Shopping before daylight
In her childhood recollections, Olive Ruth Irish begins Christmas with the trip to Ironton. The journey by horse-drawn surrey started before daylight and ended late. The children prepared their lists because the small amount of money each received had to cover the day’s shopping. Catalog orders and country stores supplied other gifts.[1]
Back at the farm, presents were hidden and wrapped in tissue and cord. Choosing the tree was another outing: the children walked over the hills and fences, carrying an axe and looking for the one they wanted to bring home. Olive remembered the familiar stand, ornaments reused each year and the small candles clipped to the branches.[1]
Fruit, stockings and the morning chores
Olive’s account gives the waiting its own details. She could smell bananas and oranges before Christmas, and her mother explained that Santa must be getting close. On Christmas Eve the stockings hung by the living-room fireplace. Sleep came slowly, and Olive recalled going downstairs to ask whether it was time to get up.[1]
In the morning, the stockings could be opened before breakfast. The presents under the tree had to wait until the meal and farm chores were finished. Her memory keeps the animals and the household work within the Christmas routine.[1]
Phyllis writes back through the years
Phyllis Wiseman Mannon’s Letter 6 is dated Christmas 1984. She was remembering childhood, writing to her sister through a succession of questions. Her trees nearly reached the parlor ceiling; popcorn strings and candles decorated the branches; books and clothing were among the presents. She too recalled waiting for their father to finish feeding the animals and doing the outside chores.[2]
Some of her details are different. Phyllis remembered stockings pinned together and hung over a chair back, then emptied into a special box. Bananas, oranges and candy were treats to save. She also recalled a Christmas when her father walked to Arabia and returned with a coal bucket holding graduated brown teapot sets for their mother and the two sisters.[2]
Two memories of the same home
The two accounts share the search for a tree, the fruit, the gifts and the wait for chores. Each also preserves its own arrangement of people and things. Olive’s fireplace and Phyllis’s chair-back stockings belong to their respective memories; neither account dates all of these childhood scenes to one particular year.[1][2]
Read alongside the broader Wiseman farm chapter, the recollections bring the household into view through its seasons and celebrations. Olive gives a continuous account; Phyllis returns to individual moments in a letter to her sister.
The work inside the celebration
The farm's Christmas did not suspend its ordinary responsibilities. In both sisters' accounts, the animals were fed before the presents under the tree could be opened. That shared detail gives the celebration a setting: the household could prepare surprises, decorate a tree and save special food, while the work outside still determined when everyone could gather. [1][2]
The differences are equally useful. Olive's journey to shop and Phyllis's memory of their father returning with teapot sets show different ways that gifts reached the house. The stockings appear in different places, too. Reading the memories side by side preserves those individual viewpoints instead of building a single, tidier Christmas from them. Neither sister's account needs to supply every detail the other leaves out. Together they show how a place can be remembered through work, anticipation and a few objects that stayed in the mind. [1][2]
Sources
- Memories of Charles and Martha Wiseman and Life on the Family Farm. Compiled by A. John Schweickart, April 25, 2012. Olive Ruth Irish, “Tis the Season,” printed pp. 179–180 / PDF pp. 188–189. Private family archive; childhood recollections.
- Memories of Charles and Martha Wiseman and Life on the Family Farm. Phyllis Wiseman Mannon, “Do You Remember,” Letter 6, printed pp. 225–226 / PDF pp. 234–235. The letter is dated Christmas 1984; the childhood events are earlier.
These are separately attributed recollections.