Christmas Presents in Christmases Past: Stories from the History Center’s Oral History Collection

 What was your favorite childhood Christmas present ever? Chances are, no matter how long ago, your memory of finding it Christmas morning is as clear as a bell. Perhaps the memories are especially held close if they are memories of a leaner time, when your family still made sure some childhood wishes came true, or a patient sense of anticipation was rewarded. We have an abundance of those kinds of memories recorded in the History Center’s collection of oral history interviews conducted over the past twenty-five years.

Mrs. Minnie B. Walker Payne was born in 1926 and grew up in the community of McDade in south Bossier Parish. Minnie remembered when her father would hook up the mules to the wagon at three in the morning, heading for Shreveport to buy toys for Christmas, such as dolls and little cooking sets and children’s wagons.

Mrs. Mathilde Gatlin McLelland, also from McDade, remembers the Great Depression as “a time when my parents started looking so worried.” So she was amazed as a seventh-grader that they managed to give her a bicycle. She couldn’t wait to ride it – and rode it right off the porch into her mother’s rose bush!

Mrs. Ophelia Burks, of Haughton, was born October 25, 1903, into a family of hardworking sharecroppers. She said normally she and her siblings didn’t have time for games. Christmas was a day for fun though. Leading up to the big day, however, there was lots of work to do. They even had to sweep thoroughly under their house to make everything looking good for the arrival of Santa. (Parents, take note: Ms. Ophelia said as a girl she loved cleaning house when it was for Santa Claus.) Santa’s elves could’ve had a toymaking lesson from Ms. Ophelia’s father, who went out in the woods and cut some small pine trees and made wagons for the children. Ophelia remembered that he “put the little tongue and everything in it where you could pull it. That’s what we had for Christmas.” Her mama put little stockings up on the wall “and stick us a little apples and candy in there. Oh, we thought we were living then!” she remembered with laughter.

Gloria Daigle Roberts, who was born in 1927 and lived as a child in the 1930’s near present-day Bossier Elementary, where her mom operated the private cafeteria for the school when it served all grades, couldn’t believe that one Christmas morning the living room in their multigenerational family home was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling presents, “like we never knew that it was the Depression or that we didn’t have anything.”

John Williams, born in Koran in 1920, remembered his mother kept the children’s Christmas presents locked in an “armie” (armoire). He knew it was always things to eat, which they would find in their stockings – an apple, an orange and a few pieces of candy. When his mother went into town for Christmas, she would buy all the cloth to make his sister’s clothes. She would cut, he would sew and his sisters would get their new clothes for the year at Christmastime.

Rev. Carl Hawkins Sr., who grew up in Princeton in the 1930’s, said he and his siblings always looked forward to Christmas because, like John Williams, that was the time when they got fruits. He said they didn’t get fruit like children have now anytime of the year. They had to wait until Christmas, and find the treats in their stockings. “We would get one apple, one orange, one, two little pieces of candy, couple of pecans, couple of English walnuts and maybe sometimes a few grapes. That’s about it, and one little toy.” For the boys that was often a little cap buster (toy cap gun). He didn’t know why he so dearly wanted a cap buster because he didn’t go to any Western movies at that young age, but “we always wanted to see if we could go running around across the old woods with our cap busters like we were cowboys.” His sisters always got dolls and they all had “Firecrackers. Firecrackers was a big thing. We didn’t worry about shooting firecrackers on the 4th of July; we shot all our firecrackers at Christmas. We didn’t shoot too many at New Year’s either, because we would have shot them all up by New Year’s.”

Clark Strayhan of Brushy in north Bossier Parish and born in 1920, said Christmas was very frugal in their household but they always got something. The present that made the most impression on him was the pedal car he wanted so badly. “In those days [there] wasn’t any such thing as antifreeze at night. If it was going to freeze, you either drained your radiator or you covered it with blankets and quilts. I got this little pedal car and boy, it was pretty and Santa Claus had covered the motor up with a quilt to keep it from freezing. That tickled me and I said, ‘Look what Santa Claus did!’”

We hope Santa Claus treats you and your family well, too. If you have any information, stories, or photos about Christmas and other holiday traditions in Bossier Parish, we would love to add them (or scanned copies) to our History Center’s research collection. Contact us at 318-746-7717 or email history-center@bossierlibrary.org or visit us at 2206 Beckett St., Bossier City. We are open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. For other intriguing facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

•  Minnie Payne, age 4, and her mother, 1930.
• 1997: Mrs. Mathilde Gatlin McLelland  1997.076.003 
• Ophelia Burks, The Shreveport Times 15 Jul 2005VF001-7066
• 1999: Gloria Roberts taken at Bossier High Reunion, Classes of 1940-1944.  1999.119.009
• John C. Williams, Sr.     2019.049.312
• Rev. Carl Hawkins Sr., who grew up in Princeton, La. as a young C.M.E. minister
• Clark Strayhan attending the Plain Dealing Dogwood Program held in the Plain Dealing Library in honor of former Dogwood Queens.      2001.021.049
• Photograph of a masked Santa Claus at the first parish-wide Christmas Party sponsored by the Bossier Parish Chamber of Commerce, held at Bossier High School.  Men from the Chamber are handing out oranges, a Christmas-time treat. 21 Dec 1949.

Article by: Pam Carlisle