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

I know, I know, I wrote about this book on February 9. It’s my favorite of the series and also the most perilous for the family. In this post, I’m going to focus on how Christmas is treated in this book.

This book tells the story of that horrible winter when blizzards started in September and continued all the way through April. The little town along the railroad is just a year old and the farmers on the surrounding homesteads haven’t had time to harvest crops; so the town is still dependent on the railroad to supply the town with food and fuel. The Ingalls family move from their unfinished homestead shanty into a finished building they own in town, and Laura and Carrie attend school until the blizzards begin descending unexpectedly close together, making the journey to the schoolhouse on the edge of town dangerous. Then the snow blocks the tracks back East, and trains cannot get through. Food grows scarce and the lumberyard begins selling building materials as fuel. Unable to afford the inflated prices, Pa and Laura twist hay into sticks to feed their wood stove.

When Christmas comes, the town is still hoping that the rails will reopen. Things are tight but their spirits are still high. One of the townspeople manages to reach the nearest town with postal service and bring back mail: for the Ingalls family, a fat letter from a pastor they had met the previous summer, a big bundle of Youth’s Companion¹ donated by the pastor’s Sunday School class, and newspapers (the Inter-Ocean and the Pioneer’s Press). The letter contains a promise from the pastor to return the next year and the news that he has shipped a Christmas barrel containing clothing donations for the family as well as a Christmas Turkey.

“There is a little silence” as the family probably images that tantalizing barrel frozen into a train far, far away. Ma puts the Youth’s Companions away and the girls set to doing washing and cleaning house quickly before the next blizzard begins. Pa comes back with the news that the town is putting a work-crew together to clear the tracks so the trains can resume.

Ma sets low expectations for the girls: she’s afraid it will be a “poor Christmas” and they may not be able to celebrate until the trains resume and the Christmas barrel arrives. The older girls stiffen their lips and agree but Grace whimpers, “Can’t Santa Claus come?” and Ma responds, “Santa always comes to good little girls, Grace.” Then Ma suggests putting all their tantalizing new reading materials away until Christmas Day.

Mary of course, agrees, ” ‘It will help us learn self-denial.’ “

” ‘I don’t want to,’ Laura said.”

” ‘Nobody does,’ said Mary. ‘But it’s good for us.’ “

“Sometimes Laura did not even want to be good.” But she eventually relents and they resolutely put the papers away. Then Ma continues with bad news.

” ‘We can find something in the stores for…’ and she glanced at Grace. ‘But you older girls know that Pa hasn’t been able to get any work for wages this year. We can’t spare money for presents, but we can have a happy Christmas just the same. I’ll try to contrive something extra for dinner and then we’ll all open our papers and read them, and when it’s too dark to read, Pa will play the fiddle.’ “

” ‘We haven’t much flour left, Ma,’ Laura said.” There’s no fruit for a pie or butter or eggs for a cake, and the town is completely out of sugar. But somehow Ma will provide; she always does.

Laura has been working on a little embroidered picture frame for herself; she decides to give it to Carrie for Christmas. And she’s been working on lace for her own use that she can give to Mary; and an embroidered hair-receiver² that she can give to Ma. Laura and Carrie combine the pennies that they’ve saved and Ma contributes another dime to buy Pa a new pair of suspenders.

But when Laura and Carrie head to the general stores, it becomes clear what desperate straits the town is in: “the shelves were bare. On both long walls, there were only a few pairs of men’s boots and women’s shoes and bolts of calico. The bean barrel was empty. The cracker barrel was empty. The little brine in the bottom of the pork barrel had no pork in it. The long, flat codfish box held only a little salt scattered on its bottom. The dried-apple box and the dried-blackberry box were empty.” The storekeeper tells them he’s out of groceries until the train arrives. Finding only a depressingly plain pair of suspenders there, the girls visit the other dry good store in town and find it “bare and echoing, too. Every barrel and box was empty, and where the canned goods had been there were only two flat cans of oysters” and that storekeeper also tells them that he is waiting on the train. Luckily the girls find a cheerful pair of suspenders there that costs exactly what they have in their pocket.

That night, no one hangs their stockings: “Grace was too young to know about hanging stockings on Christmas eve and no one else expected a present.” But they go to bed with faith that the train will arrive the next day. Laura wakes up Christmas Day with that hope again, and brings her presents downstairs. To her surprise, Ma has already set the table and put a gift next to each person’s plate. Pa returns from doing chores with the two tins of oysters the girls had seen the day before and the last of the milk from their cow so that Ma can make oyster soup for dinner, and they all settle down to opening presents.

The gifts Laura contrived are hits and Grace receives a store-bought wooden toy. There is Christmas candy that Pa bought weeks ago when it was the last of the sugar in town – they feel confident that the train is coming in, so they can consume it now as candy. Carrie remarks that it’s a lovely Christmas and Laura agrees, although there is no mention of a gift for her.

Just as the oyster soup is ready and the bread is toasted, Pa returns from doing chores with bad news: there’s another blizzard on the horizon, the train hasn’t gotten through, and now it will be delayed while they start over with clearing the tracks again. The storm hits while they’re still eating. Even before they finish Christmas supper, frost coats the windows and the temperature drops near the poorly insulated walls, the light dims. After they eat, Pa twists some hay into sticks to heat the room and they huddle around the stove. Ma lights the nearly-empty kerosene lamp and reads several stories from the saved papers. Following chores, they dine on “hot boiled potatoes and a slice of bread apiece, with salt.”

“That was the last baking of bread, but there were still beans in the sack and a few turnips. There was still hot tea with sugar […] there was no more milk. While they were eating the lamp began to flicker. With all its might the flame pulled itself up, drawing the last drops of kerosene up the wick.”

Christmas ends when Ma tells them, “The fire is dying, we may as well go to bed.”

That’s in late December. The storms continue until April. The food runs out. The family is reduced to eating pancakes made from water and wheat, one each, and sleeping most of the day to save energy. Pa’s fingers are too cold and stiff to even play the fiddle and cheer them up.

Finally spring comes and the trains resume, including the one containing the Christmas barrel which they’ve been waiting on since December.

From the barrel, Ma receives a new dress and a silk shawl. Mary gets new warm underclothes and a fascinator (a type of head-shawl). Laura gets a new pair of shoes, five pairs of machine-knit woolen stockings, and a complete set of embroidery silks which “caught on the roughness of her fingers, scarred from twisting hay.” Carrie, a coat, hood, and mittens. Pa receives two white shirts and a cap. For Grace, two dresses “to grow into” and a couple of baby books. All of these, donations from their pastor’s congregation back in Minnesota.

At the bottom of the barrel is the promised Christmas turkey, still frozen solid, and even a package of cranberries! The stores have been restocked with groceries, so Pa invites their friends, the Boasts, to join them for Christmas dinner in May.

Pa buys groceries: “a whole sack of white flour, sugar, dried apple, soda crackers, and cheese. the kerosene can was full.”

Ma makes three loaves of yeast-risen bread. Laura adds sugar to the cranberries for a jelly. They make apple and raisin pies. Ma bakes a sugar-frosted loaf of cake and stuffs the turkey with bread-stuffing. Carrie peels potatoes and Laura mashes them. Laura makes gravy, and Mrs. Boast arrives, bringing butter.

Following dinner, Pa declares that his fingers have finally thawed and breaks out his fiddle. The book ends with them all singing together:

For what is the use of repining,
For where there’s a will, there’s a way,
And tomorrow the sun may be shining,
Although it is cloudy today.

That resolution is what makes this my favorite book: things get bad, then worse. You can’t imagine how it will get better. Ma exhorts them all not to despair: despair, in Ma’s beliefs, is the greatest sin. They are trapped there, starving in the dark, thin and cold as storms rage around them. And they all survive until spring.

These two Christmases are happy, despite their troubles. The one in December reflects a problem that the Ingalls often have: a belief that their train will come in, the sun is finally shining on them, they can afford to eat the last of their sugar – in the form of the Christmas candy – and spend money they barely have on tinned oysters, because the train will arrive this afternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest – and then the next storm hits, and before you know it, they are trapped in a poorly insulated building, cold, dark and hungry, without food or coffee or fuel for their stove or for their lantern. And yet they contrive Christmas, sacrificing things they have made for themselves to give the people they love gifts and taking joy in listening to stories from the hoarded papers. And Laura and Carrie see it as a lovely Christmas after all.

When the train finally does arrive, the family is overwhelmed by the generosity of their pastor’s congregation. They purchase groceries – despites Ma’s warning about their financial position in December – and invite their good friends to join them for a feast. This Christmas is joyful for the fact that they survived, they are with people they love, and they have the music from Pa’s fiddle to celebrate with.

1. A children’s paper that originally encouraged piety and later evolved into The American Boy. ↩︎
2. An object now obsolete that women kept on their dressing tables. They would save the hair caught in their hairbrushes and use it later to create things, such as “switches”, early hair extensions used to bulk up your braids and buns. ↩︎