heats. If you win the first one, you get your shopping done on the day
before. If you win the second, you get through Christmas Day, before
your patience and good spirits give out. Of course, New Yorkers, like
yourselves, who indulge in families and other old customs, have a mighty
good time out of it. Christmas with a family is great anywhere on earth.
But that isn't New York's fault. If you didn't have a family, you would
be dining out or going to some matinée or sitting around watching the
clock. That's where it is your solemn duty to envy Homeburg if you
never have done it before. And that's why I would be homesick to-day if
you had fed me four dinners, Mrs. Jim, and had been a whole covey, or
bevy, or flock, or constellation of angels--whichever is correct.
I don't mean to say that we get any more at Christmas than you do. We
enjoy and endure our presents, same as any one else. And we have just as
hard a time buying them. There aren't enough people in Homeburg to make
a Christmas jam, but we have our own line of troubles. The question in
Homeburg is not how to keep from spending so much money but how to spend
what we have. The storekeepers don't pamper us. In fact they are severe
with us. If we don't buy what they offer the first year, they store it
up, and we have to take it the next Christmas. When the Homeburg
storekeepers have had a bad season, it's up to us to go back the next
year and face the same old line of junk, knowing it will be there until
we give in and buy it. There are two Christmas gift edition copies of
Trilby still on sale in Homeburg, and Sam Green the druggist has had a
ten-dollar manicure set on sale for ten years now. He won't get another,
either. Says he was stung on the first one, and he's going to get his
money back before he goes in any deeper. It goes down about fifty cents
a year in price, and last year Jim Reebe almost bought it at four
dollars and seventy-five cents for Selma Snood. We have hopes of him
this year--unless he and Selma quarrel or get married, either of which
will be fatal.
No, we have our troubles, same as you do, and Homeburg is full, on the
day before Christmas, of worried fathers who duck into the stores about
seven P.M. and try to buy enough stuff to eat up a ten dollar bill
before the doors close. But that's a minor detail. What makes me love
our Christmas is its communism. Christmas isn't a family rite in
Homeburg. It's a town festival, a cross between Home-coming Week and a
general amnesty celebration.
[Illustration: In Homeburg you come home to the whole town.]
People come home for Christmas all over the world, but in Homeburg you
don't merely come home to your family, you come home to the whole town.
A week before the twenty-fifth the clans begin to gather. Usually the
college folks come first. Sometimes we have as many as a dozen, and the
whole town is on edge to see them. It's next to a circus parade in
interest because you never can tell what new sort of clothes the boys
are going to spring on us. In the grand old days when DeLancey Payley
and Sam Singer used to blow in for Christmas, they walked up from the
depot between double lines of admirers, and their clothes never failed
to strike us with awe. I remember the year when Sam came home with one
of those overcoats with a sort of hood effect in the back. I never
saw one before or since. He was also wearing a felt hat as flat as a
soup plate that year and a two-quart pipe fitted carefully into his
face, and when old Bill Dorgan, the drayman, saw him, he threw up both
hands and cried, "My gosh, it ain't possible!"
Then the children begin coming back. There is a great difference between
Homeburg and New York regarding children. In New York a child is
personal property. But in Homeburg a child belongs to the whole town. A
birth notice is a real news item in Homeburg. I suppose every baby is
personally inspected by at least two hundred citizens. We criticize
their care and feeding, suggest spanking when they are a little older,
quiver unanimously with horror when they begin to "flip" freight trains,
or get scarlet fever, and watch them grow up as eagerly as you New
Yorkers watched the Woolworth Building. When they are graduated from
high school we are all there with bouquets and presents, and we have an
equity in the whole brood. Molly Strawn, the washerwoman's daughter, got
more flowers than any one last year. And when they leave town to get a
job, if they are boys, or when some rude outsider breaks in with a
marriage license and despoils us of them, if they are girls, we all feel
the loss.
That's why Christmas means so much more to us. At Christmas time the
town children come home. Will Askinson comes home from Chicago. He's
doing very well up there, and it takes him two hours to get the length
of Main Street on the first day after he arrives. Every one has to hear
about it. Sadie Gastit comes home from Des Moines with a baby; regular
custom of hers. Sometimes she makes the same baby do for two years, but
usually it's a new one. I remember Sadie when she was only knee high to
a grasshopper, and her mother spanked her for climbing the Republican
flagpole during the McKinley campaign. The Flint children come down from
Chicago to visit their aunt. There were only a boy and girl when they
left fifteen years ago. Now there are eleven, counting wife, husband,
and acquisitions. Last year Ad Bridge brought a new wife home from
Denver to show us. Year before last Miss Annie Simms, who has been
teaching in Minneapolis, brought down a young man to show to her family.
She was going to be exclusive about it, but did it work? Not much. She
had to show him all around. We just happened over there in droves.
Everybody loves Annie and we were afraid for a little while that she was
going to be an old maid. The young man will bring her down this year I
suppose. They were married last June.
All the Homeburg children and grandchildren arrive in the last two days
before Christmas. They go home to their folks to deposit their baggage,
and then they all come down-town to the post-office, to get the mail
ostensibly but in reality to shake hands all around. The day before
Christmas is one long reception on Main Street. The old town fairly
hums.
As a matter of fact, Christmas is a good deal like a Union Depot. The
approaches are the most important part of it. By the day before
Christmas every one is feeling so good that things begin to happen.
People whom you have never suspected of caring for you come up to your
office and leave things--cigars, and toys for the children, and
Christmas cards. Men with whom you have quarreled during the year shake
hands violently all around a circle on the street, and when they come to
you they grab yours, too; and you begin to talk elaborately as if
nothing had happened--a good deal like two women wading through a formal
call; and it makes you feel so good that pretty soon you buy a box of
Colorado Durable cigars and you go over to the office of some man for
whom you have cherished an undying hatred, because he didn't vote for
you for the school board. You peek in his door, and if he isn't there
you go in and leave the cigars with your compliments.
There's never been a Christmas at home when I haven't been operated on
for a grouch of this sort, and most always it comes the day before. If I
had my way there wouldn't be any Christmas--only the day before. On the
day before you're so tickled over what the other folks are going to get
from you, and so full of pleased anticipation over what you may get from
the others, that good humor just bursts out all over you like spring
waters from the mountainside.
On Christmas Eve in Homeburg we all go to the Exercises to hear the
children perform. They build churches in Homeburg with big doors, so
that they can get big Christmas trees in them, and we grown-ups go
early in order to hear the kids squeal with wonder when they come in and
see those thirty-foot miracles in candles and tinsel, down in front.
Homeburg children are divided into two classes--those who get all of
their presents on the church Christmas trees and have to worry through
the next day without any additional excitement, and those who have to
sit through the Christmas Eve exercises with only a sack of candy to
sustain them and who land heavily the next day. The discussion as to
which is the better way has raged for a generation, anyway; at least my
chum and I discussed it every year when we were boys, he adhering to the
Christmas tree plan, and I to the homemade Christmas. And last year,
when he came back, we began it all over again, he claiming it was cruel
for me to make my children wait until Christmas Day, and I pitying his
poor youngsters for getting done with Christmas before it began.
Anyway, Christmas Eve is a grand occasion in the churches, and every
year I notice with amazement that some youngster whom I remember as
having been formally introduced to society through her birth notice only
a few weeks ago, seems to me, has gotten large enough to get up on the
platform and speak a piece. They do it at the most unheard-of ages. I
believe there are two-year-old orators in the Congregational Sunday
school. I get a good deal of suspense out of some of your baseball games
here, especially when Chicago plays you, but the most suspense per
individual I've ever noticed has been in these Christmas Eve exercises
when some youngster just high enough to step over a crack in the floor
gets up to recite a piece, and fourteen parents and relatives lean
forward and forget to breathe until he has gotten his forty words out,
wrong end to, and has been snatched off the stage by his relieved
mother.
Competition gets into everything, and it has marred our Christmas
exercises a little lately. The Methodists are growing fast and are very
ambitious. A few years ago they rented the Opera House, put in two
Christmas trees, with a real fireplace between and a Santa Claus who
came out of it, and charged ten cents admission. That embittered us
Congregationalists. It smacked of commercialism to us, and we would not
budge an inch--besides, there wasn't another Opera House to rent. So,
nowadays, our spirit of good-fellowship on Christmas Eve is sort of
absent-minded and anxious. We are always counting up our attendance and
sizing up our tree, and then sliding over to the Opera House and looking
over the Methodist layout. Sometimes we beat them, but generally they
have a regular mass meeting and make a barrel of money. Last year they
turned people away and brought Santa Claus on the stage in a real
automobile. We were so jealous that we could hardly cool down in time
for Christmas dinner.
As a matter of fact, the only unimportant part of our Christmas season
is Christmas Day itself. It is a sort of hiatus in the great doings.
When we go home on Christmas Eve, it is with a great peace. We have
bought our presents. We have greeted all the returned prodigals. We have
made up with a few carefully selected enemies. Our children have spoken
their pieces successfully at the Exercises, and have gotten a good start
on the job of eating their way through a young mountain range of mixed
candies and nuts. All the hustle and worry is over, and we are
unanimously happy. The week following Christmas will be one dizzy round
of parties and teas for the visitors, and Homeburg will be a delightful
place full of the friends of boyhood, with an average of one reunion
every fifteen minutes in and out of business hours. But on Christmas Day
nothing will happen except the dinner. We'll get our presents in the
morning, and then at noon the great crisis will come. We'll either
conquer the dinner, or it will conquer us.
You know how it is, Jim, because that's the kind of dinner you had
to-day. It was an Athletic Feat--not the ordinary kind of city dinner
where you save up carefully during seven courses, and finish strong on
the water crackers and cheese, but a real Christmas gorge. Every time I
sit down to a Christmas dinner in Homeburg, I feel more strongly than
ever that each guest should have his capacity stenciled on him. They are
more careful of box cars in this country than they are of humans. You
never see a box car that doesn't have "Capacity, 100,000 lbs." stenciled
on its sides. And they don't overload that car. There have been times
when, if I could have had "Capacity, two turkey thighs, one wish-bone,
trimmings, and two pieces of pie" stenciled on me, I would have gotten
along better. I think they ought to try to make these Olympic games more
useful to our nation by instituting a Christmas dinner marathon. If we
have to eat for two hours and a quarter, top speed, once or twice a
year, we ought to train up to the task as a nation.
I always feel a little bit nervous about Christmas dinner before it
comes, but I never shirk. As a matter of fact, it isn't really
dangerous. As far as I know, no one has ever actually exploded in
Homeburg on Christmas Day, and we all seem to get away with the job in
pretty fair shape. But it spoils the day for anything else. The town is
full, in the afternoon, of partially paralyzed men lying around on sofas
in a comatose condition, like anacondas sleeping off their bi-monthly
lunch. Homeburg is absolutely dead for the rest of the day. If a fire
broke out on Christmas afternoon, I don't believe even Chief Dobbs would
have the energy to get up and put on his helmet. It's hard on the exiled
men who just run down for Christmas Day from the cities. They don't get
in on anything but the eating. Sam Frazier struck last year. Said he
wasn't going to pay ten dollars fare and incidentals any more, to come
down from Chicago on Christmas Day for an all-afternoon view of his
brother's feet as said brother lay piled up on the sofa. He was going to
come down after this on the Fourth of July.
It doesn't affect the women so badly because they don't eat so much.
They haven't time. It takes two women to steer one child safely through
a Christmas dinner, anyway, and about three to get the ruins cleared
away in time to get up a light lunch in the evening for the reviving
hosts. If there is any one time when I would care less to be a woman
than at any other time, it is on Christmas afternoon, when her men-folks
have gone to sleep and have left her with a few cross children and a
carload of Christmas dinner fragments for company.
That's where you city folks with your servant problem have the best of
us, and I'll not dispute it, Mrs. Jim. On the other hand, the nicest
part of our Homeburg Christmas is the fact that, when we fold our tired
hands over our bulging vests after dinner and lie down to rest, we know
that there is no starving family in Homeburg which has had to celebrate
Christmas by taking on an extra drink of water and indulging in a long,
succulent sniff at a restaurant door.
We have poor people in Homeburg, but we haven't any poverty problem at
Christmas. It's a strictly local issue, and it is handled by the
neighbors. Having lived a long time in the city, Jim, you may not know
what a neighbor is. It's a person who lives close to you and takes a
personal interest in your affairs. A good neighbor is a woman whose
heart is so large that she has had to annex a lot of outlying territory
around the family real estate in order to fill it. No Homeburg woman
would think of constructing an extraordinarily fine pie without sending
a cut over to her nearest neighbor.
About Christmas time we are especially busy neighboring in Homeburg, and
any family which lives near us and isn't going very strong on the
Christmas game, because of sickness or trouble, is our meat. It would be
an insult to go across the town and help a family in some other
neighbor's territory, and that was what got Editor Simpson of the
_Argus_ into trouble a couple of years ago.
Simpson is a young man, a comparative newcomer from the city, and a very
earnest and enterprising party. He runs the _Argus_ on the high gear
and is never so happy as when he is promoting a public movement in real
city style. It occurred to Simpson three years ago that Homeburg ought
not to be behind Chicago in anything, especially at Christmas time, and
so he started a "Good-fellow" movement. They were running it strong in
Chicago that year. Any man who wished to be a "Good Fellow" sent his
name to the "Good-fellow Editor" and offered to provide a Christmas for
one or more poor children. It was a grand idea, stuffed full of
sentiment, and we Homeburg men just naturally ate it up. When the day
before Christmas came, seventy-five "Good Fellows" were on Simpson's
list, and they had offered to take care of one hundred and twenty-five
children, to give each a real Christmas. Simp's office was full of
groceries and toys, applicants were clamoring for children, all was
excitement and enthusiasm--and then a horrible state of affairs was
disclosed. Simpson hadn't provided any children. There was a bleak and
distressing lack of material for us to work upon. In all Homeburg there
weren't ten families who were going without Christmas turkey, or its
equivalent, and in each one of these cases some neighbor had sternly
ordered Simp to keep his hands off and mind his own affairs. There we
were--seventy-five Good Fellows with boatloads of cheer and no way to
dispose of it. The only person we could find in all the town to descend
on was Pat Ryan. We smothered him in groceries, and he ate himself into
biliousness that night and had to have a doctor for three days, which
helped some, but not much. On the whole, it was a dismal failure.
What! Nine o'clock? Excuse me, Jim. I seem to have taken root here. No;
I am going this time. Back to my room with Christmas all gotten through
with, thank goodness and you folks. You understand. You've made it as
nice for me as any two magicians could have done, and I thank you from
the bottom of my heart. But it's my last Christmas in New York, I hope.
Next month the wife and children come on, and by next Christmas, if I
have any luck at all, we'll join the happy army that swoops down on
Homeburg for the holidays. My, but it will be funny to look at the old
town from the outside in! Me--a visitor in Homeburg!
Do you know what prosperity is to a whole mob of city people, Jim? It's
the ability to pack up their families and go off to some Homeburg or
other for Christmas. And do you know what makes city people successful,
in Homeburg opinion? It's coming back every year. And if we made a
million apiece, and didn't preserve enough of the old home-town love to
come back, we wouldn't be successful in their eyes, not by a long way.
Well, good-by, philanthropists. And, thank you, I can't come again next
year. I'm saving up to go home. That's what makes this cigar taste so
good, Jim. Last one I'll smoke until carfare is in the bank.
THE END
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
End of Project Gutenberg's Homeburg Memories, by George Helgesen Fitch