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settlers of this area, Christmas was to them a bright, hopeful season in the middle of the year’s dreariest days.
Katherine Riley, of Amissville, who has lived in the county all her life, said that presents for her family of seven were simpler and less expensive than today’s battery-operated and computerized toys, but they meant just as much:
“We knew pretty much what we’d get,’’ Mrs. Riley said. “For the girls, there were always dolls, sometimes a tea set. In our stockings would be tiny dolls, oranges, nuts, maybe some new stockings or gloves. The boys would always get a new knife.”
Mrs. Riley said that the tree always had homemade decorations: “We had paper lanterns, paper chains, and popcorn on the tree, but we didn't see the tree until Christmas morning. Santa always decorated the tree when he brought the presents.”
Although Mrs. Riley grew up well within the age of electricity, her mother had told her of using candles on the tree. "Mother said there were lots of fires, then,” she said. “It was so dangerous.”
Christmas meant many days of serious baking to Mrs. Riley’s mother. “She made seven or eight cakes for the family. We didn’t have fruitcakes - in those days only wealthy people were able to have fruitcakes - but Mother made chocolate layer cakes, fresh grated coconut cakes, what we called a ‘plain cake’ (it was probably a pound cake), and an orange and raisin cake. Mother also baked cookies - sugar and molasses cookies that you cut out with a biscuit cutter. I remember the house smelled so good, but of course everything smells and tastes better to children.”
Mrs. Riley said that Christmas dinner was not so different from what would be served now, with a few exceptions: “We always had a baked hen. There were no wild turkeys in the woods then - they had all been killed off. We had something so good that my mother would make. She called it ambrosia. At Christmas time then you could always find fresh coconuts in the stores, even out here in the country. Mother grated coconut and mixed it with oranges and I think some other fruit, and we had this with our Christmas dinner.”
Katherine’s husband, Sam, would always make sleds around Christmas when he was growing up. "He made them out of wood,” Mrs. Riley said. “They even had wood runners.”
But Katherine’s father. Mr. Leslie Walter of Amissville, was the local blacksmith and he was able to give his children sleds with metal runners made out of buggy rims.
Besides sleds, Sam was responsible for some of the entertainment on Christmas. He used to catch rabbits, sell the skins for two or three cents, and buy firecrackers for Christmas morning. To add to the noise, the Riley boys all tried to be the first one up. The early riser was the one who shot the shotgun to celebrate the start of the day.
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