The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Christmas Down On the Farm By William E. Bohn THIS HOLIDAY SEASON may be a time of diminishing returns. I hear people saying on all sides that in this age of abundance children...
...There was a dearth of things which came from the outside, which would be shipped in from the city or from Florida or California...
...But it is true that on a morning of new snow and keen, cold air and tinkling bells, young, spirited horses find it hard to stay on the ground...
...He would be the first up, filling the stoves with wood so that we could explore our stockings in comfort...
...There always seemed to be snow...
...This is what is happening to Christmas...
...Old rules were relaxed, and money was spent...
...They were fitted to the season...
...Never, he would say, did handsome animals dance and prance in such lively fashion...
...Of fruits in their sea?sons, apples, pears, cherries, straw?berries, there were more than we could consume...
...The neighbor boys, of course, would congregate...
...Life in the country was abundant in some respects...
...And finally we would be called in to such a dinner as Dickens would describe in detail but which I will more modestly leave to your imagination...
...I hear people saying on all sides that in this age of abundance children have too much, that if we give them presents we merely clutter up their lives...
...But our life, so unrestricted and abundant in some respects, was rather poor in others...
...My mother always tried to bring in a word or two about the fact that we were cele?brating the birth of Jesus...
...But the pleasure derived from making these crude contraptions is something that went far beyond mere possession...
...What flavor they spread over our unaccustomed palates...
...The first sound we would hear in the morning would be those clear-ringing chimes...
...I can recall making toys for my?self and...
...The main body would be painted a deep red and the ornamen?tation would be in the form of a galloping horse or a rearing reindeer done in gleaming gold...
...Wise aunts and uncles and grandparents advise you to give the little folks checks: "They will appre?ciate the money when the time comes to go to college...
...And the music which they made as they started off down the shining road was, to me, the very symbol of Christmas...
...The Christmas sort of happiness I associ?ated from the earliest times with sleigh bells...
...They were appre?ciated all the more...
...How well I recall the bright colors of those sleds...
...She could suggest such things with better effect than any professional religionist...
...My father would be gay along with it...
...One of us would be given a sled and the other would re?ceive a pair of skates...
...The world was white, bright, gay...
...There would be some errand to do, fur?nishing a reason for hitching the horses to a sleigh...
...Very little was said about it out there on the land...
...They must have known that there was something special going on...
...They never were com?pletely satisfactory...
...Neither were oranges or bananas or dates or figs...
...And how sharp and shiny were the runners of those skates...
...There was...
...The home-made sled never glided down the hill quite as smoothly as the one from town...
...my brother??sleds, express wagons, kites...
...But we had them only in their seasons??except for the great rows of cans in the cellar and the bins of vegetables stowed away for the winter...
...It was partly because of the lack of store goods that Christmas loomed so large...
...having some of the best things for only a short time...
...How like flying our motion seemed as we started down the fast-frozen brook...
...I have said nothing about religion...
...All of the new skates and sleds had to be critically compared...
...It was not too bad...
...My brother and I could usually count on our gifts...
...in short, a lack of the products which came from afar and cost money...
...There was no church and no preacher...
...Each happy owner was convinced that his own were superior, not only to those of his friends, but to any other skates or sleds in the whole world...
...Before long we would be out and around in the gleaming world...
...We had plenty of the things which we pro?duced ourselves??milk and bread and meat...
...The plenty which we enjoyed was not bought with coin of the realm...
...There was a sort of release about the spirit of the day which had no parallel at any other season...
...But I do our whole way of life an injustice if I suggest that our pleas?ure was derived mainly from food...
...Living far out on the land, we went seldom to shop or store...
...Candy was by no means as common as it is now...
...There would be candy enough, and from far-off places would come the golden fruits of warmer climes...
...When I hear this sort of talk, my mind goes back to my childhood on the farm...
...Even the odor of the paint had a deliciousness which comes back to me now...
...And the wheels of the little cart so painstakingly hammered together never did turn out to be exactly round...
...The deliciousness of the treat was almost worth the year-long deprivation...
...Dickens, of course, would be kid?ding himself...
...If Charles Dickens were writing this story, I am sure he would suggest that the horses entered into the spirit of the holiday...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 52
