CHRISTMAS DAY, 1934-THIS IS HOW WE DO

We promised to have a regular tree and we’ll all be children and have a lot of fun out of it. Ina Dobson

Christmas morning found Ina enjoying a good nap. In fact, Jack had to awaken her with a “Merry Christmas” and a “Happy Anniversary.” Today they were also celebrating 43 years of marriage, as were June and Bertha.

So Ina rose tardily to begin her 1934 Christmas. While Jack went to “feed the chores,” she began to fix breakfast: biscuits and sausage for him, beefsteak, cream gravy, and lite bread for her, also grapefruit, cereal, cranberries, and honey oranges. She gave Dick the Dog a generous breakfast of meat scraps, etc., and the cats also with liver to top it off and wished them all a “Merry Christmas.”

Then she fell to work and was all done and dressed and fixing her apples for salad when the guests came. Doris & Ruth were ready and willing to make themselves generally useful, lighting the tree, setting the table and arranging seats, and performing such tasks as Ina directed. It looked very pretty and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.

Ina got through it all just fine. Mrs. Cordell and Bertha helped in the kitchen. Bertha had dressed a fat young rooster and brought it ready for the roaster. She also insisted on making pies since Ina had her hands full. One of each – mince and pumpkin -- would be plenty, Ina said, but no – here came two each and ginger cookies frosted. So they had mince and pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it, ginger cookies, fruit cake and do-nuts, and fruit and whipped cream for that, coffee, oranges, nuts and candy besides the after dinner mints. Well, we just parceled out the leftovers. Mr. Boehm got half of each kind of pie. I believe Mrs. Cordell got a whole pie, some donuts, cookies, and buns. Mr. Boehm also got some of each. Bertha got the remains of the roast, buns and donuts . . .

“And this is how we do,” said Ina. “It was a good day.” KW