The Spirit of Christmas, as Found in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Books

This is the first of a December series of posts, looking at how my favorite author, Laura Ingalls Wilder treats Christmas in her children’s series, and what I’ve learned from these stories.

In this, her first book in the series, Christmas gets its own chapter. It comes early – Chapter 4 – and the first three chapters all establish the coziness of the cabin that the family lives in, how warm and snug and safe it feels, when the days are dark and the winds howl outside, and the girls imagine hungry wild animals lurking in the woods about the house. (And, in fact, Ma and Laura confront a bear in their own yard one evening.)

The chapter on Christmas begins long before Christmas Day, describing the care Pa takes in building a smooth, hand-carved shelf with a bracket, for Ma to set her prize possession, a little china shepherdess, upon. Laura devotes two pages to describing how Pa carves and hangs the shelf, and how Ma sets the china figure on the shelf. (Ma must have been relieved to place the shepherdess out of reach of her two rambunctious children).

In preparation for Christmas, Ma cooks all day: two kinds of bread, and crackers¹, a huge pan of baked beans, two pies, and cookies. And Laura and Mary make candy by drizzling boiled molasses onto fresh, clean snow so that it cools into fun shapes.

On Christmas Eve, Laura’s Aunt Eliza and Uncle Peter and their children, Peter, Alice, and Ella arrive in a one-horse open sleigh. Despite the cold, the children play in the deep snow. That night, they hang their stockings² by the fireplace, and all of them squeeze into the one-room cabin together, cousin Peter sleeping in the trundle bed that Laura and Mary usually share; the four little girls cuddled up on the floor in one big bed together; Laura’s Uncle and Aunt take Ma and Pa’s bed; and Ma and Pa make a bed on the attic floor with the buffalo robes from Peter and Eliza’s sleigh.

But Laura cannot sleep because Uncle Peter begins telling Pa a scary story – a scary story that is real – about Aunt Eliza being stalked by a panther near their house! When the story ends, the little girls begin whispering to each other about the panther and how scared Ella and Alice were and how scared Laura and Mary would have been – and Ma tells Pa that “those children will never sleep unless you play for them.” Pa gets out his fiddle and Laura falls asleep to Pa playing and singing.

In the morning, the children wake up all at once and check their stockings. They all receive warm mittens and a peppermint stick. And Laura is unable to think about anything else because she receives a rag doll, which the author spends a whole page describing every detail of. Up until this point, Laura has been using a corn cob – literally a corn cob – wrapped in a scrap of cloth as a doll – but this is a real doll and it’s Laura’s very own. “No one was jealous because Laura had mittens, and candy, and a doll, because Laura was the littlest girl” except for the babies (Carrie and Laura’s cousin, Dolly Varden), who are too small to need presents.

Pa and Uncle Peter receive mittens, themselves. Aunt Eliza gives Ma an apple studded with cloves that she made. Ma gives Aunt Eliza a needle book that Ma had sewn out of flannel. They all admired each other’s gifts. Laura reflects that Santa Claus gives good children gifts, but doesn’t give anything to parents: not because their parents misbehaved but because parents are adults, and adults must give each other gifts.

After the gifts are admired, they’re all put aside while everyone – adults and children – do chores. The men and Peter go out to the stable and care for the stock and chop wood; the women and girls stay indoors and clean house, putting away the bedding and sliding the trundle bed back under Ma and Pa’s bed. Then Ma makes pancakes, shaped like men for special fun because it’s Christmas Day. It’s too cold for the children to play outdoors, so they eat their Christmas candy and look at the two or three beautiful books that Ma and Pa own.

After a huge dinner with all that good food that Ma prepared ahead of time, the guests bundle themselves up in layer after layer and pack themselves into the sleigh with the buffalo robes and hot flatirons. The family leaves early so they’ll be home before dark (remember, Peter had just told the story of a panther that lived near his home).

What strikes me in this story is how simple their Christmas is. Ma makes a lot of food but not as much as my SIL did this Thanksgiving, and look at what they eat – bread, crackers, baked beans, vinegar pie and dried apple pie, cookies, and maple candy. This food tells you that the Ingalls family did not have a lot of money: their home is tiny, one small room and the girls share a bed. The presents are not extravagant and, except for the peppermint sticks – one per child – and maybe Laura’s doll³, all the gifts are hand made and simple: mittens, an apple stuck with cloves, a cloth needle book. Except for the doll, the gifts are simple.

The emphasis in the story is on family, on being together with people you care about. Following this book, we don’t hear about Eliza and Peter again until many years later when I think Ma sends them a letter. In those days, people didn’t fly or drive cross-country to visit family, especially if they didn’t have much money. If you moved away from your family, your personal contact might end, aside from letters. Medical care was rudimentary and there were no antibiotics; many women died in childbirth; there was a ridiculous amount of guns available (industrial revolution); and crime following the Civil War was at its peak: once someone was out of your sight, for no matter how little time, it’s possible you might never see them again.

Goodbye meant goodbye.

In this book, the Ingalls family had simple expectations for the holidays, and were grateful for the little they had: a warm home, a good meal (beans and bread), and a peppermint stick and new mittens.

1. Ma baked the crackers herself. ↩︎
2. Real stockings that they would wear on their legs, not the kind of stockings that are purchased to put gifts in. ↩︎
3. The way Laura describes the doll, I had always assumed that it was store bought. But in a later book, the doll gets damaged and Ma repairs it so deftly that it seems like new; which makes me think that maybe Ma made it for Laura, a lot of effort for a little girl who is not her favorite. I say that without prejudice: it’s really clear that demure, polite Mary is Ma’s favorite; just as brave, strong Laura is Pa’s favorite. ↩︎