[Why our area has its particular political and religious attitudes.]

Christmas!

What other Holy Day creates such feelings of joy, happiness, mirth, merriment, and despair? I am naturally of the ‘feel good’ temperament driven by dopamine, but also see the melancholy side of many.

To everyone, the year has been fraught with frustration, apprehension, and mis-information if not downright lies. As a research scientist, I have little tolerance for those who prey on others’ emotions for control. Even with all the issues we have encountered, in all but the worst of cases, everyone has a much more pleasant, shall we say easier, life than our forebears who settled this land we call Oklahoma, Indian Territory.

Let’s take a journey back in time… Think back before cellphones, before internet, before GPS, before space launches, before interstate highways, before jet airplanes. Keep going back before concrete roads, before airplanes, before cars, before refrigerators, before electricity, before telephone, before the discovery of oil, before the War Between the States in 1861-1865 disrupted the country. Keep on going back before Samuel Morse’s telegraph in 1844. Now we are to the time of the forced relocation to Oklahoma.

The only communication was letters. In a strange quirk, letters are a tremendous boon to our history, since the writing made a record of events, unlike telephone conversations. What was Christmas like?

“Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of the preparations for Christmas on the Prairie: “Ma was busy all day long, cooking good things for Christmas. She baked salt-rising bread and r’n’Injun (ed. rye and Indian corn) bread, and Swedish crackers, and a huge pan of baked beans, with salt pork and molasses. She baked vinegar pies and dried-apple pies and filled a big jar with cookies, and she let Laura and Mary lick the cake spoon. “That very Christmas, Laura Ingalls was delighted to find a shiny new tin cup, a peppermint candy, a heart-shaped cake, and a brand new penny in her stocking. For in those days, these four small gifts in her stocking were a wealth of gifts to the young girl.” [Legends of America]

What was the house like? Typically, the structure was one or two rooms of rough-hewn timber with wide cracks chinked with mud and no insulation. No running water, indoor plumbing, refrigerator, or electricity graced their manse. On a cold, windy morning you had to beat a path to the outhouse, then get water from a spring or dug-well. These conditions were not that long ago. I remember my grandparents getting electricity to the one bulb in the room, with one receptacle in the entire house. I was in college before outdoor plumbing came to our aunt’s dog-trot, double-pen house sort of heated by a fireplace, which scorched you on one side and froze you on the other.

Look outside in the country this time of year. Our native scrub oaks and hickory trees are brown. If a green Christmas tree were available, a spriggy, sappy, sticky cedar was about all that was around in this part of Indian Territory.

Some places wood was too scarce and others the house was just too small for a tree. Decorations were vintage handmade such as cookie dough, popcorn on a string, berries, ribbon, yarn, or handmade dolls and ornaments.

Humm. For them, conditions had not changed dramatically since the Immaculate Birth on the First Christmas half way around the world in the likewise rural community of Bethlehem.

Christmas Eve often involved singing carols within the meager house. Humm. This tradition persisted two thousand years from the First Christmas ranch hands greeted by angels out on the range. Christmas Day involved early to rise by the kids to ooh, ahh, and gasp at their ‘bounty’ under the tree.

If they lived close enough to other people, a wagon ride to the local mission / school house made the morning. Then it was back home with extended family for the bustle of preparing an organic feast of free-range venison, yams, and berries. The more affluent, like the Ingalls, had fancy stuff.

The afternoon was spent around the fireplace with the older men spinning yarns and dozing, the younger men talking hunting and clearing that south 5-acres, and the kids doing what kids do.

After cleaning up and putting a tablecloth over the food for later snacks, the ladies came to the fire. Such were the traditions which persisted in rural America until post World War II. They too had diseases, loss of loved ones, and some were alone. But life must go on for the living.

What was the Christmas story preached? The kids had it memorized.

“An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”–Luke 2:9-11

The story continues years later and is specifically for us at this time in history, where so much bad news seems to be the only news.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”–2 Timothy 1:7

The child in the manger became the Rabbi leader of a cadre who changed the world. He taught us how to pray.

“And let us not be lead into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”–Matthew 6:13.

Think about the Christmas account for early Indian Territory was the same as the first Christmas, and is the same as for us. The gift of Christmas is not about a romanticized past, or some ethereal future, but gives us a way to handle our today’s difficulty. Merry Christmas!

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Excerpts from our book:

Where Indians, Outlaws & Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.