#a prairie Christmas

[kulapti]

Wild Coyote & Leaping Pronghorn, Dec 2023, ink.

List of north american prairie species shown here, roughly top to bottom: Northern Bobwhite, Engelmann's Milkweed, Augochlora sweat bees, Indiangrass, Pronghorn, Widow Skimmer dragonfly, Blue Darter dragonfly, Common (White) Yarrow, Bluet damselfy, Coyote, Giant Grassland Cicada, seeds of Prairie False Foxglove, American Basketflower seedheads, Firewheels, Prickly Pear cactus, Rainbow grasshoppers, Sideoats Grama.

[digitalnewberry]

Christmas unboxing, 1870-style

They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny. Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Think of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy and a penny. There never had been such a Christmas. -- Little House on the Prairie

During the Christmas of 1870, while a semi-fictionalized Laura Ingalls Wilder delighted in a few relatively modest gifts on the prairie, the IRL Johnnie Everett was experiencing a very different holiday back east in Williamstown, New York. As these pages from the Newberry's Everett family papers demonstrate, Christmas in town as a member of a prosperous family of preachers, publishers, doctors, and educators was a much more extravagant affair.

Six-year-old Johnnie received so many presents -- from a gun to a watch to a "pair of wristlets" -- that he appears to have needed to take a five-day break in order to finish listing them all in this thank-you note to his aunt. (The effort required to produce such fancy serif handwriting may also account for some of the delay.)

For more examples of Christmas presents past from the Newberry's modern manuscripts collections, please visit our Holiday Haul story map 🎄🎁🎅

–Jen Wolfe, Digital Scholarship and Outreach Librarian

[shutterandsentence]

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Photo: Chicago, Illinois

[neonbuck]

train rides across the US Northeast have a sad kind of beauty. the mud and rust, the trees, the foggy harbors, lonely ponds with swans

[deejayphoto]

A Christmas Card

[wannabesucessful]

Sesame Street Storytime Calendar 1982 Pt. 3

[king-bush]

Prairie dogs in winter clothes, I call em holiday hogs

[ghostoffuturespast]

Happy Holidays!

From the Crimble Pronghorn

[somediyprojects]

Poinsettia stitched by Abby Puffpaff. Pattern designed by The Prairie Schooler.

“Finished this freebie design, I plan to do a few as ornament gifts. Substituted the called for red for dmc115 garnet variegated.”

[starlight-zombie]

One of the weirdest side effects of my grandparents dying is that when I miss them or I'm having a bad day, I have a strong desire to watch The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, or Hallmark Christmas movies

[muppette]

Yuletide on Sesame Street 🎅🎄🎁⛄️

[vox-anglosphere]

A prairie couple is drawn by cutter across a bitterly cold landscape

[shutterandsentence]

"Christmas is not a time or season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas." -- Calvin Coolidge

Photo: Illinois

[lauriemarch]

there is something so deeply instinctual within me that tells me i should be dressing like half-pint laura ingalls wilder when i go to church

[kazhanko-art]

I live in one of the northern most major cities in Canada. It regularly reaches -40C as a low and our winters average -15 to -20C for the most part. When I was a kid our first snows were often in late september if not october. Winter usually started by november.

This year we didn’t start keeping our snow until over halfway through november. I can smell the grass and mud as if it were spring. It’s been raining at night, when it used to be so dry and cold that we got no precipitation.

last summer the sky was for what felt like a month always filled with smoke. A lot of the times you could stare straight into the sun. People had to be evacuated from the rural regions, and before we even hit summer, when we normally still have a snow risk, the province was covered in bush fires.

The thought that this is just how it is now is terrifying

Christmas as a cultural icon is starting to get really dystopian in a climate sense, december has historically been a time of year in which there would be snow in a significant portion of europe and north america, and the fact that its not even icy this time of year and all the christmas songs and decorations reference a time of year that will likely never exist in the same way again in my life time is so strange.