A Christmas Ghost

There is a beautiful house on Helena’s lower West Side that has been home to a number of tenants in the past twenty-five years. Some of those who have been associated with the house report odd experiences that I have detailed in Haunted Helena: Montana’s Queen City Ghosts. For the Scott family, the house was a magical place that holds special memories of family and one unique Christmas dinner. The house was built in 1877, and its longtime owner was Christmas Gift Evans, whose pioneer hardware firm of Sanford and Evans was a well-known, reputable Helena business. Chris Evans was born in Deerfield, New York, on Christmas Day in 1840. His parents felt so blessed at his birth that they named him Christmas Gift.

The Christmas Gift Evans House, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is a rare example of the French Second Empire style. Its Mansard roof has elegant wrought iron cresting and inside, the handsome dark woodwork evokes another time. Original built-in furniture includes a dining room breakfront with exquisite beveled glass. The house has seen its share of tragedy including the death of Evans. Suffering from circulatory problems in 1915, Evans died in the house after the surgical amputation of his leg.

Christmas Gift Evans, born on Christmas Day, 1840, still likes to celebrate his birthday.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Garth Scott was a single parent with two children when the family moved into the house in 2004. During the year they lived there, the Scotts thoroughly enjoyed the historic home and created some wonderful family memories. But it was Christmas that year that was especially memorable. Garth’s mother cooked a huge family dinner for some thirty family members who gathered around the dining room table. They took many photographs to capture Christmas memories. An extra guest appears in many of the photos, reflected in the beveled glass of the breakfront. The image of a man with a distinctive goatee does not match any of the guests seated at the table.

The family later discovered a portrait of Evans in a drawer of the breakfront. The identity of the image is certain. Christmas Gift Evans, perhaps in celebration of his birthday, apparently shared the family’s Christmas dinner.

Christmas in Butte 1876

Butte was still a crude mining camp built around mining claims at Christmas in 1876. It was customary to salute the dawn of Christmas Day with firecrackers, tying them in packages and hanging them on the telegraph poles. In the aftermath, Park Street and Broadway were littered with bits of paper from the explosions. Then on Christmas night, families gathered at Loeber Hall on Broadway. A play had been presented weeks before raising $170 to pay for the party. The tree was brilliantly lit with candles and a committee of ladies had spared no expense in its decoration. But, according to the Butte Miner, some “croakers” complained that the base of the tree was left unfinished, and it would have been better had the ladies added some moss or other decoration.

Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, 1876, offered suggestions for tree decorating
 and included this engraving to illustrate.

All agreed, however, that the tree was spectacular. The ladies carefully chose gifts for each of the children sparing no expense. Some community members also sent gifts. All were hung on the tree as was the custom. Stockings made out of mosquito netting were filled with apples—a rare and a very special treat—along with popcorn, candies, and nuts for all children ages two to thirteen. Young ladies who had reached the age of 14 had reason to wish they were children again, reported the Miner.

William Porter played St. Nicholas, dressed in a buffalo overcoat, buffalo shoes, and a buffalo cap with long white whiskers and jingling bells. He distributed the gifts, but unfortunately, not all the gifts went to those for whom they were intended. Some of the gifts were taken off the tree by persons unknown before St. Nick could hand them out. This caused some hard feelings, and a dance planned for parents and friends unfortunately never materialized. Children, however, were unaware of others’ bad behavior and went to bed happy as Christmas 1876 passed to become a pleasant memory. 

Friday Photo: Santa Claus is Coming

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3736

Santa Claus stopped in front of F. Jay Haynes's photo studio to have this photo taken in 1897.

Christmas Trees from Forest to Fireside

We all know that Christmas trees can be a drain on the budget, and that is nothing new. In the first settlements of territorial Montana, Christmas trees might come fresh cut from the forest but required an outlay of cash to decorate. Ribbons and ornaments—even those made by hand of scraps—were expensive and hard to come by. Churches, meeting halls, and courthouses were the usual venues for Christmas trees because they could be communally decorated. Gifts, including fruit and candy, were hung on the trees and not usually placed beneath as we do today. Distribution of gifts on the tree was done with great ceremony.

By 1880, Christmas trees were more common in private homes and sold in larger cities for ten to fifty cents. In the next decade, one in every five families had a Christmas tree. By the early 1900s, Christmas trees cost from twenty-five cents to a dollar and most families had their own Christmas trees.  While decorations could still cost more than the tree itself, saving decorations from year to year helped Christmas trees become almost a seasonal necessity. An editorial feature in the Daily Missoulian, December 18, 1910, advised that Christmas trees were for everyone. Even those too old to hang a stocking and those with no young people in there households should not give up on the custom.

Maurice Hain poses with the family's Christmas tree in 1936.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 945-214

While some argued that cutting trees desecrate the forest, Gifford Pinchot, conservationist and first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, answered these critics. He maintained that cutting a five-foot tree is not the same as logging an old-growth lodge pole pine. A five-foot farmed tree grows in half a decade and can be replaced. Pinchot further remarked, “Trees were destined to be used. What better use could be made of them [than] to give pleasure to millions of people at Christmastime?”

Whether you cut your own or buy your tree, keep the custom and fill your home with Christmas.

Christmas in Helena 1884

One of the coldest holidays on record in Montana was that of 1884 when temperatures dipped to 30 degrees below zero. That Christmas Eve there was a foot of new snow as some fifty children assembled at the Episcopal Church at Grand and Warren in Helena. They stood in awe of the Christmas tree decorated with ripe, golden fruit. With mouths watering, they anticipated distribution of the rare, precious treats. As Benjamin Benson arrived at the church late, he smelled smoke and saw telltale signs curling out the windows. Benson ushered the children to safety in a storefront at the Brown Block. The alarm sounded. Firemen came quickly with their hose carriage and the steamer named “City of Helena.” Firemen took water from a cistern at Fifth and Warren and pumped it through two hundred feet of hose. Although ice soon coated the firemen, the water miraculously did not freeze in the hose. The church was insured, but the Christmas tree with its delectable decorations was a total loss and the children were disappointed.

This map shows the location of the Episcopal Church (center). Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collection.

Christmas dinners at local eateries, however, were not a disappointment. At the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a grand Christmas tree sparkled and bouquets adorned the festive tables. The International Hotel served many who preferred the chef's traditional meal rather than one at home. The Bon Ton restaurant served the most expensive dinner adding quail and woodcock to traditional fare. And at Mrs. Norris' exclusive boarding house, guests enjoyed a Christmas feast finished with luxurious ice cream. But it was a tiny private restaurant that won the highest praise. The Nagle sisters at Porter Flats on Ewing Street—the first large apartment building in Helena with fully equipped kitchens in every unit—served the most impressive meal. The Herald praised everything from the oyster soup, roast turkey, and mashed potatoes to Philadelphia ice cream and Java coffee.  The Nagle sisters, said the reporter, “made us think that our lot was cast in pleasant places when we put our legs under their mahogany table for our Christmas dinner of 1884."

May your Christmas be just as pleasant.

St. Helena Cathedral

On Christmas morning in 1914 at 10 o’clock, the fifteen bells in the St. Helena Cathedral spire rang out for the first time inviting all to the dedication mass. Fifteen hundred people filled the sanctuary to capacity. The service culminated a six-year building project, and the cathedral was still unfinished, but the community did not seem to notice the lack of stained glass windows and statuary familiar today. The Right Reverend Bishop John B. Carroll conducted a memorable service, noting the absence of the two major contributors. Peter Larson, who died in 1908, was one major donor, and Thomas Cruse was the other. Cruse, who had died a few days before, gave $100,000 toward the building costs and paid for the fifteen bells in memory of his daughter, Mamie. The day after Christmas, the first Requiem Mass in the new cathedral was sung for him. Cruse’s life was a rags to riches tragedy. An Irish immigrant, he rose from poverty with the discovery of the Drumlummon Mine near Marysville. Cruse’s wife died in 1886, leaving him to raise an infant daughter. An overprotective and domineering father, he nearly smothered her.

Mamie Cruse. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-807

Strong-willed Mamie was her father’s match. Three times married, twice divorced, and estranged from her father, she lived a life of dissipation and died in 1913 at twenty-seven. Each of the Cathedral bells is inscribed to Mamie and so they are sometimes called “Mamie’s Bells.” Montana historian Richard B. Roeder intended to write about Mamie's Bells but died in 1995 before he could fulfill that desire. Roeder’s obituary appeared on the Independent Record’s front page on Christmas Eve. By the strangest coincidence, next to his picture was Martin Kidston’s story of Mamie's Bells.

Daddy Reeves

A. I. “Daddy” Reeves came to Helena in 1892 and became a Christmas institution. The Reeves Music House brought many fine musicians and musical events to Helena. Reeves liked to tell the story about how he got his name. His parents weren’t much on naming their large brood of children, and when he went to school, the only name he had was Baby. The teacher suggested he needed a name, so he came up with initials he chose from the alphabet the teacher had hung on the wall. The A and I don’t stand for anything. In 1928, Reeves’s business and a huge collection of sheet music went up in smoke when lightning struck a rooftop and burned nearly an entire city block. Reeves did not lament. He started again and ran his shop until he retired in about 1945 and moved to the Masonic home in the Helena Valley. Reeves, known to hundreds of kids as Daddy, taught music lessons to hundreds of Helena youths. He organized Helena’s newsboys and the kids at Intermountain Children’s Home and St. Joseph’s Orphanage into choirs and harmonica bands.

Daddy Reeves stands at left with the Montana Deaconess School harmonica choir in 1929.
Photo courtesy Intermountain. L.H. Jorud, photographer

Most children did not suspect that for more than fifty years Daddy Reeves was the official Elks Lodge Santa Claus. He never duplicated his grand entrances. He arrived by steam automobile or horse-drawn sleigh and once hid for hours in a fireplace at the Montana Club before bursting out. In 1944, when Reeves played Santa for the fiftieth time at age eighty-two, the Helena Independent wished him the same amount of happiness to carry him over the trail of love, kindness, and joy he blazed for Helena boys and girls.

P.S. Christmas seems to inspire good works, even from the Anaconda Company.

Lew Switzer’s Christmas Message

“If the Hoosier was for men,” read Lew Swtizer’s 1918 Christmas ad, “every modern business…would have [one].” In Kalispell, Montana, and elsewhere across the nation, the Hoosier was a much-desired Christmas gift. Switzer, a Kalispell furniture dealer, bluntly claimed that if this poplar kitchen cabinet could make man’s work easier, no man would be without one. But “men carelessly leave thoughts of efficiency behind when business hours are over.” The ad theorized that most of the nation’s work really took place in the American kitchen where millions of women spent long hours walking needless miles from one corner of the room to the other, and back again.  Organization could prevent all that walking. Switzer’s ad went on the point out that the Hoosier “restores charm to home keeping, prevents waste, and conserves strength.”

Kalispell Daily Inter Lake, December 6, 1918

The Hoosier, often found today in antique and second-hand stores, was the most popular type of kitchen cabinet from the late 1890s into the 1920s. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company adapted a baker’s cabinet to make the first model, on the market in 1899. Hoosiers were either wooden or enameled metal.The usually included drawers, cupboards, shelves, tea and coffee canisters, sugar and flour bins, spice racks with special glass containers, and work space. Until the 1920s, kitchens did not usually have built-in cabinetry, and so the Hoosier and other similar pieces of kitchen furniture were essential to a well-run kitchen. The Hoosier “released the bonds of drudgery” and made a woman’s kitchen practical and serviceable. The 1918 Hoosier had space for storing four hundred items, all at arm’s reach. Switzer encouraged his customers to “make one heart glad” at Christmastime and give the gift of convenience. Playing upon patriotism as the nation celebrated the recent end of World War I, Switzer admonished men declaring, “It is your patriotic duty to buy useful gifts and to buy early. So select your Hoosier at once.”

P.S. Remember these holiday advertisements?

Long George Francis

One of the most colorful characters of the High Line was an old time cowboy who came to a hideous end. Long George Francis was well known on the rodeo circuit. He lived along the Milk River west of Havre on a small ranch.

This photo of Long George Francis was taken at the Great Northern Montana Stampede in Havre
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 952-167

But Francis lived by the old range rules, believing unbranded stock was fair game. Times were changing, range laws evolving, and opinions about Francis were divided. Some were outraged when the court convicted Francis of grand larceny for the theft of a bay mare. Others saw Francis as a cattle rustler and approved of his conviction. But after sentencing in 1918, Francis went into hiding. He was on the lam for two years until he finally grew tired of running. On Christmas Eve, 1920, he prepared to give himself up to serve his sentence. But first he determined to make one last trip to visit his schoolteacher girlfriend near the Canadian border. He loaded his car with apples and gifts for her and the children and started out on the journey. It was snowing and cold. Thirty miles northwest of Havre in the middle of nowhere, he wrecked his car and broke his leg in the accident. Fashioning a splint from an apple box, he tried to crawl for help. Exhausted and in pain with little hope of rescue, Francis slit his own throat and bled to death in the snow.

The Gold Nugget

In the early summer of 1857, Granville Stuart and his brother James were en route from California to visit their parents in Iowa. Granville became very ill near the future site of Corrine, Utah, delaying their journey for seven weeks. During this delay, an armed confrontation between the Mormon settlers in Utah and the United States government made travel along the emigrant routes impossible. When Granville could travel, Hudson’s Bay employee Jacob Meek advised them to head for the Beaverhead valley where they could safely wait out the Mormon conflict.

Granville Stuart, 1883. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-260

It was this circumstance that led to Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. On Christmas Day of 1857, as the Stuarts and others camped in the Beaverhead valley, trader Richard Grant had built a three-room log cabin for his family, and he invited those camped in the area to Christmas dinner. Among the invited guests were the Stuart brothers, Jacob Meek, and Reece Anderson. Grant had hoarded some flour for the feast. The men had not tasted bread in a long time, and so soda bread, chokecherry preserves, dried buffalo meat, boiled smoked buffalo tongue, and coffee made a remarkable feast. Granville’s widow many years later claimed that at this Christmas dinner, Richard Grant gave Granville a gold nugget as a gift, claiming it had been mined at a certain creek in the territory. This supposedly led the Stuarts and Reece Anderson to prospect along Gold Creek the following May 1858. There they made Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. It was later proven, however, that the gold nugget Christmas gift that prompted the Stuart party to prospect had really been mined in California. So that first gold discovery was actually an incredible coincidence.

P.S. Remember Granville's crazy book-buying trip?

Friday Photo: Butte's Christmas Tree

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Workers used mechanical assistance to decorate this tree outside the Butte courthouse circa 1917. Have you put your tree up yet?

P.S. Remember this homesteader's Charlie Brown tree?

Merry Christmas!

I hope you woke up to a full stocking this morning. Merry Christmas!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

The Orr children of Dillon, Montana, hung their stockings and waited for Santa in this c. 1928 photo.
P.S. Dillon was at the center of a stocking controversy in the 1920s.

Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s Benevolence

The Anaconda Copper Mining Company controlled much of Montana in the first half of the twentieth century, and many compared its grip to a giant snake coiled around the state.


"In the coils of the Anaconda," Butte Daily Bulletin, October 2, 1920

The company tried to soften that negativity by doing good works, especially at Christmastime. The three hundred children at the state orphanage at Twin Bridges especially benefited from the company’s public generosity. In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, the company carried out what the Anaconda Standard termed its “annual task of love.” Children at the orphanage were asked to submit a first and second request from Santa Claus, and the list then went to the Anaconda Company offices in Butte. Secretarial staff then did the shopping, choosing gifts according to the list. Among the gifts in 1934 were sheepskin coats, doll buggies, pleated hip skirts, skates, tinker toys, Tarzan books, phonographs, sleds, leatherette helmets, wrist watches, Brownie cameras, and bamboo fishing outfits. Staff individually wrapped each gift and decorated it with ribbons, tinsel, and ornaments, topping the finished package with a Christmas card bearing the child’s name and cottage number. The children lived in cottages on the property and each cottage had its own individual tree. Late on Christmas Eve, the gifts, along with a generous supply of candy and nuts, were placed beneath the trees in their respective cottages. The Anaconda Company extended equal benevolence to the children at the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Galen and the crippled children of Butte. At least on Christmas morning, the coiled snake of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company directed its grip to a truly needy population and used its wealth to do something good.

Miles City Christmas 1884

Miles City, Montana, looked forward to the holidays in 1884. On Christmas Eve, the Daily Yellowstone Journal instructed its readers to “Get the hinges of your jaws ready to warble “Merry Christmas” to friends and neighbors. And be sure,” said the Journal, “to clear your chimneys for the descent of Kris Kringle.” But not entirely in the Christmas spirit, the Journal recorded the final percentile grades of public school students, certainly embarrassing several like George Busch of the senior class who earned a 40, Kate Cupples who earned a 56, and others. Now that’s a gift for a parent—to have your child’s ill achievement published in the newspaper, and on Christmas Eve.

From Chronicling America, Library of Congress

On a more festive note, the Journal advertised the perfect Christmas present: The Missouri Steam Washer. No home, said the Journal, is complete without it. Patented in 1883, the advertisement claimed that the contraption was so simple to use that a ten-year-old could do the family wash in an hour. Wouldn’t the kids love that present! Or you could buy a buffalo coat for $15, or pantaloons for $1.50. And the Journal had some advice on sizing up the roasted Christmas turkey: “Don’t look in its mouth as if it were an old horse with a tooth ache,” said the Journal. “Just gently dislocate its wings. If it’s old and tough, you’ll have to tug pretty hard on the flappers.” When it comes to dessert, said the Journal, there will be no poison in your pastry if you use Dr. Price’s pure extract of vanilla. So shake the snow out of the Christmas tree and unhinge your jaws for Christmas dinner.

100 Christmases

Mary McGinnis of Butte celebrated her 100th Christmas in 1934. Andrew Jackson was president when she was born in 1834, and she was married in New York before the Civil War began. Her husband left for the gold fields of California, promising to send for her if things worked out. He did send for her in 1861, and that Christmas is the one of all the one hundred that she always remembered. That Christmas Day in 1861 found Mrs. McGinnis aboard a schooner off the coast of Central America bound for San Francisco, not far from where the Panama Canal today joins the two oceans. But there was no such shortcut back then, and ships had to go all the way around the horn of South America to reach California.

An advertisement for passage on a ship like the one on which Mary McGinnis sailed

Mrs. McGinnis recalled that Christmas morning on the ship, crowded with miners bound to try their luck in California. The Christmas spirit was strong among that motley group. A storm raged off the coast and waves dashed against the sides of the ship, yet the group paused for a short service to commemorate the meaning of the holiday. The vessel creaked and lurched, and a hush fell over the rough miners and assorted passengers and crew. “I could never forget it,” said Mrs. McGinnis, “if I lived another hundred years.” In due time the ship arrived at San Francisco, and Mrs. McGinnis was reunited with her husband.  She later lived in most of the major gold camps in the West and came to Butte to live with a daughter after her husband died. She outlived her daughter and most of her family, and cherished their memories, but that one Christmas aboard the ship was to her the most memorable.

Ice Skating in Butte

Butte celebrated the long-anticipated formal opening of the Pavilion Ice Rink, the largest and finest rink west of Chicago, late in 1884. The amphitheater was located on Alaska Street, one block east of the Butte Silver Bow County Courthouse, where the parking lot of the Butte-Silver Bow Archives is today. During the weeks leading up to the opening, the Daily Miner reported problems in freezing the rink because of the vast area of ice it required. The skating area was 9,000 square feet. A culvert supplying water for the ice ran beneath a cement floor. The ice was formed in thin layers of fine spray to a final depth of six inches. The process was labor intensive, and thus the opening was postponed throughout December as managers worked to build up the layers of ice. Finally, a pre-opening Grand Masquerade on December 20 attracted skaters from Anaconda and Deer Lodge. The Northern Pacific offered special rates and reserved seats at no extra charge for those out-of-towners attending the gala. The event featured floral arrangements from San Francisco, a flowing bronze fountain from Chicago that cost $600, special effects from new electric lighting, a newly uniformed brass band, a completely dust-free environment, and four hundred pairs of the celebrated New York Club skates for rent. There was also an experienced bouncer to make certain no bad characters gained admittance. After the preview on December 20, the rink opened to the public on Christmas Day, and on New Year’s Eve, professional skaters from back East promised the best entertainment ever produced on ice. The rink, however, proved too difficult to maintain, and soon it was no more.

May your holidays be as festive as those celebrations.



Postcard courtesy Nancy Oram



Friday Photo: Christmas Tree

Now that you know the stories of Montana's first two national Christmas trees (here and here), have a look at this photo of a less spectacular (but no less heartwarming) Christmas tree.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 945-214

Maurice Hain decked this one out and posed beside it in 1936. Have you put up a tree yet?

P.S. I'll be talking and signing books this morning at 11:30 at the Montana Historical Society. Hope to see you there!

Montana's Second National Christmas Tree

Montana has three times contributed the nation’s official Christmas tree, in 1958, 1989, and most recently in 2008. The second time, 1989, was the year Montana celebrated its statehood centennial. That year the national Christmas tree came from the Kootenai National Forest in Lincoln County. In October of 1989, the Capitol Christmas Tree Committee advertised for a woodcutter to cut the chosen tree. The committee was looking for a person with community involvement who knew how to use a chain saw. They found their man in Bill Crismore, president of the Montana Logging Association, who was a Libby resident active in the community. On Saturday November 18, a crowd gathered to see the giant Engelmann Spruce felled. But as Crismore’s chainsaw did its work, the tree had a mind of its own and fell the wrong way, narrowly missing 300 spectators. Attached cables diverted its path, and the tree fell across a truck instead of into the road. Efforts to move it caused its upper trunk to snap, and the tree could not be used.

Bozeman Daily Chronicle, November 19, 1989
Clipping from the Montana Historical Society Research Center vertical file

Fortunately, there was another choice that had actually been the favorite in the first place. The 43-year-old, 67-foot Engelmann Spruce was soon felled and on its way to Washington, D.C. The limbs of the broken tree were cut and sent along with the new tree for use in case its branches were broken in transit. Crismore later said ruefully that had he known so many people would be present, he would have chosen the second tree anyhow. People milling around and children running in and out impeded his work and made the felling more dangerous and difficult to calculate.


Preparing the tree for its trip to DC. Western News, November 1989
Clipping from the Montana Historical Society Research Center vertical file

Montana’s First National Christmas Tree

Montana has donated the national Christmas tree displayed outside on the White House lawn three times:  in 1958, 1989, and 2008. The tradition of the national tree stretches back to President Calvin Coolidge. During his administration in 1923, the Society for Electrical Development conceived the idea of a national decorated tree to encourage electricity and electric lighting in holiday decorating.

The first national Christmas tree was lit on December 24, 1923.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, National Photo Company Collection, LC-F81- 28049

The national outdoor tree has since become the official symbol of the holiday season, but also symbolizes current events. For example, from 1942 to 1944 during World War II blackouts prevented lighting the tree; in 1980 the tree was only fully lit for 417 seconds, each second symbolized each day hostages had been in captivity in Iran; in 1985, lights were dimmed on Christmas Eve in observance of American hostages in Lebanon, and in 2001 families of victims of 9/11 participated in the lighting of the tree. The trees have come from across the nation. Sometimes they have been cut trees, and sometimes living trees that were later planted. In 1958, Montana got its first turn to supply the national tree. The Libby Chamber of Commerce presented President Dwight Eisenhower with an Engelmann Spruce cut in the Kootenai National Forest. The tree was 99 feet tall, but cut 24 feet up its base to make a 75-foot tree. The tree, weighing some 5,000 pounds, rested on two flatbed rail cars with its branches wrapped and cradled for the 2,490-mile journey from Libby to Washington, D.C. President Eisenhower tripped the electric switch on December 24. Today, trees are lit early in December to allow a longer holiday season.

Friday Photo: Healthful Holiday

Will you be cooking a Christmas feast like this one that Rose Drew Paulley hosted in Lavina in 1938?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

We tend to overindulge during these special times of year, and we pay for those extra pounds in the New Year. But it's not a modern problem, as an article from 1881 goes to show...

In 1881, Montana newspapers ran an article cautioning holiday hostesses to think carefully about the health of their guests. "Friends," said the article, "those of you who expect to treat your children to a holiday feast, let us give you a hint. Why are all our holidays filled with unreasonable feasting? Overeating at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s causes sickness, and doctors always expect to be busy at this time of year. Instead of loading the table with certain foods that injure the digestive system and work mischief in every part of one’s vital organs, wouldn’t it be better to put more healthful foods on the table? How can certain foods be pronounced unwholesome and bad for you, but at those special times of the year considered good and desirable? Women control the meals in their households and could greatly reform the world if they heeded this advice and put wholesome food that does not stimulate the palate into gluttony on their tables." The article went on to point out that there are other ways people get sick during the holidays besides overindulging. Keeping late hours then sleeping late, compressing the stomach in tight clothing, wearing thin shoes, neglecting to bathe to keep the pores open, exchanging warm daytime clothing for evening attire, eating at irregular times, fretting over unimportant issues and taking quack medicines for imaginary maladies all compound the misery of holiday ill health. Back in 1881, these things were all of concern. Things haven’t changed very much, have they?

P.S. Remember this 1893 recipe for duck?