These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
December 21, 2025
This story was written by my aunt Martha Haaby a few years ago about her memories of Christmas as a girl in the 1940s.
Christmas at the Flaten house in Pinecreek
It was a magical time ….our mother, Ida, worked hard to make it exactly that….but first the practical side of things. The baking was done: Lefse, Fattigman, Krumkaka, Rosettes, Sweet Soup.
The tree dad cut was brought in and set up to “thaw” and “settle”
Everything was scrubbed, the curtains were washed, starched, and stretched. All that could be cleaned, was.
We stored the Christmas tree trimmings upstairs on the granary, same place we stored the dynamite, down the box would come. Everything in the box was the same year after year but it was so exciting to open it and start draping and hanging things on the tree. There was always tinsel…had to have tinsel. I still have the gold braid that we draped on every year. It may look kind of pathetic and worn to some but that is not what I see.. ..another decoration I remember were the 3-dimensional 8 point stars that my cousin from Chicago, Dorothy Halling, made. There must have been 15-20 of them. She folded them into that design (origami), then waxed them and applied glitter. We had them on the tree every year and they were stored in “the box”.
Then it was “Little Christmas Eve” (the 23rd) time to just sit and look at the completed preparation for Christmas. So satisfying. So beautiful. And part of this special evening was to have hot chocolate and toast.
Mom still had to go to the barn for milking. When that happened I got busy checking out presents. Once I sneak-peeked one and it was a lamp from my brother Gilmore. It had a very beautiful glazed ceramic dwarf (one of the 7) on the base. My brother Edwin later said he thought some of the dwarfs’ names were Sneezy, Feesey and Dopey.
Supper was served with the best dishes we had, on a white table cloth. Irene had bought Mom silverware, I really mean silverware, It had to be polished after we ate because the lutefisk turned the fork tines black. Usually we had meat balls, pork spare ribs, mashed potatoes, gravy, lutefisk and all the trimmings. Mom was such a good cook, and we ignored the black tines on the forks.
After the dishes were done it was time to go into the other room where the tree was…did I ever believe in Santa Claus! Really truly, I even heard bells . …I don’t know how that happened but I heard them. One Christmas Eve I heard those bells again and Mom said I should go check if there was anything outside….I kind of fearfully opened the outside door and there was the sleigh that we brought wood into the house with, and it was piled with presents!!! We pulled it right into the kitchen…wow what a heart thumper that was.
Much later I learned that my sister Irene who worked at Woodwards (where the Silver Dragon is now) had bought these presents for us. One of the things I got was an overnight case with underwear, one for each day and all different pastel colors, and a half slip that had small silver bells sewed to it. Next time I went down the aisle at the church I put a bit of an extra bounce in my step. Now it was someone else’s turn to hear bells and wonder where they came from!
Quite a few Christmases we got presents from my dad’s sister Gelina in Chicago and my mom’s sister Ethel in St. Louis, MO. Wow, that was fun. Actually, it was more than fun, it took me into the stratosphere.
One year I got a book from Ethel, Rhymes and Limericks. I remember “What makes more noise than a pig caught in a fence?” answer “2 pigs”.
These boxes were not opened so there were individual presents under the tree, no! The entire box was stored upstairs till the big moment, so you never knew who got something or what it could be. The presents under the tree we could do the “whole lot of shaking going on” routine, but this big unopened box, O brother, that was just too much for me…I am a person who, when I get an exciting book, I have to go to the back to see what happens. That barn time was a real opportunity for me to peek and I did. I am sure Mom must have known, how careful can a little kid be? but that was part of what kept things magical. She never said anything about it.
I believe you had to be a kid at heart for a Christmas like ours to work. It was a big effort to do all the things that made it memorable (besides all the everyday stuff that had to be done). To have energy left over to make it magical is what is truly amazing. So one thing for sure was time management …there would be an order, then “And hop to it” was the style that worked at our house. No thinking about it or putting it off, “now” was a good time. And really there was no money … they butchered a hog in November…so we had very good meat… all the food was very good. Our mother deserves all the credit for making things “happen”. We were very blessed, indeed. It is hard to explain.
Talk about barn time…when my friends Kathy and Betty Soltau were over and mom was out of the house we would jump in the folks’ bed. Sometimes we would give it extra effort and get up on the iron headboard and take a leap from there. Adventure, you have to take it where you find it!
Thanks Auntie Martha for taking the time to write this fun story
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.