked for weeks beforehand to have enough on the table, since guests were apt to pop in at any time. One recommended menu from the Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping of 1880 included clam soup, baked fish, turkey, quail and chicken, not to mention scads of fresh and canned vegetables, baked goods and plenty of desserts from peach pies to chocolate drops and ice cream. Woe to those who didn’t plan ahead: one account tells of one family in the wilderness being forced to dine on “boiled mule and snow.”

Those with enough money to eat out were lucky to find a restaurant serving Christmas dinner, let alone a palatable menu. In 1855, California’s Shasta Courier listed the Christmas menu at St. Charles’ restaurant as consisting of mostly homemade goods like mock turtle soup and oysters, a variety of meats including boiled mutton, tongue, stuffed pig and oyster pie, vegetables and simple cobblers and pies. By 1886 in Carson City, Nevada, however, eating out at Christmas was all the rage. The Morning Appeal reported that three different restaurants “will spread extra,” with a menu to make one’s eyes pop out, and each place vying for the best menu in town.

The elite La Veta Hotel in the gold country of Gunnison, Colorado, also had one of the best Christmas menus in the west during the 1889. The menu offered several wines, salads, nine meat dishes ranging from rabbit and trout to duck and antelope, a variety of vegetable and fruit dishes, and a slew of desserts. Simpler fare was served at Cafe Francis in El Paso, Texas in 1898. The El Paso Daily Herald printed the menu which included green turtle consomme, a choice of antelope, calf tongue, fricassee of brain, rock cod, suckling pig or turkey; relishes, a simple salad with mayonnaise dressing, standard vegetables and choice of desserts. Alas, newspapers are scant as to what proprietors of these places charged for the holiday meal.

Then as now, Christmas also was time to make merry with whiskey and other libations. Historians today still talk about Richens “Uncle Dick” Wootton, the trapper, scout, mountain man, toll road proprietor and all-around good guy showed up in young Denver at Christmas in 1858. Wootton brought his famous “Taos Lightening” with him, a specially-made whiskey that was all the rage in New Mexico and Colorado and is still heralded as the earliest brand of whiskey in America. Wootton handed out tin cups, and proceeded to get the whole camp drunk. One observer would remember that “the whole camp got hilarious.” Later during the Civil War, one group of Union solders drank a “full 15 gallons of bad whiskey all by themselves” one Christmas.

Indeed, saloons were big business during the holiday. In 1877, one Big Jim Donigan got into a Christmas scrap in a Prescott, Arizona tavern. And in Ruby Hill, Nevada, according to a Eureka Daily Sentinel issue in 1879, the Christmas party went on for a full three nights with parties, dances and crowds drinking cups of Christmas cheer in the saloons. Then there was James “Silver” Roberts, who threw some insults around in a Cripple Creek tavern on Christmas night in 1901. As he got up to leave, Roberts was whacked on the head with a gun by the barkeep. The unfortunate man fell, hit his head on the woodstove, and and suffered a third head injury as he hit floor. As he lay there dying, other bar patrons urged him to the bar for a drink for an hour before the authorities were called.

After the turn of 1900, musical revues and boxing matches  became quite popular as well. The 1909 Grand Valley News in Colorado was just one of many newspapers reporting on a boxing match, between Young McFarlan and Gig Cree, which was scheduled to take place Christmas night. In fact, a Christmas night boxing match in Victor, Colorado sent famed boxer Jack Dempsey on his road to fame.

One thing for sure had changed very little since the days of Christmas past in the west: eggnog. Believed to have originated in a London tavern around 1775, Eggnog made its debut in America during the late 18th century. The recipe, consisting mostly of eggs, sugar and rum, has changed very little. Those who partake can verify that the beverage certainly warms the toes, if not the heart, and the combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and a dash of vanilla make it all the more delightful. So drink up, give a toast to the wild west, and enjoy your holiday season in style.

A Christmas Past: The Wild West Part I

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

Gazing at a classic Currier and Ives Christmas card today, it is easy to fall in love with the scenes depicting old-time wagons full of people bundled up against the cold and dashing through the snows of yesteryear. We love the romance of yuletide days of long ago, when families gathered around warm fireplaces, children marveled at their full stockings hanging from the mantle, and warmly dressed folks merrily brought in the Christmas tree or arms full of presents. But while we may love celebrating our yuletide holidays with the old-fashioned trimmings complimented by scented candles from Walmart that are meant to recall a day long ago, Christmas in the raw, untamed West was quite different from what we imagine it to have been.

It is true that during the 1800s, the holidays were celebrated in style in eastern, more civilized, cities. But the west was still quite young back then. There were no large malls, stores or internet shops to call upon for our Christmas shopping. Planes did not yet exist, and only the lucky could find or afford railroad passage to visit relatives. In the high plains and even higher mountains, cowboys and miners might find themselves stranded in storms with no company. In the barren west where few large towns flourished, cruelly cold conditions in the high country could include blowing snow and blizzards, making it difficult for families to gather, let alone survive, in a bleak and barren land. As for the holiday itself, a good old fashioned Christmas in the west was often meager with simple presents, simple fare, and not a lot to celebrate. There was, however, always hope for prosperity in the new year.

It is interesting to look at how our Christmas celebrations evolved as a country. Surprisingly, historians have found that Christmas in America was not really celebrated until the mid-1840s. One of the earliest references to the holiday was recorded in 1846, when Virginia Reed of the ill-fated Donner Party recalled that her mother selflessly saved “a few dried apples, some beans, a bit of tripe, and a small piece of bacon” for Christmas dinner, telling her children “eat slowly for this one day you can have all you wish.” Catherine Haun, one of thousands of new pioneers who who resided in a tent community on California’s Sacramento River in 1849, remembered keeping Christmas. “I do not remember ever having had happier holiday times,” she wrote. Likewise another pioneer, William Kelly—formerly of Britain—spent the holiday at a different California mining camp, where he was delighted at having seconds of plum pudding.

While settlements along the Sacramento and other places in early California were doing quite well, other areas remained sparse and lacking in any real settlement. The southern Colorado plains were still quite unsettled in 1854, when Fort Pueblo was attacked on Christmas Day by angry Utes after failed negotiations and the accidental spread of smallpox from Governor David Meriwether’s men. In the fray, every man at the fort was killed. The only woman, Chepita Martin, and two children, Felix and Juan Isidro, were taken captive. In time, thankfully, Pueblo and Colorado would eventually evolve with the rest of the west.

As Christmas traditions began catching up with the far away west, pioneers learned to simply make do with what they had to celebrate the holiday. They were inspired by the traditions brought by others from their native countries. The traditional song “Deck the Halls,” for instance, was first translated in America from a sixteenth century Welsh song in 1862. The popularity of the tune inspired people to decorate their homes with “boughs of holly” and other native fauna that included berry branches, evergreens, nuts and pinecones. And the tradition of placing mistletoe where couples could share kisses underneath its leaves is actually an ancient Greek tradition. Especially at the end of the Civil War, people were looking more than ever for cohesion in a difficult time. Celebrating Christmas meant the reintroduction of the comforting, celebratory traditions that immigrants to America brought with them from their home countries.

Christmas traditions became more and more important to pioneers as a sign of hopeful prosperity, warmth, love, and yes, status. Much like certain households today, Victorians in general went largely overboard when decorating. In many instances, not a fireplace mantel, banister, table, sideboard or doorway escaped garlands of evergreens peppered with cheerful red berries and jaunty homemade bows. Traditionally, making sure the decorations were up was the responsibility of the lady of the house; one 1896 magazine decreed that women who failed to go all out on the decorations was “a disgrace to her family.” Outside, the Christmas cheer spread with the introduction of the Yule Log, a Nordic tradition that entailed the men hiding a large, identifiable log in the woods, embarking on the chilly business of finding it with the rest of the family, and burning it (traditionally, a piece of the log was saved to being the following year’s Yule Log hunt).

After Christmas was declared a national holiday in 1870, folks in the west began really getting in the spirit of the season. Larger cities were forming, and with them came the kind of civilization many people yearned for. Now, folks could subscribe to St. Nicholas magazine, a highly popular periodical that was the brainchild of Roswell Smith in 1873. And slowly but surely, certain large chain stores like Sears & Roebuck and a smattering of others began publishing catalogs from which settlers in the west could order gifts, if they could afford them. It would be about a decade, according to most historians, before the tradition of bringing in and decorating a Christmas tree came along (on Christmas Eve, not the day after Thanksgiving). One of the reasons the tree made such a late debut was, not every household could spare an extra tree from their meager firewood stack, nor room in which to put it in their small cabins and homes.

Notable is that the Christmas tree decorations we know today were largely absent in the wild west. Rather, most decorations were of the homemade variety, fashioned out of colorful ribbon and yarn. Dried fruit, popcorn, homemade candy, cookies and nuts sufficed to make strings of garland, and it could be consumed after the holiday – waste not, want not. A star for the top might be fashioned from a piece of tin. Only those with money could afford the manufactured glass baubles that are highly collectible today. The most dangerous decoration of all? Christmas tree candles, which could easily light the tree on fire. San Francisco’s Morning Call reported on the death of one “Grandmother Fitzsimmons” in 1891, whose carefully decorated tree became a “sheet of flame” when one of the candles fell. Granny tried to save some of the trinkets, accidentally setting herself on fire.

In the west, a lot of thought went into giving practical, thoughtful and almost always handmade gifts by using what was on hand. Most pioneers were not wealthy by any means, meaning that they spent much of their time working to produce and make their own food, clothing, bedding, furniture, tools and other necessary items to survive. California pioneer Elizabeth Gunn wrote of filling the family stockings (literally stockings that were normally worn) with such practical items as “wafers, pens, toothbrushes, potatoes, and gingerbread, and a little medicine.” Other gifts included cake, candies, nuts, raisins and even “a few pieces of gold and a little money.” Lacking books to give, Gunn and her husband wrote their children letters to put in their stockings as well.

Other homemade gifts could include clothing, dolls made from cornhusks, embroidered handkerchiefs, hand-carved wooden toys, pillows and sachets. Lucky indeed was any family wealthy enough to order an item from a real catalogue, which had to be sent for many months before it was actually delivered. Remember that episode of “Little House on the Prairie” where little Laura Ingalls and her family are secretly shopping for each other for Christmas? And at the forefront is a new stove for her mother?? Yeah, that didn’t happen. In reality, the real Laura Ingalls Wilder’s gifts on one Christmas consisted merely of “a shiny new tin cup, a peppermint candy, a heart-shaped cake, and a brand new penny.”

Another misnomer about Christmas in the west is how families were able to gather each holiday season. That certainly was not always the case. In the case of Army wife Frances Roe, the lady tried her best to be merry with the other military wives around her who “sent pretty little gifts to me.” But Frances admitted she was homesick, and said she was sad that a Christmas box from her home, wherever that was, did not make it to her in time for the holiday. Men fared worse than women like Frances. In the Rocky Mountains during the 1840’s, for instance, the hills were alive with men from all walks of life. Married or single, very few of these hardy gentlemen had their family with them, unless their wives were sturdy Natives who knew how to live in the wilderness.

Mountain men, government explorers and trappers were just some of the men wandering around the west. The lucky managed to make it to a central meeting place for a small Christmas gathering. Natives, some of whom attended as well, called it “The Big Eating.” Writer and adventurer Bret Harte once old of a night of Christmas merriment among some cowboys holed up together in a bunkhouse. Will Ferril of Denver, Colorado, remembered spending the holiday during 1888 with “two or three” miners up in the high country. One cowpuncher was lucky enough to share a box of presents with his coworker. The gifts in that case were from the “camp tender” and included such luxuries as Arctic sleeping bags, candy, fruitcake, tobacco, wool socks, even books. To these men, finding a kindred spirit to spend Christmas with was essential to keeping their spirits up.

Those lucky enough to make it to a town in time for a holiday might find another kind of kindred spirit in the form of a shady lady. Most women of the night tended to celebrate Christmas day, and night, with men who needed their company. And many madams, including Lil Douglas of Bisbee, Arizona, Madam Millie of Silver City, New Mexico, and Rachel Urban of Park City, Utah (just to name a few) were fondly remembered for their annual Christmas parties for their gentlemen friends. Shortly before her death in 1909, Colorado madam Blanche Burton purchased a ton of coal for needy families at Christmas.

Stay tuned for A Christmas Past: The Wild West, Part II