As we turned another page on the calendar, it was a new season as well as a new month. Monday morning last, the frost was as thick as a light snow on the rooftops. It was a very killing frost and the gardens all looked sad once the sun came up to melt the frost and wilt the plants.

With Halloween just behind us, we are close to the winter holiday season. It is a lot different this year. The country is still in mourning and shock and although people are trying to return to normal and maintain our resolve and determination to be strong and united against the evil acts against us, there is a thin veil of caution and thoughtfulness as we think ahead to Thanksgiving and Christmas. We feel a hesitancy about the usual celebrations. We are aware that we need to reassure our children and yes, ourselves, that we need to keep a normalcy about our holidays, even as we try to temper the activities we are used to and keep a more solemn and positive attitude.

I remember when our five children were very young and we lived in the country, we struggled with restrictions imposed by a war and the rationing and the problems it imposed.

In spite of the lack of things we had available, we celebrated the year and holidays; for Thanksgiving we had a really old-fashioned “home grown” meal. It was the first time I had ever kept the Halloween pumpkins and learned how to cook them. We went out in the fields and the small patch of woods near the house and the children all collected dry materials for a winter bouquet. A tall tree on our fence line provided a large box of hickory nuts and another a small amount of butternuts. The garden provided all the food we needed to go with the two chickens from our own flock, instead of a turkey. It was a good holiday in spite of the war’s restrictions.

Christmas in those early years was also mostly “home grown.” We went early to the lot across the road and the children tied ribbons on several evergreen trees – later the man of the house would cut one that had been tagged. We got straw from our small barn, and fixed a crèche alongside the fireplace in our old farmhouse. We had only one string of outdoor lights, so we arranged it in a “V” for victory, a symbol being used both in Great Britain and the United States. There were not as many outdoor lights in those days, but people used many smaller lights than we do now.

That was also one of the years we made bayberry candles. The children picked pails full of the little gray berries in our pasture lot and we kept them in the shed till a day we started candlemaking; we boiled them on the woodstove all one weekend, skimming off the wax as it rose to the surface. That project produced such a small amount of wax from the huge amount of berries that we had to revise our plans to make regular dipped candles to making small, floating ones. They were as fragrant as large ones, and the house smelled so good while they simmered on the stove; it was well worth the effort.

I still have an ornament that David made in the lid of a fruit jar. The children painted the lids, then glued an appropriate picture in the lid and punched a hole in the top for hanging.

All these simple things we did then are good memories and more exciting than walking into the dime store to purchase some kind of glitter.

Maybe in some ways we can all “downsize” the preparations for celebrating holidays this year, and make them more meaningful. It would be nice if children could be included in some simple projects.

The quote last week was by Bob Hope.

Who said, “Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character; it’s not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent”?