The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941 Page: 361
546 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Collection
parboiled, then roasted. He attributed his success in life
to eating stuffed gizzards thrice each year-on his
birthday, on Christmas and on New Year's Day.
OTHER CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS
That Christmas fathered poetry and sentiment, even
in Texas when it still was in the woolly stage, is evi-
denced by one of the first appeals to Santa Claus from
the pencil of a lad. The epic, heroic in its self-abnega-
tion, follows:
"Dear Santa Claus, please pass me over;
Bring a new skin for mangy Grover."
OLD NEW YEAR'S GIFTS
New Year's gifts when Texas was a republic were not
bought in shops, but were the product of home industry.
The farmer exchanged with his neighbors such fruits
of his labor as he could spare, and the hand and the
heart worked together as members of a family circle
prepared for the holidays. The knitted mittens and
socks may not have looked pretty or expressed dollar
values, but they kept warm not only the parts of the
body for which they were wrought, but warmed friend-
ships and kinships . . .
CHRISTMAS ON THE PLANTATION
Christmas on the plantation has also vanished, with
its barbecues and befo'-de-war songs and ragouts of
possum and sweet tater or stuffed coon in a bath of
'lasses sauce.
"Christmus, Christmus, nigger man,
Possum sizzlin' in de pan,
Possum's toastin', taters roastin'
Christmus, Christmus, done am come."
Holiday activities among Stephen F. Austin's early colonists
and the origin of the place name for New Year's Creek, near
Brenham, are told in Dr. E. C. Barker's Life of Stephen F.
Austin, p. 42:
Austin probably left New Orleans on November 25.
He was certainly back at Nacogdoches on December 17,
whence, no doubt, he proceeded immediately to the
interior. During his absence a few families had moved
into his grant, but our information concerning them is
very scant. Evidently few of the "fifty or more" fami-361
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941, periodical, 1941; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146052/m1/400/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.