DAY 12 -- ADVENT 2023

GIFT-GIVING IN HARD TIMES

Merry Christmas! – I hope the suit protector will fulfill its duty all right and that your present laundry bag is in the last stages of dilapidation, or at least so near it that being a self-respecting laundry bag, it will be glad to wash itself out of the picture! Remember the Christmas that Myrtle and I got dress protectors and we couldn’t any of us figure out what they were and I finally pulled one over my head? – Shirley to Vance, 1932

The gift-giving of yesteryear was different from today. Money was scarce, and so were goods. The point was not to satisfy the longing of the recipient but to think of something that he/she could use. Many gifts were handmade.

Ina didn’t have much money to spend, so her gifts were homemade or perhaps shared from her storehouse of goods. Once she sent a jar of her strawberry preserves to Earle and his wife Bernice, knowing that they didn’t make any for themselves that year. Grandson Stanley was given a pen that was a “premium” provided with the purchase of grain or feed. One year they sent books – “new, but we had read them,” she said.  And she tells of making small cushions stuffed with dried rose petals and a quilt top.

And one year Shirley made dress protectors for all the women in the family and what she called a “suit protector” for Vance. Dress protectors were fastened under the arms to prevent perspiration stains on one’s clothes. In the days before effective anti-perspirants, dress protectors were important.

Well, you get the idea. However, I notice that Ina did go out of her way to provide store-bought gifts for Shirley – for example, a diary, a pair of pajamas, a box of stationery, stockings, and leather-faced gloves. KW