TIME MACHINE ... Christmas.

"Friendliest Town On The Eastern Shore."  Our tradition runs deep.  Excerpt from a letter to the editor from a visitor to Newtown, (former name of Pocomoke City) published in the Baltimore Sun, April 28,1847.

This place (Newtown) is a pretty snug little village, containing about 500 clever and hospitable inhabitants; it has good wide streets, quite clear of that "eye sore," known mostly over the Peninsula by the name of "deep sand"; the houses, though built of frame, are generally built substantially and with some discretion and taste; there are two neat, new, and quite handsome frame churches in it; as for the merchants of the place, suffice it to state that they are very clever and hospitable.  F. Mezick, Esq., the landlord with whom I stopped, and his very obliging and jolly assistant, are richly deserving of a passing notice, for the good treatment and the extension of the many civilities to "the stranger."

(Reader-friendly viewing of news archives/historical archives material)

December 24, 1897 (Time Machine archive)
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) 

              

December 25, 1924 (Time Machine archive)

The Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, Texas)

(Excerpts) 

Childhood's Christmas Memories

"Backward, turn backward, Oh Time in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight."

How many of us tonight are wishing that old poem might come true just once more in our lives?  Of all the days in our childhood, none stand out so vividly in our memory as those mysterious Christmas times.  There is something about our Christmas memories that reach the heart of every one of us who were so fortunate as to grow up in a happy home.  We did not say a big, luxuriant home, but a HAPPY HOME.  A home where sympathy and LOVE, and a family understanding of one another's hearts fills the atmosphere of the whole home.  A home where each member of the family believes in and rejoices with every other member of the family in their ambitions and their hopes and their accomplishments.  That's the kind of home we mean when we say a happy home.  It may be a humble little cottage or it may be a mansion.  It is the spirit in the house and not the shell in which we live that makes happy homes. And it so happens that most of our happy homes are humble homes because we have so many more humble homes in America than any other kind.

What are your first memories of Christmas?  Can you bring them back through the long years and tell them over again to the children?  There is nothing children love to hear so well as Christmas stories of their own fathers and mothers. "What did Santa Claus bring you when you were a little boy Daddy?"  "And what did he bring to mother?"  "Did he travel then just as he does NOW?  And what kind of toys did little girls and little boys send for in those days?"  

It is the unusual, the impossible, and the mysterious belief that it will happen that puts the thrill of expectancy into the heart of the little child at Christmas time.  It is their faith in the spirit of Santa Claus that is so beautiful.

But if the memories of Christmas time in the old home far away are among our most treasured memories of childhood, what is our greatest privilege at Christmas time now?  Is it not storing up other Christmas memories in the lives of our children to be recalled a generation from now when we are no more and other little ones yet unborn are begging for Christmas stories of long ago?  This is one of our greatest opportunities and privileges for Christmas, 1924.  Creating Christmas stories and Christmas memories to be retold by the generations of fathers and mothers in 1950, 1975, and even up to 2000 after the first Christmas story was ever produced.

...fill the childish hearts and childish minds around you with those Christmas memories you would be proud and happy to have them carry through their lives and tell over and over at the Christmas tides of the future to the little heads nestled near their hearts.

Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers or something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about? Please send to tkforppe@yahoo.com .

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