by Peter Twitchell
Christmas in the 1950s was simple. You got the dog teamed up to pull a sled and you mushed through five feet or more of snow and powder snow to look for a suitable Christmas tree.
Sometimes the whole dog team disappeared in the deep snow and Dad would push and yell some orders to his dog team to move and get some yardage.
When we got a Christmas tree, the team of dogs would pull the ten foot sled back out using the trail they’d broken and head down to the river where the trail was solid at the ice level.
Then we’d carry our tree into the house and stand it up in the tree stand that Dad had prepared. Mom and I would pop some corn on top of the wood stove and she would use her heaviest thread and needle to string the popped corn and weave around the three branches to decorate our tree.
She pulled out her crafted Christmas tree ornaments from the 1930s and each bulb was unique and beautiful. No one manufacturer has ever been able to duplicate Christmas tree bulbs like them.
Christmas tree ornaments are plain in these modern times, no one takes the time to make beautiful and original tree ornaments anymore and all we’re left with is memories how beautiful trees were decorated back then.
Gifts we got as kids were simple and no one present more than 10 bucks under our tree. We got warm pants, or a warm shirt, warm socks, or a sweater. No one spent more than a hundred dollars on gifts for their son. It was rare.
I did get a plastic double barrel shotgun from my Aunt Elsie T. Orcutt who lived in Oregon. The gun shot plastic darts to shoot at a wind up plastic rabbit on wheels. This toy gun and rabbit helped me get rated Expert Marksman at the Fort Richardson target range in later years!
