That first Christmas tree that you get as a newlywed couple, grand or not so grand, is a memory that probably stays with all of us. Looking back on almost 80 Christmases, memories of their first trees, both when they were children and when they had their own children, are some of the Christmas memories that have really stuck with Ralph and Ella.
Ralph related:
Ralph related:
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When the twins were born...on December 10, [1953], and with Christmas coming on the 25th, we had only 15 days. With the surprise of the twins, there was a of activity going on! I don't remember a lot of gift giving or things like that. We were kind of wrapped up with two children. I remember we did get a tree….We had a very small apartment. I think we paid 50 cents for one of the last trees before they threw them all away. (“I think it was a little one that was sat on something, because we didn’t have room,” Ella chimed in.) But we did want to have the Christmas spirit, so bought this tree for 50 cents. We put some decorations on it. I think we made some from colored paper, chains or something like that. I don't remember a lot of family coming over. We stayed pretty much at home by ourselves.
I guess it was the next year...and we wondered how we'd put the Christmas tree up and not have the babies tear it down, playing with it. So we put it inside their playpen! On a suitcase or something so it was set up a little bit. So we had a tree with lights, and they would look at it….
With our family, we always, of course, had a Christmas tree….We would have everyone get around the tree after breakfast, and open the gifts. Sometimes we had some toys open they could play with, and we had the wrapped gifts. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of good memories about it.
For Ella, Christmases as a young girl in Scotland weren’t accompanied by all of the tinsel and lights that many of us associate with the holiday. Afterall, this was wartime.
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We didn't have any Christmas trees. Only the rich people had Christmas trees. No decorations or anything like that. I remember my grandma [Charlesina] had some paper decorations that she'd string from the ceiling. It was very sparse. We didn't have decorations outside - the city wasn't decorated. But this was wartime when I was growing up. War broke out in 1939 when I was 5. We just didn't have much at Christmas time.
The thing I do remember, when I was in grade school, they always had us go one day, with our Sunday clothes on, on a walk from school to a Presbyterian church that was not too far away, for a Christmas service. Because I was a good reader, I was chosen one time to give the scripture reading from the pulpit. That was the highlight of my life that year!
So that was it. Our Christmases were very sparse. Nothing like in America, like when we came over here and all of the things that they do here. But it could be different there now, ya know; I grew up during wartime when things weren't available, and it was just a different life.
Ralph remembers the first Christmas tree his family had as a boy. After his parents (Jaunita Inglish and John Virgil Mitchell) separated when he was about 2 years old, he and his mother and brother Johnnie moved to Mesa to his grandmother’s house (Bertha Clarice Copeland) for a year or so.
I remember the excitement my mother had when we moved into a little rental unit away from my grandmother. My mother wanted to be independent, so we moved into a little rental unit, probably a block or so away from Grandma's. We had our first Christmas tree there that year. My mother, and my brother Johnnie, and I….It was a pretty meager little Christmas. We just had a small tree, and it was just the three of us.
In August of 1941, his mom married Lester Johnson, when Ralph was 7 years old. Often at Christmas, the gifts that they'd get were things that they needed anyway: pajamas, underwear, a bicycle tire. There was some singing and ceremoniously opening Christmas presents. Lester even dressed up as Santa a few times to pass out the gifts!
With their own children, Ralph remembers:
I remember this about your Grandma Ella: She would always make a lot of good decorations, things around the tree, making things nice for the kids. I remember one year a wooden train track for BM, and she was up late at night, laying it out, fixing it up.
Another fun memory is when they lived in Long Beach, California, they made a tradition to drive to Watsonville to cut down their own tree. They did this for two or three years. One year they borrowed a motor home from a friend, took the kids and a friend each (except SM, who was very young.) "The motor home was pretty full! We cut a tree, tied it on top, and brought it home."
Now, when did Grandpa get those fantastic Christmas socks??? The red, green, and white striped ones, knee high?
Your mom and BM got those for me, in San Jose, in 1963. They're a few years old now! I still have them. Grandma has darned them and fixed them, patched them. Then your mom has knitted another pair for me. So I wear the old pair a little bit, and the new pair a little bit. I always wear them on Christmas morning. I could even wear them to Church today, Honey! It was either in '63 or '64.When you wear them just once a year, they last a long time!...That's part of a family tradition, to wear those Christmas socks every year.
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| Ralph and Ella with great grandkids GF and NM - December 2010. Ralph is sporting his legendary socks! |
A Christmas tradition I remember with Ralph and Ella is of making hard candy together, licorice flavored. We had to carefully stir the candy concoction, then pour it out on newspaper that lined the kitchen table, that was covered in powdered sugar. We’d have several of us working together, each with a pair of scissors to quickly cut the candy into small pieces before it cooled too much. Although we did this when I was in high school in the mid 1990’s, Ralph and Ella actually started doing this with their kids decades earlier: "HG really liked doing that. We did that in Broken Arrow [Oklahoma] with her friend Amy." One time, when the work was done, HG and her friend got in a powdered sugar fight! The sugar was all over the kitchen, in their hair, on their faces. They obviously had a great time!
Merry Christmas!!!
Source: From a phone call recorded on 22 December 2013 with Ralph and Ella.
