Celebrating Christmas in Wolf River, Ahnapee & Algoma

Christmas is Christmas. The reason for it never changes, though over the years its celebration has. Wolf River’s first Christmas 163 years ago was much different than Algoma's was a short 50 years later. The early families knew about Father Christmas but possibly not of Clement Moore's description of him. Howling of wolves surely broke an otherwise silent night,  but it is doubtful the families sang about it, and a white Christmas on the Door County peninsula was more of a fact than a dream.

In the tiny 1851 settlement called Wolf River, there were three families. The Hughes and Tweedales arrived on June 28, 1851. Warners came a week later on the 4^th of July. They survived eking out a living in a wilderness with only themselves upon whom to depend. For as much food as they had laid by, it was running out by Christmas. An icing Lake Michigan was not conducive to a trip to Manitowoc by small sailboat, and a trip on foot along the shore was more than arduous. It was unsafe. Nevertheless, someone would have to try it, but it had to wait.

Christmas Day found the three families together celebrating the birth of the Christ child. There was no clergyman reading the Christmas story from a bible. The dinner menu was one most Algoma residents would be unfamiliar with – a salt pork pie – and one they’d rather stay unfamiliar with!  If gifts were exchanged, they weren’t recorded, but it is likely that on his trips to Manitowoc, Orrin Warner brought something for the children’s stockings. Perhaps he returned with yarn so his wife Jane could knit mittens or stockings. Perhaps he brought candy canes. Maybe he carved little toys or even built a sled. Nobody knows for certain.

As Wolf River grew and turned into Ahnapee and then Algoma, Christmas celebrations changed. Twenty-two years after that first Christmas, the fledgling Record told of angels singing and merry throngs of residents looking forward to a new light. Christmas was not yet commercialized. At least not in Ahnapee. That 1873 paper also told of a Christmas Eve program planned by the Philothean Society. Unusual by 2014 standards, the activities included a debate discussing the how detrimental Great Britain’s rule of Ireland was. An essay and an oration rounded out the evening’s program. If there was a tiny bit of Christmas in that program, it wasn’t mentioned. By 1881, the Enterprise used Christmas to make sport of Ahnapee girls, saying they washed their stockings so they could hoist them up with pulleys to ensure Santa would fill them. The Record countered with the smell of Kewaunee stockings and then went on to say that most Kewaunee girls never wore them because it was nearly impossible to find any big enough. The papers didn’t stop the barbs long enough to reflect the cheer and good feelings of the season.

Church services reflect joyously on the birth of Christ. But, services have changed too. Franz Gruber composed Silent Night in 1818, but more than likely the early Ahnapee choirs had never heard of it. The arrival of pastors meant church services for most, though the Record pointed out the Baptists’ lack of services during the 1880s. After 1900 the paper noted how the pastors put effort into the services, with some even arranging to have Christmas trees. In an effort to augment income, Ahnapee and Algoma ship captains made one last trip in November or early December, taking Christmas trees from the north woods to Milwaukee and Chicago, at first supplying mostly the German immigrant population. Ironically, years before, in 1851, a Lutheran church in Cleveland, Ohio made news when it had a Christmas tree, which some called “idolatry.”

By 1904 Christmas was again changing. Algoma was filled with Christmas spirit and yuletide greetings. Church services were important. College students joined their families, and relatives went back and forth visiting each other.

Schools offered programs open to the entire community. Children recited their pieces, sang songs and acted in skits. Algoma’s school presentation was on December 23^rd in 1909 as was Slovan’s in 1923, unheard of in 2014 when the hustle and bustle would never allow it. Most school programs included a visit from Santa Claus who brought popcorn balls and candy canes. Vacation followed.

When Mrs. C.L. Barnes opened her new store before Christmas 1909, she invited women to purchase her new Haights Vegetable Silk Hosiery, something known for durability. It was noticed that baby things were being purchased while Algoma teachers spent noon hour shopping for gifts for each other during one of the institutes. That brought questions. What was it that not everybody in the small town knew? Boedecker's drug store advertised “Elegant Toilet Sets,” - in those days meaning a comb, brush and mirror – while Kwapil was offering opportunities with sale merchandise.

RFD had come into effect throughout the county on November 20, 1904 and a month later the Record told residents how to meet the letter of the law by keeping their mailboxes open and snow cleared. Christmas cards were introduced in England years before and it was RFD that helped them spread in the U.S. Red Cross continued fundraising efforts in 1909 selling stamps to “Stamp Out Tuberculosis.” It was a good year. Christmas mail was getting so heavy by 1923 that Casco’s mail carriers Christ Drury and Joe Koss made no secret of looking forward to January.

Quiren Groessl was a soldier at Camp MacArthur in 1917 when his Christmas note reported that the men were anxious to get to the battlefields of France. Kewaunee Mayor Edward Seyk had gone to the Texas camp to visit all the Kewaunee County boys while the county’s women kept on with their Red Cross work, thus helping the fighting men. The women of St. Paul’s were putting together boxes for Indian missions in the Southwest.

For 10 or 15 cents, residents in 1916 saw matinee and evening Christmas Eve showings at the Majestic. Viola Allen started in the 6-reel feature The White Sister. Bank of Algoma knew their customers would be pleased to receive a pretty calendar when they called for it.

Schubich’s Furniture reported in 1923 that rocking chairs were the #1 gift, followed by pictures. Guth’s music store customers dug deep in their pockets to buy 4 pianos and 15 phonographs. Barney Google was the most popular sheet music, followed by Bohemian and German waltzes. Melchior’s jewelry store knew many young girls were getting wrist watches, while Joe Charlier said his customers were buying clocks. Both were selling diamond rings. Bach-Dishmaker knew that most would be receiving sensible handkerchiefs and socks, but also knew which woman was getting a $100 coat, a big ticket item. LaPalina and Harvester cigars and sweaters were also on lists. Shaving sets were the fad at Groessl’s drug store but L.J. Englebert said heavy clothing was not moving. Merchants were looking for snow and a threatening sky, sure to help sales because the weather was too warm. Lidral-Gerhart was selling kerosene and gas lamps, Pyrex baking ware and jackknives. Weather wasn’t important there.

Christmas celebrations evolved. Clement Moore’s Visit From St. Nicholas was published anonymously in 1823. Moore told us about Santa's twinkling eyes and the "little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly." White Rock Beverages used a red and white image of the jolly old man as early as 1915. We wonder what we will receive on the first day of Christmas and every other day. Irving Berlin has us still dreaming of a white Christmas, and journalist and humorist Helen Brooks White wrote, “To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult every year.” Isaiah said, “For unto us a child is born,” and Luke said, “She brought forth her firstborn and wrapped him in swaddling clothes…..” And as the familiar carol goes, “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."

Sources: Ahnapee Record and Algoma Record Herald;  An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Commercial History of Algoma Wisconsin, Vols. 1 & 2, c. 2006 & 2012; Here Comes the Mail, Post Offices of Kewaunee County, c. 2010; postcards are in the blogger's collection.