Several years ago, Tom Martin gave his children a special Christmas gift: a book of memories he compiled about growing up in Toano, once an eastern Virginia commercial hub. His stories began with memories of people, places, and events about 1930 and continued until he went to college in 1941. About them he wrote, “I hope [they] will give you some insight as to how I was raised, and how things looked to me a young boy growing up in that rather unique community.”
Christmas in an Early Twentieth-century Town Near Williamsburg, Virginia
Toano was the central town and attraction in James City County before the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg by John D. Rockefeller Jr., whose plan to restore the colonial capital was made public in 1928. At that time, Toano was a bustling place with about twenty family homes, a school, a railroad depot and freight station, industries such as barrel and canning factories, a bank, three hotels, several stores and restaurants, garages for motor vehicles, stables for horses, a pool hall, and more.
Tom remembers that Christmas was a time of family gatherings and big meals together. Decorations were simpler and gifts were fewer. His memories conform to holiday rites as practiced in America from the Victorian age until the post-World War II years. The Christmas tree was put up during the week before Christmas and a pageant was held at church. Since his father owned a clothing and dry goods store and Christmas Eve was the biggest day of the year, his parents didn’t put out gifts until late that night.
“At Christmas time my father always had a pretty good stock of special gift items, such as toy wagons, tricycles, boxes of handkerchiefs, stationery, cheap costume jewelry, etc. and always a wooden box of hard candy.” The store’s second floor was not much used. “I do recall that at least once in the early 1930s the second floor was used to display Christmas goods,” he said. The store was heated by a potbellied iron stove. Since there was no running water in the store, freezing pipes weren’t a concern.
Fireworks at Christmas
“In that community, and I believe in most of rural Virginia, Christmas was the time for fireworks,” said Tom. The store had firecrackers, Roman candles, sky rockets, torpedoes, and sparklers. “The smallest firecrackers, which we called ‘flashcrackers’ came in a package with the fuses all bound up together so that that whole package could be set off with one lighting. As these things cost 5 or 10 cents a pack, we didn’t very often set them all off in one shot.”
Celebrating Christmas at Home
The Martin family lived in an American Foursquare-style house. For Christmas, his father cut down a cedar tree nearby. Snow on the holiday was rare. His mother made an excellent dark fruitcake with cherries and dried fruits around Thanksgiving that would cure until Christmas.
The holiday menu included turkey. “On a few occasions, my father had killed a wild turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and that was always a special dish … I recall that a small rope would be tied to the turkey’s foot.” The rope was thrown over a tree limb. The bird was beheaded and hoisted up “so that the blood was pumped out before his heart stopped beating.” Toano grocery stores sold live turkeys and chickens during the holidays, which made picking the turkey “another matter altogether.” Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner also included dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, old ham, sweet potatoes, beans, sliced tomatoes, homemade rolls, and the desserts included dark fruitcake, mincemeat pie, sweet potato pie, and homemade lemon jelly with custard.
Holidays were shared with family. They spent the day in activities that included outdoor games, often including playing with the children's christmas gifts. “That was before the days of TV,” said Tom, “so there was no football game to watch, which would have undoubtedly captured the attention of all the men and boys.”
Toano was Located on a C&O Railroad Line
Tom once worked in a Toano drugstore at the soda fountain. The owner had been a railroad engineer. “I have heard people say that while with the railroad [he] had a magic touch with train whistles, and could play ‘Silent Night’ on the whistle, which he often did on Christmas Eve during his railroading days.”
The drugstore was demolished when the main road was widened to four lanes about 1960. “The Toano that I knew in those days was no more after that happened, and ceased to be a ‘Village’ like it was during the Depression days of the 1930s.”
Source;
This article was adapted from one written by the author for the December 2009 issue of Williamsburg’s Next Door Neighbors magazine.
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