1948, my parents woke me to see the Christmas tree. It was a small cedar tree because no pines grow naturally here. But instead of the string of electric bulbs usually used, she had found her old candle clips and replicated the tree of her childhood. It stood on her treadle seeing machine, in front of our full length mirror. All other lights were turned off.There is nothing quite like real candlelight through the sparse branches of cedar! My mother, Gladys Gould Roberts, passed away 6 months later. I am so thankful I had this first hand glimpse into the Christmas traditions of the generation before me. Another from that time before my birth that had become a tradition started in early 1900s: oyster soup sometime during the season. My uncles got a shipment of oysters from the East coast to Indiana, on ice, via rail, especially for their mother to fix each year! And these were just ordinary businessmen, not high income men.
