CHRISTMAS IS COMING

It truly was a wish book. Starting the week after Thanksgiving, my brothers and I waited impatiently for its arrival in our rural mailbox: the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog. There was no other book like it, especially for farm kids who lived miles from a city and had never been in a department store.

The Christmas catalog contained page after page of toys, everything from Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys to dolls, books, BB guns, and board games of every type. Of course, the catalog also contained clothes for kids and adults, shoes, boots, plus other excellent gifts such as jewelry, radios, and musical instruments—just about anything anyone would want or need. My brothers and I took turns paging through the catalog, making our choices for Christmas presents—what we hoped Santa would bring. My mother said we could pick out one toy and one practical thing, such as a sweater, a pair of mittens, or maybe a winter cap with fancy ear flaps.

As an early lover of books, I remember well the year that I chose Fun for Boys, edited by William Allan Brooks. It was 1943, and we were in the depths of World War II. After reading the brief description, “The complete book of games, hobbies, sports and recreation,” I knew this was the book for me. The description in the catalog promised that readers would learn how to throw their voices, identify German airplanes, and develop their muscles. I was interested in all of these things, especially how to identify German warplanes. I worried that a German plane might fly over our farm—a Messerschmitt ME 109, for instance—and I wanted to be prepared to identify it.

I also picked out a sweater, a blue one because Ma said I looked good in blue. I really didn’t care what color the sweater was as long it wasn’t pink or light green or some other girly color. It wasn’t the sweater that interested me, anyway; it was the book.

Once we had informed Ma of what we wanted from the Sears Christmas catalog, we turned our attention to other things. After the brief Thanksgiving break we were back at school, working on our numbers, practicing our reading, memorizing our spelling lessons, studying geography, and when we had a free moment, trying to mimic the Spencerian script handwriting that was strung out above the blackboard. (In my case it was hopeless; my handwriting was doomed to resemble chicken scratching more than it would ever come close to what that famous calligrapher, Mr. Spencer, had suggested as a model for all country school children.) Those of us in second grade and above knew that starting that afternoon, for about an hour before the end of every school day, schoolwork would be temporarily pushed aside and we would begin preparing for the Christmas program.

For most people in the Chain O’ Lake school district (those residing within two miles in all directions from the school), the Christmas program was the social event of the year. It was an opportunity for parents to see their children perform, a chance for those without children to experience a night out, and a time for everyone in the community to leave behind the troubles and worries of the Depression and the war, at least for one night.

Some country school teachers dreaded the annual Christmas program as much as they looked forward to it. It was common knowledge that some teachers’ contracts had not been renewed when their school’s Christmas program had been inferior. On the other hand, the program provided a break in the daily routine of school, and more importantly it gave students the chance to explore a new dimension of their education: performing in front of a group.

Many of the pupils attending Chain O’ Lake Country School were shy farm kids. I was even shyer than most. If a visitor drove into our farmyard, I was more likely to run and hide than to meet whoever came visiting. The Christmas program helped a roomful of shy kids come out of their shells, at least for one evening.

Around three o’clock on the Monday after Thanksgiving vacation, Miss Murty opened her desk drawer and pulled out a pile of papers. I recognized them as the Christmas program papers: the skits, songs, and recitations that were the backbone of the annual event. She obviously had already spent considerable time planning this year’s program. There were no tryouts for various parts in the skits, no choice as to which recitation we each might do, and no opportunity to choose which songs we would sing. Miss Murty had it all figured out, and in the next hour we each would learn what we were expected to do on the Friday night before Christmas break.

Before she handed out the assignments, she talked about the importance of the Christmas program, reminding us how much everyone in the community looked forward to it and how important it was to cheer people up during a time when there wasn’t much to cheer about. I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say; I was mostly worried about what I would be expected to do. I remembered the year before, how scared I had felt as a first grader, standing on the stage and trying to remember my lines when all I could see was a roomful of people staring at me, waiting for me to mess up—I was sure of that. But I had showed them. I hadn’t forgotten my part. It was some kind of Christmas miracle, I guessed.

Miss Murty went on, talking about the importance of the nativity scene, explaining that in many ways it was the core of the entire Christmas program. She told us that for this year she had selected Jim Steinke and Geraldine Hudziak, older students, for the roles of Joseph and Mary. I wondered what I would say if a few Christmas programs from now the teacher asked me to play the part of Joseph. I didn’t want anything to do with that. How dumb it would be to walk across the stage wearing a bathrobe with a kitchen towel tied around your head, with Mary at your side wearing a bed sheet over her shoulders and a white towel on her head! If I ever had to play that role, I wouldn’t hear the end of it from my school buddies. But that possibility was several years off. Right now I had to worry about what I was expected to do this year.

Finally Miss Murty gave the rest of us our assignments. Mine were a short recitation about the importance of Christmas, singing parts in three songs, and a minor role in a skit where we would each hold up a letter that together spelled Christmas. After reading through them, I put the papers in my book bag to take home. I knew my mother would be interested in what I would be doing.

Indeed, Ma was more interested in my Christmas program assignments than I was. Together we looked over the sheets of paper, Ma smiling from time to time. Finally she said, “You’ll have fun doing this.” I, on the other hand, saw the program as a bunch more work to do, stuff to memorize and practice, when I would rather have my nose in a book. By second grade I wanted to spend as much time reading as I could, and memorizing stuff for the Christmas program didn’t seem all that important.

Miss Murty thought it was important, though, and she let us know that the next day and every day leading up to the night of the program. Before every practice she gave a little spiel about the importance of the program. And she didn’t let up on us until we had every bit of the program down pat.

Two weeks before the performance, the three-member school board spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon putting up the stage. At the front of our schoolroom, they pushed aside the teacher’s desk and recitation table. In their place they laid out roughly a dozen two-by-eight-inch planks, nearly as long as the schoolhouse was wide, and nailed them to sawhorses. By chore time that afternoon, the stage was complete. It stood about two feet above the schoolhouse floor, high enough so all the performers could be easily seen from every seat in the room. A length of wire ran from one side of the room to the other, just above the front edge of the stage, and brown stage curtains, stored in the piano bench the rest of the year, were now strung on the wire. The side curtains consisted of bed sheets donated by one of the school board members. On the floor to the left of the stage stood a tall spruce tree waiting to be decorated.

When we arrived at school the next Monday, we were immediately aware that preparations and practice for the Christmas program had ratcheted up several notches. We had been practicing for about an hour at the end of each school day, but this week Miss Murty extended practice time. Now we would spend an hour and a half singing songs like “Up on the House Top” and “Away in the Manger” and trying to keep from giggling when “Mary” and “Joseph” shuffled across the stage in their efforts not to trip on a too-long bathrobe and oversized bed sheet. We also devoted time to decorating the tree with handmade paper snowflakes, bells, and trees and strings of popcorn. There would be no electric lights on the tree, of course.

Excitement mounted as the evening of the program loomed ever closer. On the afternoon of performance day, Miss Murty sent us all home an hour early. “Rest up a little,” she said. But I knew I couldn’t rest. I was too excited and worried about flubbing my lines or, even worse, completely forgetting what I was supposed to say.

We milked the cows a little early that evening, and Ma brought out a new pair of overalls and shirt that she had ordered from the Sears catalog especially for this night. “I want you to look nice up there on the stage,” she told me.

When we arrived at the school, cars were parked along both sides of the road, and the schoolroom was already nearly filled with people. Two gasoline lamps provided light, one at the front of the room and one at the back.

I don’t remember much about the program itself, which means I must have remembered my lines and stayed mainly in tune when I sang Christmas songs with my fellow students. I do remember the skit in which we held the letters spelling Christmas; I think it was Clair Jenks who held the letter M upside down so the word came out Christwas, evoking chuckles from the audience. Off to the side Miss Murty motioned for him to turn the letter in the right direction, but he never did.

What I remember even more vividly are the Christmas gifts we received after the end of the program. The teacher had put a present for each of us under the Christmas tree, practical items such as handkerchiefs, pencils, and combs. Suddenly, Santa barged into the schoolroom with a hearty “Merry Christmas,” stomping the snow from his feet as he moved toward the stage. Some of the babies in the crowd began to howl, frightened out of their wits by this strange character all dressed in red and with an enormous fake white beard. But my classmates and I had been eagerly anticipating Santa’s arrival, and we sat at the edge of the stage awaiting our gifts from Miss Murty, which Santa handed out to each of us. The bearded gentleman also gave Miss Murty the presents we kids had brought for her: a scarf, perfume, or hand-knit mittens. Then Santa seemed surprised to find two more presents under the tree.

“Well, what do we have here? Why, this one’s for Bill Miller,” he said, holding up the present for Bill to retrieve. “And this one is for Herman Apps,” he said next, offering a gift to my dad. It had become a custom for a few “unusual” presents to be distributed each year, and both Bill and my dad looked suspicious as they opened theirs. Bill fumbled with the wrapping on a rather long and narrow present and then held up his gift: a real pig’s tail. Everyone laughed and clapped as Bill stood with a silly grin on his face, wondering who in the neighborhood had recently butchered. Of course, the pig tail had come from one of our pigs, the very one that Bill had helped butcher not many weeks before.

Pa opened his present slowly and carefully. He tore off the wrapping paper to reveal a matchbox. When he slid it open, a live and very unhappy English sparrow flew out and fluttered around the ceiling of the schoolroom. More laughter and clapping ensued.

As everyone filed out the door of the school, Pa and a couple of school board members armed with brooms and a mop worked to encourage the angry sparrow to leave the building. It was another Christmas program that would be long remembered.