My birthday is January 5th. Since it is so close to Christmas and New Years, I didn’t have a lot of “typical birthday parties” when I was growing up. Usually my party amounted to having Chuck and maybe one or two other friends over for dinner where I got to choose the menu.
I didn’t usually get big gifts for my birthday because I had already requested them for Christmas. It was more typical for me to get books or socks or things like that. One of my favorite birthday gifts was a giant ½ lb. Hershey candy bar. I wasn’t too particular about the type. I liked Hershey’s Plain, Hershey’s Almond or Mr Goodbar about equally as well. I got one of those quite often for my birthday. I would eat one square a day and it would last several days.
I don’t have many clear memories of specific birthdays except for my 8th birthday. It was special because it was the day I was baptized. Birthday’s were celebrated in our family but the celebrations were usually small and family oriented.
Probably more memorable than my own birthdays were other celebrations. I especially liked Mothers Day and Fathers Day. Most of the time us boys would go together to get Mom or Dad something for their special days but I remember a few times when I bought a separate gift. One of the common gifts for Dad was a “bread and milk bowl”. His bowls were always getting broken so he needed a new one about every year. Sometimes we got him socks or a box of candy bars. Mom usually got chocolates and cards and something pretty if we had the money. In our family it was the sentiment more than the gift that was important so expensive gifts were rare.
We celebrated all the normal holidays like everyone else. For New Years Eve we usually had an oyster stew supper followed by some table games. One tradition we had that was a little unique was to leave an empty plate out on New Years Eve for the New Year to put something on. When we woke up on New Years Day there was usually some candy or cookies or something on our plate from the “New Year”. Not very many families did that but we did almost every year.
For Valentines Day, we used to deliver the valentines to our friends. On valentines night, we would take the valentines and drop them by the door of our friends and then knock and run and hide and watch them come to the door to find the valentines we had left. It took quite a while to visit all the homes of our friends without getting caught. Later on we just exchanged valentines in school. That took a lot of the fun out of Valentines Day.
For St. Patrick’s Day we always made sure we were wearing something green in a visible place. If you didn’t have green on, other kids could pinch you and did. We took it seriously and those without green got quite a few pinches. You usually didn’t forget more than once. We did more around April Fool’s Day then than now. Aunt Ellen was one who loved April Fools Day. When we were living in the valley, she would show up on our doorstep early in the morning with a pan of freshly baked biscuits. We would dig in only to find that she had put cotton in the middle of the biscuits. What a disappointment but what a good joke as well. If it wasn’t cotton biscuits, it was something else but she usually caught us because she did something before we got to school and realized that it was April Fool’s Day.
Easter was always a special holiday because of the significance of the day and because we got to color Easter Eggs. We would usually buy the small pack that had the colored tablets that were used to color the eggs and we usually colored two dozen eggs. Those colored eggs were the ones we used for Easter egg hunts. By the time Easter was over, the eggs were often in pretty bad shape. We not only hunted them, we also ate them. The Easter Eggs were usually colored the Saturday morning before Easter. We heated the water to boil the eggs and then used some of it in cups to color the eggs. As I recall, you had to add vinegar to the water to get the color to stick to the eggs. I always liked the little wax pencil that I could use to write messages on the eggs before putting them in the dye. We made quite a mess but we had lots of fun working together as a family.
Fourth of July was always a fun holiday. That was when Heber had it’s Rodeo. There were lots of activities around the rodeo. Usually there was an early morning flag raising ceremony. For lunch, the ward put on a Bar-B-Que and we usually ate lunch there because Mom was usually helping with the meal. Then there was the rodeo and at night there was usually a show and a dance. We took in the show.
Labor Day was never a big holiday for us. It simply signaled that school was about to begin for another year. Thanksgiving was a different matter. We usually used Thanksgiving as a time to get wood for the winter. Sometimes Vard, Grandma Scott, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Dick would come to Heber to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. We usually had a turkey with all the trimmings for lunch and we usually got at least a couple loads of wood as well.
Christmas was a special holiday. Quite often we went to Mesa to celebrate Christmas because Vard was down there. It was a time when Dad could take off work and we would stay in the valley for a week to ten days. The older boys would wake everyone up at 4-5am and we would gather in Aunt Ellen’s front room for the “Christmas Tree”. After the gifts were passed out Aunt Ellen would prepare a breakfast for everyone. I was the littlest one in the family then but I tried to do all the things the big kids did. Christmas was a family time and I looked forward for it to come around each year.