Christmas in Lynn

L-R: Philbert holding Virgene, Aunt Julia, Ellen, Aunt Otilia, & Uncle Lawrence

Christmas was always an exciting time in the Lynn Valley.  I don’t remember as much as I probably should, but none the less we always had a good time.  One of the things we liked to do was to go caroling, we would get on a bob-sleigh and go from house to house and sing Christmas Carols.  We enjoyed doing this and the people whose houses we went to seemed to enjoy it also.  When Laurel Hill was teaching we took Dad’s horses and bob-sleigh, sleigh bells were fastened on to the harnesses.  Simon Baker Jr. was driving the horses.  We had quite a caravan, we had a big sheet of iron hooked behind the sleigh, it was about four feet wide and eight feet long, the front of it was curved up so that it would ride over the snow.  We also had some individual sleds tied on behind and we took turns riding on them.  When we got up by the reservoir, Laurel, tipped her little sled over and hit her forehead on the edge of the big metal slide and when her head started to bleed, we were sure she was going to die.  Needless to say, this stopped our fun afternoon.

The ward met in the school to hold church activities so it was kind of hard to remember which activities were church and which were school.  We used to always have a Santa Clause party and Santa would come with presents for the kids.  We would always try to guess who Santa’s helper was, Aunt Julia was always a dead give away because of her thumbnails which were short and squatty.  We didn’t have electricity, so everyone would bring a lantern or a lamp, or both, to light the school.

We had grades one through eight in the school and everyone would help decorate the room.  Mostly it was paper chains that went crosswise from corner to corner, pulled up in the center and a large bell hung in the center.  The chains would also loop from window to window.  The school program would consist mostly of stories or poems given by the children.  Some years we would put on a one act play.

The folks would generally make their last trip to town to get supplies for the winter sometime before Thanksgiving, then we would be snowed in until some time in April when they would plow the snow out of the road.  One year not long before Christmas, Douglas and I had gone upstairs to bed.  There was a knock on the door and Dad went to see who it was, it was Clement Simper, he said that he was going to Burley tomorrow and wondered if Dad needed any thing.  Dad told him that he had a coaster wagon layed away at Western Auto and he wondered if Clement would bring it home for him.  The next night we had gone to bed and there was a knock on the door.  It was Clement with the wagon.  A few days later the road was still open, so Dad and Mother decided they would go to Burley.  Doug and I stayed home, after the folks were gone, we decided we would find the wagon.  We hunted in the basement, in the garage, the granary, the sheds at the corrals and all the small building, but we couldn’t find any wagon.  Christmas morning when we went down stairs to see what Santa had brought, the wagon was under the tree.  Years later, I asked Dad where he had hid the wagon.  He said he knew we would be looking for it, so he had carried it up to some tall sage brush between our place and Uncle Raymond’s and hid it.

As I mentioned, we didn’t have electricity, so when we, Uncle Raymond and us, decorated our Christmas Trees, we put candle holders on them with candles.  We only put about six or so candles on ours, and when we lit the candles, Dad would have a big bucket of water handy, to put out the fire if one started.  Uncle Raymond had a lot more candles on his.  They were the most beautiful sight I had ever seen when they were lit.  We had our tree up from December 15 to January 6.  Santa’s helpers would come again New Year’s Eve and leave candy and nuts again.