This is the third article in December of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on December 19, 1909, and touches on the art of gift giving.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

As We Give the Gift

IS THERE anything new to be said about putting up or sending out or presenting gifts?

I thought not, until last Christmas, and then I had a novel notion come my way–as, indeed, one had been impressed upon me at almost every Christmas for some years previous. Since we have taken to tissue paper and ribbon and the like, new inventions have multiplied.

My new idea last Christmas came in the form of dinner table favors which were, in reality, attractive and amusing gifts. A big Christmas bell in bright scarlet was put in the middle of the dinner table. It was not hung, but set flat on the table. Radiating from it were ribbons, the further end of each under the plate of one of the guests. The “home end,” if you might call it so, was, of course, under the bell.

While the soup was in eating many were the conjectures as to what the ribbons meant. As soon as the plates of the first course were removed the ribbons were pulled, each member of the party taking his or her turn. From under the bell, which was lifted slightly by the ribbon which connected it with the chandelier overhead, were drawn tissue-paper wrapped parcels of various shapes, which, when opened, were found to be “double-headers,” in that each contained an amusing and a useful or valuable gift.

Appropriate Gifts.

For example, the tea devotee of the family received a small tea set arranged on a tiny tray, and in the sugar bowl lurked a ring for which she had long yearned. To the hunter of the party was given a stuffed rabbit, with a ribbon about its beck fastened with a handsome scarfpin. A large brass locket bestowed upon one held, instead of a picture, a $10 gold piece; while a tin lunchbox which fell to the lot of another contained a valuable book which he had expressed a wish for. All this came as a sort of aftermath of the morning distribution of gifts, and was a charming surprise to every one.

In the same fashion I have heard of a bell to which ribbons were attached connecting with cards which told the recipient where to find a gift which had been prepared for him. A variant of this were cards of ribbons telling the children that there were gifts for them concealed in certain parts of the house, and setting the youngsters scampering after their presents as soon as the meal was over. A little Christmas tree in the middle of the table, bearing gifts for the guests, is not a novelty, but it is always pleasing.

The Presentation.

Of course, there are all sorts of ways of presenting gifts to the home people. To hang them on the Christmas tree or heap them about its base, or put them in the stockings the children and grown-ups hang up, is as old as the hills, and none the worse on that account. In some households a chair in the living room is denoted to each member of the household and the gifts placed there for them. The problem of making the presentation to the people in the home is a comparatively simple matter. It is when we are putting up and sending out gifts that our ingenuity is taxed.

After all the innovations, perhaps there is no prettier fashion of sending out Christmas gifts than by wrapping them in white or tinted tissue paper and trying them up with bright ribbons, perhaps sticking a bit of evergreen or a sprig of holly under the ribbon bow. This is not tedious work, because one does not so consider it at Christmas time, but it makes a pull upon something most of us have to count, and that is money. We did not feel it so much in the day when we used handkerchief ribbons to tie with and treasured pieces of tissue paper which we smoothed out and freshened as best we could for wrapping and binding the parcels. But now, since competition and fashion have made themselves felt in the doing up of Christmas presents, as in almost everything, we are not willing to fall behind in the race. So we buy tissue paper by the quire and ribbon by the bolt, and often we are not even contented with the baby ribbon which filled the measure of our desires only a little time ago. No! there are ribbons brocaded in holly and in violets and in poinsettias that we must get now—and the broader the better!

Just as sensible persons had to assert themselves some years back in protest against the elaborate Christmas cards which had ceased to be merely affectionate reminders and became expensive constructions of pasteboard and silk and satin, so those of us who still wish to make more of the present than of its wrapping must call a halt. A step in the right direction has been made by the introduction of paper tape in silver and gold and colors, and the use pf tiny paper seals. With these, or the gayly tinted tissue papers that come you can make as pretty a parcel as any one need rejoice to receive on Christmas morning.

One word about the cards. I have said that gorgeous cards were renounced by those of us who thought the sumptuousness of tokens which were meant to be merely inexpensive reminder was making a kindly custom absurd. Elaborate confections of this sort have practically disappeared, but in their place has come the hand-painted card on which we spend as much money as would suffice to purchase a present which is really worth keeping and cherishing.

I do not wish to condemn Christmas cards, but, honestly, haven’t we had too many of certain kind? Don’t we feel a little inclined to groan when we view the costly bits of decorated pasteboard which litter our rooms after the holidays? Then they lie on desk, table and mantle, too pretty, and yet, it may be add[???], representing too much money, f[???] us to feel justified in dumping them into the waste basket. Instead, [???] that we keep them about until they are dusty and soiled, never having wo[???] more than an instant’s passing pleasure from them, and finally they go into the fire.

Of course, there are charitable institutions which are glad to receive Christmas cards for their children and poor people, but they would be as well satisfied with a card which cost 5 cents as with one w[???] cost 50, and the former would have one as well to bring your friend to your remembrance.

Cannot we rather reform on the Christmas card question and put something better in its place? If you wish to spend more than a few cents on a gift to a friend, there are little books—not cheap ones, either, but those that are well bound and worth keeping—which would be no more expensive than the showy card. And if the memento is to be sent to a friend on whom you mean to expend but little, do you not think she would value a letter from you more than a dozen cards?

The letter would take a longer time to write and give more trouble? True. But this is Christmas, and the Christmas spirit is not that which makes a gift of the easiest thing to do. We are all of us too much given to compounding with our Yuletide consciences by buying a card or its equivalent and sticking it into an envelope and making that take the place of the expression of loving through or good will which our own pens could send more acceptably.

If the gift without the giver is bare, then many a Christmas present goes forth stripped to the bone. There is no grace of the giver in the present which is sent with no mark of loving remembrance. The poorly put-up bundle which takes tenderness with it means more than a gorgeous hand-painted card which goes into its envelope with. “There! I forgot Aunt Jane; but this card will look stunning to her, and it’s the quickest thing to send.”

Make your Christmas presents beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside; outdo yourself in planning to give them to the family in novel and attractive fashions, but, above all, don’t forget, in putting up your parcels, to slip in the most important addition: the loving thought, the individual attention which makes a brief letter in an everyday envelope stand for more than the handsomest gift sent unlovingly from the biggest and most expensive shop.

Marion Harland

This is the second article in December of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on December 12, 1909, and is a continuation of Marion’s talk on gift giving.

In this article, it is Marion’s advice that mothers should have young children learn of self-sacrifice and giving by saving money and making home-made gifts.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

The Child and Its Christmas Effort

HOW much share in Christmas have the children of today? How much are they taught to feel the true spirit of Christmas?

Consider average children, and what does Christmas mean to them? A time of holidays from school, of gay shop windows, of many gifts, of much good eating. Does it stand for much more?

We defraud our children when we give them only so much of Christmas as this. If we have never before taught them the true meaning of the most blessed holiday of the year, let us do it now. There is more in the season even than the manger and the star, the child and the shepherds. Give these to the children, but give them also the idea of the lesson that Christmas brings a self-sacrifice for others; help them to feel that the only gift worth giving is that which counts for something to the giver.

I think that as a rule children are generous, unless they have been taught to be calculating. Cultivate such generosity; and, for the love of mercy, never encourage in them that spirit of “give and take,” of keeping a debt and credit account on Christmas presents which has done so much to poison the season for older people.

As soon as the child is old enough to understand giving at all, make the gift something coming from him or her personally. The childish efforts will be weak, the childish results will be poor, but that makes little difference so long as the loving, generous spirit lies back of the gift. The book-mark worked in straggling cross stitch by baby fingers means as much to the father or mother as anything a hundred times its value could signify. If ever there is an opportunity in which will counts more highly than achievement, it is in the gifts which children make to their nearest and dearest.

As the children grow older do not abandon this line of teaching. Instruct them to make their gifts costs them something; to begin long before the holiday season to hoard their pennies; encourage them to stop the little indulgences dear to their small souls (and bodies), such as purchases of candy and peanuts and popcorn with their spending money, for the sake of laying it aside for Christmas gifts. The self-denial will do them good in more ways than one. It will teach them to give up their own pleasure for the sake of others; to make the prospective pleasure of those they love dearer to them than their own immediate enjoyment.

Let me say a word here relative to the benefit of giving allowances of spending money to children from the time they are old enough to have money to spend at all. It not only teaches them the use of money and imparts a beginning of a sense of responsibility in financial affairs, but it does more by providing them a chance to forego personal indulgence for the sake of giving to others. If from their tiny allowances they are encouraged to save for charity and for birthday and Christmas gifts, they have gained a lesson that no preaching and teaching in later years could so thoroughly implant.

Not that the best gifts are those which are procured simply by paying out money for them. Make the children understand that, and help them to make their gifts with their own hands. The way to do this has always been more or less easy for girls, who could sew and embroider and knit and crochet presents for those they loved. Of late the path has been opened for boys as well, and the manual training bestowed in our schools has been of benefit to them. By the aid of tools and pyrographic outfits and jigsaws they are able to do their share in making their Christmas gifts with their own hands.

A Guiding Hand.

I should be doing my subject little justice if I did not say that these instruments to which I have referred had also done their part toward the manufacture of some fearful and wonderful objects with which the living rooms and bedrooms of some of us are cumbered. The unassisted and unadvised child is likely to perpetrate grievous things if not aided by counsel. Apparently, the majority are born with little discrimination between good and evil so are as the works of their hands are concerned, and offer plaques and panels for alleged “decoration” with as much confidence of approval as an artist would feel in presenting a painting of his own doing.

Therefore let us guide our children when we may. There is no reason why their gifts should not be of value beyond that given them by love. Among my cherished possessions are a carved box for hairpins; another, much smaller, for collar buttons and similar trifles; a glove box and handkerchief box adored with pyrogravure; a footstool, and a hanger for my roller towel—all the work of boyish love. They might so easily have been useless horrors that I am filled with thankfulness whenever I think of them.

Encourage your children to make gifts which will really supply long-felt needs. Teach them that it is a very poor gift which is made without consideration of the wants of the person to whom it goes. To buy or to make at random is the least gracious way of manufacturing a present for any one.

The small girl will be helped by such instruction. They will probably display a tendency to buy and make certain fluffy, useless articles which commend themselves to the feminine mind in its immature stages, and sometimes later on. Guide them in their work. Teach them that it is better to make a wash cloth, or pad for a bureau drawer, or a shoe bag, or a needle book, or something equally simple, which is of practical value to the person who receives it than to break forth into all sorts of ambitious impossibilities in the line of decoration—so-called.

Never can I forget one Christmas when I received a bag of belting cloth with a filling of thistledown and a decoration of flowers in water colors, a construction of silk and chenille and cardboard to hang from the chandelier, a china plaque with a Gibson girl on it, six calendars and seven sachets. The only redeeming feature about the gifts was that love probably prompted the sending. That was the only thing they represented besides money. Not a bit of thought had gone to the selection, no planning as to what would meet my taste and my needs.

Don’t let your boys and girls grow up in that way. Let them consider as much a part of the Christmas gift as the money which goes into it a study of the preferences of the person to whom it is sent. They would not give a workbag to their grandfather, or a pipe to their aunt, but, unassisted, they would doubtless make just as absurd presents to other members of the family or to friends. Guide them in the selection until they are old enough to judge for themselves. Don’t turn the children loose to do their own shopping, but find time, no matter how busy you may be, to go out with them on their expeditions to the stores and help them learn how to buy. Don’t put this off until the last moment either, but undertake it as long ahead of time as you can.

Bear in mind always that the children ought to have a share in “making Christmas” in the household beyond the giving of presents. Entrust them with a certain amount of responsibility as soon as they are old enough to take it. Confide to them part of the preparations. It may be that to them you will delegate the collection and hanging of the greens, the decoration of the table, the preparation of the candies which are to go into stockings and fancy boxes; the painting or lettering of the cards which are to mark the place at the Christmas dinner; the putting up the parcels which are to go out of the house. If you do not, at the moment, think of something to confide to their care, study it up until you have found something. There should be no drones in the house in the midst of the Christmas preparations. While the children are still young make them understand the solidarity of the family, and that they have their own important part in helping t make the Christmas joy.

Marion Harland

This is the first article in December of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on December 5, 1909, and is an article on helpful tips for purchasing gifts for people you may not know very well.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Gifts for the Country Cousin

EVERY ONE possesses country cousins or their equivalent. The degree of relationship may vary, or there may be none at all; the distant connections may be uncles, aunts or merely friends, and their homes may be in towns they would scorn to have called “country,” far though these may be from the big centers of city life. Yet to those of us who do live in such centers the dweller in any less crowded region is likely to be considered as one living in the country.

“New York isn’t nearly so pleasant at this time of the year as the country,” wrote a visitor in her bread-and-butter letter after returning from a stay in a thriving town of 50,000 inhabitants. The fact that this same town had beautiful suburbs within easy driving distance—and that it was not New York—to her mind made it “country.”

Wherever the “country cousins” are, however, they are to be reckoned with or for in the Christmas preparations. My plea today is that in such reckoning you regard them less as country people and more as human beings.

Do I hear an expostulation? Do you declare that you always look upon them as human beings and as beloved relatives as well? Stop and think a bit. Do you recollect what you sent them last Christmas? Put on your considering cap. Better still, if you follow the wise custom of keeping your Christmas lists over from year to year, consult that for last Christmas, and see what you sent them. Here it is. Now read it over.

“Aunt Mary—tidy.” You haven’t forgotten that tidy? It was given to you the year before by a grateful Sunday-school scholar, and when you opened the parcel you said: “It was very sweet in Jane to make it, but I wouldn’t be found dead with that thing in my parlor.” Yet you were quite willing Aunt Mary should receive that atrocity as a token of your affection for her. Don’t you feel a little ashamed when you think of it?

Let’s go on with the list. “Uncle Tom—book of sermons.” You probably gave him these because you thought they might do him good, though you might have known he would not read them. Sermons were never much in his line, and the poor old gentleman’s eyes are too bad now to allow him to use them much. When he can read he would rather have something a little more likely than those sermons.

The next item is for Cousin Ella. I don’t wonder you wish to pass that by without notice. “Framed picture” looks very well, but do you recollect the picture? It was a chromo lithograph, and not a good one at that. I grant that Cousin Ella doesn’t know much about art, but is that any reason why you should inflict upon her such a confusion of glaring colors as were confounded in that picture? Why didn’t you give her a good photograph simply framed, if you had to give her a picture? There’s nothing in which there’s a bigger risk than in the buying of pictures for others. When you buy one for a person whose tastes are not well known to you, get something non-aggressive, at least—something you would not object to having on your own parlor or sitting-room walls.

There, after all, is the keynote to the choice of Christmas gifts for the country cousins. Don’t send them something to which you yourself would hardly give houseroom. Even though their tastes may very possibly different from yours, even if you are not sure of their preferences in most lines, select something which would please you, and you may be pretty sure to please them.

This principle is a good one to start with, but there is more than that even in the gifts for the country cousins.

Try to study their individual needs a little, and consider these in choosing your presents. More than that, given them what they want, as well as what they need. All of us have a touch of the feeling expressed by the woman who said that she could get along without the necessities of life, if she could only have the luxuries. The country cousin is probably like the rest of us. So, if you make her a gift which you think will supply a necessity, add to it a flavor of luxury which will raise the present above the level of the commonplace.

An Added Personal Touch.

For example: You know that she is likely to need towels. Well, towels are acceptable to me in any circumstances, and doubtless to any other housekeeper; but there is an added grace in receiving them when they are adorned with an embroidered letter, which shows that some thought of me went into the gift beyond the mere business of purchasing it. Don’t you believe the country cousin would feel that grace, too? Or, suppose that you gave her dish towels—a homely present, but very welcome to most of us. Mark these, too, with an outline letter or name in heavy red marking cotton. It will take little time to do them, and the handiwork will impart to the gift the personal touch which trebles its value to the recipient.

Follow the sample principle with the rest of the gifts you send the country cousins. Never make them a dumping heap for last year’s unwelcome gifts. What you don’t want yourself because it is useless or unattractive or unsuitable is an outrage on the spirit of Christmas to bestow upon some one else.

Go further than this. Don’t leave to the random impulse or the last hurried moment the choice of gifts for the country cousin. Don’t say, even in your thoughts, “Oh, they live away off and don’t see anything new, and will never know if this is not in good taste.” You can’t be positive on the taste question, and even if you were, is that quite the spirit which should go with the choice of a Christmas present?

Try to reconstruct your mental attitude toward the country cousins and the gifts you choose for them. In the first place, fill yourself full of the real spirit of Christmas, the spirit of a great gift bestowed with a great love. That is the ideal of giving you should set before yourself. In the light of that, buy yourself gifts for the country cousins.

You look at the purchase of such gifts in a rather different way with that light upon them. You make your choice in another fashion from that you have heretofore followed. You buy as though you were selecting for the near and dear, and if you do not know the tastes of the distant one to whom you are giving, imagination takes the place of knowledge. And with that imagination put common sense, and you have a pair it is hard to beat.

Imagination and Goose Sense.

Your imagination tells you that if a person is off in the real country, away from many neighbors, she may need brightness and beauty brought into her life. Your common sense warns you not to achieve this by the gift of useless trifles in the line of ornament and bric-a-brac, which clutter more than test beautify. In the place of these, you choose a good picture, a nice piece of brass, a candlestick or a lamp or a sconce, a pretty table cover or a couch cushion, or something else that will be pleasing after the first novelty of possession is worn off.

Or you may know that the country cousin is a housekeeper who loves dainty things, and has little means to satisfy that love. Send her an attractive bureau cover or tray cloth or centerpiece or a set of doilies or a little china which will be useful as well as ornamental. Give her a set of nappies or of bouillon cups or of finger bowls or a cup and saucer or a pair of candlesticks or any other pretty thing you would like for yourself. Or turn your back upon these and give her something for her own personal adorning, a delicate jabot or collars and cuffs or half a dozen yards of novel ruching or some other neckwear or a pair of silk stockings or gloves or, if she is a young girl, something dainty in underwear. What would you like yourself in her place? There is your guide.

But are there no men country cousins? Surely there are, and they demand more thought than the women. But even here you may make a wise choice if imagination and common sense are again put to work. The young men are easily pleased. A tie, a fancy handkerchief, a pipe—no man ever had too many pipes—a pair of silk socks, gloves. With an older man the choice is harder. The pipe may do here again, or a tobacco pouch or desk furnishings, unless he is likely to be overloaded with these.

When in doubt for man or woman, old or young, a safe gift almost always is a magazine subscription. Here is a gift which comes every month and lasts a whole year. Books are good, if you know you country cousin’s tastes, but a magazine is better. Select that which will, to your mind, meet most nearly the wishes and the preferences of the one to whom it is to go, and you will rest content in the thought that in one instance at least your choice of a Christmas gift is likely to be a success.

Marion Harland