Slideshow: 14 of Bill Kemp's holiday columns

At its deadliest, tuberculosis killed 118 people in McLean County in a single year. There were 35 TB deaths in 1907, with hundreds of others suffering from the years-long wasting effects of the disease.

Selling Christmas Seals to fight the tuberculosis scourge originated in Denmark. In 1907, a struggling sanatorium in Delaware picked up the idea, raising $3,000 in the process. The following year, the American Red Cross and a national tuberculosis organization partnered on this novel fundraising idea, and soon everyone was decorating their envelopes with these colorful, holiday-themed stamps.

In January 1908, a group of forward-thinking Bloomington residents gathered in Jonathan H. Rowell's law office to organize what would become the privately funded, all-volunteer McLean County Anti-Tuberculosis Society (known later as the McLean County Tuberculosis Association). This group then turned its sights on Springfield, lobbying the state legislature to pass a tuberculosis act to give counties the power to establish tax-supported sanatoriums to care for TB patients.

Such legislation passed in the spring of 1909, though the anti-spending McLean County Board of Supervisors (the precursor to the County Board) initially balked at instituting a sanatorium tax. In the meantime, the local Christmas Seal campaign was the only source of revenue for TB programs.

Frustrated citizens finally managed to place the sanatorium tax question on the ballot, which passed in a November 1916 referendum by 56 percent to 44 percent.

In March 1917, McLean County spent $15,000 for 40 acres in what was then a stretch of rolling countryside northwest of Normal (today the site of Fairview Park, named for the sanatorium). The 34-bed facility, designed by Bloomington architect Arthur L. Pillsbury, opened in August 1919.

Initially, patients were given "fresh air treatments," which emphasized bed rest and open windows, even during the winter months (this was before antibiotics were used to successfully treat the disease). The outer walls of the sleeping rooms-two on the first floor and two on the second-consisted of a nearly continuous bank of windows. When the glass was lowered, the rooms took on the look and feel of porches. The ward rooms were not even heated until 1930-1931.

Even after the establishment of a county-operated sanatorium, the McLean County Tuberculosis Association continued to sell Christmas Seals to fund important TB programs like an outpatient clinic.

After World War II, the TB clinic moved from the sanatorium to the county tuberculosis association's downtown Bloomington office. Money from the sale of Christmas Seals enabled the association to purchase X-ray equipment, which made the diagnosis of the disease much easier. Later on, the association operated a mobile X-ray unit so they could travel to area schools.

Although Fairview Sanatorium closed in August 1965, the McLean County Tuberculosis Association kept the Christmas Seal tradition alive.

In 1973, the National Tuberculosis Association changed its name to the American Lung Association. The newly named organization continued to sell Christmas Seals, though the money raised now helps combat a wide range of respiratory diseases.

Today, one can even use the Internet to send an electronic, or "eCard," version of a Christmas Seal.

Things were much the same 90 years later, as area residents flocked downtown for the 1955 Christmas season. “Women buy neckties or cufflinks, men buy perfume and frilly nightgowns.

“Everybody buys toys for the little ones,” remarked Pantagraph reporter Tom Gumbrell, who surveyed the downtown scene two weeks before Christmas. “Santa Claus is everybody with a dime in his pocket.”

In 1955, the three largest local retailers, Klemm’s, Livingston’s, and Rolands, were located on the courthouse square, holding their own against national department stores Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney and Sears, Roebuck and Co. All six competitors were within three blocks of each other, which made for crowded downtown sidewalks come December.

From the late 1940s until the mid-1970s, Livingston’s, on the south side of the square, hoisted two giant Santas (pictured here) onto its overhang.

The two identical Santas measured some 13 or so feet in height and were probably made of some early plastic or fiberglass material.

Clothing, then as now, was a staple holiday gift. Roland’s, on the north side of the square, offered Barbizon quilted rayon satin loungers carrying names like “Pretty Puff” and “Lady-at-Ease.” The Woolen Mill Store on the 400 block of North Main Street sold a wide range of menswear, including Campus-brand sport shirts, Essley dress shirts, Pleetway pajamas and Wembley ties.

This was the era of post-war consumer affluence.

Middle and upper-middle class shoppers of the mid-1950s were snapping up televisions for their dens and “rec” rooms. Livingston’s offered the new “swivel base” 21-inch General Electric TV for $249.95 (or about $2,000 in today’s dollars). “Easy weekly or monthly payments!” noted a holiday advertisement.

The Stern Furniture Co. on the 500 block of North Main Street advertised a 5-piece TV “trayette” set for $9.95; Biasi’s Drug Store on the square’s east side had Remington Duchess lady electric shavers for $21.50; City Sales and Service at 115 E. Front St. sold the new Zenith Royal-500 all-transistor pocket radio for $75 (or more than $600 today); and for “young marrieds” of the “modern living” set, Sorg’s Jewelers on the south side of the square offered a 22-piece set of Heirloom Sterling for $99.75.

For years, Klemm’s “toyland” was a favorite destination for area children. The department store on the square’s north side featured dolls, carriages, gun-and-holster sets, Lincoln Logs, tricycles, pull toys and other “happy gifts.”

Murray’s Hobbyland on the 100 block of North Main Street sold the wildly popular Betsy Wetsy doll. “She drinks! She sleeps! She weeps! She wets!” proclaimed a December advertisement.

And what would the holidays be without a good stiff drink (or two or more) under the belt? Duncan Liquors on the corner of Front and Center streets sold 7-, 9- and 12-year-old imported Irish whiskey for $5.98 a fifth.

Better yet, the store offered free delivery in “no-name” trucks so your busybody neighbor wouldn’t know about your boozy proclivities.

Sadly, the glory days of downtown Bloomington retail were numbered. In 1962, Kmart opened the first major retail store on the “beltline,” today Veterans Parkway, and five years later Eastland Mall opened, taking with it Sears and Penney’s.

What happened to the Livingston’s Santas? They were eventually shipped to Champaign-Urbana, but then came back to the Twin Cities and displayed for a while at Jeffrey Alans.

After that they might have been sent northward to the Chicago area.

Back in 1955, even world-weary Pantagraph newsman Tom Gumbrell had to admit that, just like the song “Silver Bells,” Bloomington’s bustling sidewalks were “dressed in holiday style,” with “children laughing, and people passing, meeting smile after smile.”

It was “Christmas time in the city,” with the historic brick buildings of downtown serving as splendid backdrop for all the good cheer.

“Christmas isn’t all commercial like some folks say,” Gumbrell wrote.

“At least, that’s the way it appears in this corner.”

Those living on the city’s north side sometimes used Sugar Creek, and those on the south had access to several ponds that were once pits dug for the manufacture of clay drainage tile and brick. Today, these ponds include those at Lakeside Country Club, Holiday Park and the old Anglers Club. Spring-fed Houghton’s Lake, today part of State Farm Park, was also a popular spot for those fleet-footed on steel blades.

The first known reference to ice-skating at Miller Park on the city’s west side appears in the Dec. 5, 1895, Pantagraph. “Bloomington has found a new winter sport, and from this time on skating parties will be as common as bobsled parties and coasting parties have been in the past,” noted the newspaper.

That evening “mirth and jollity reigned supreme” as 400 skaters sped around the frozen surface. “The wind was as sharp as a razor, and those who stood on the bank shivered. But the moon rose, round and bright, over the eastern trees, and filled the entire valley with a flood of radiance,” added The Pantagraph. “Fancy skaters were there by the dozens, besides those who slid on their heads. And young ladies were out by the scores, some who could skate and some who couldn’t and some who were afraid to try.”

Skating at this time took place on the newly completed lagoon-like body of water north of the park’s arched stone bridge. When the city completed a second, much-larger lake on the park’s south end in 1902, skating often took place there.

Beginning in the late 1880s, the Bloomington-Normal streetcar company ran a line to Miller Park. On frosty evenings area residents, with clattering skates slung over shoulders, packed the Allin Street “cars.”

Much like dancing, ice-skating offered a socially acceptable setting for young couples to meet and court. No doubt many seasoned readers of The Pantagraph can recall winter evenings long past when they glided across the ice, sweetheart in hand.

Way back in January 1896 a feature in The Daily Leader (a long-defunct competitor to The Pantagraph) painted a picturesque portrait of a “grand skating carnival” with “belles and beaux … skimming on steel beneath the electric light and soft moonbeams.” In the early evening The Daily Leader reporter “mixed with the gay throng, 500 people, men, women and children; boys in knickerbockers, misses in kilts; young men and young women, all ages, all colors, all creeds, all nationalities, all political faiths.”

A day earlier a heavy snowfall had blanketed the city, so 25 men on skates pulled and steadied an improvised scraper to clear a track along the edge of the lake, “and in this the merry-makers glided in groups, one behind the other.”

From time to time through the decades city officials established other skating venues. In the winter of 1928-1929, for instance, the city flooded the old school lot at the corner of Oak and Monroe streets on the city’s near west side. Lobbying hard for the rink was Alderman Val Simshauser, described as “a champion of fun and safety for children.”

Despite the occasional appearance of such facilities, Miller Park remained the community hub for skaters. In mid-January 1942, an estimated 1,000 locals ages 2 to 70 “whizzed” over 10-inch-thick ice on Miller Park’s large lake. “There were children hardly able to walk on solid earth, scampering along on all fours,” noted Pantagraph reporter John Temple. And for those fleeing Old Man Winter, the park pavilion offered a “huge fire in the old-fashioned stove.”

Skating continued at Miller Park for another 60 years. In the early part of this decade, the Bloomington parks department stopped cleaning the lake ice with brooms and a small plow. The decreasing number of skaters and the opening of the indoor Pepsi Ice Center helped to end an outdoor recreation tradition dating back more than a century.

Sponsored by downtown merchants, the parade’s purpose was to draw attention to an autumn promotion known as “Mammoth Value Day.”

The balloons (such as the one pictured here) were not local creations, but rather the handiwork of Pittsburgh-based puppeteer Jean Abel Gros.

His lively career included staging a “grand opera” with puppets and designing marionettes for Depression-era WPA school programs on topics like nutrition and folklore.

By the late 1930s, Gros had launched a business whereby promotion-conscious merchants all over the country paid to have his balloons paraded through their downtowns.

Despite the commercial overtones of the Bloomington parade, it’s clear local residents — at least the adults — were looking to cast aside worry and woe.

Not only was the country still mired in the Great Depression, even more ominously, the Nazi war machine was on the march through Europe. In fact, several days before the parade, the Wehrmacht had goose-stepped into Warsaw, the capital of Poland.

The Bloomington parade featured a “unique pneumatic array” (The Pantagraph’s words) of 42 balloons.

Included were an elephant, two cats, a musical pig, an 82-foot-long dragon, a giant head with flapping ears, a pirate, caterpillar, drum major, hippopotamus and a dachshund “as big as three or four automobiles.”

The largest was Gulliver, who when standing, reached five stories in height. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty of maneuvering such a colossus through downtown, Gulliver was carried on his back — “the position which the Lilliputians tied him in Swift’s famous story,” The Pantagraph reminded readers.

Like the much-larger Macy’s balloons (the first of which debuted in 1927), Gros’s creations were made by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.

The balloons were inflated Saturday morning on the grounds of Jefferson School (now a District 87 administration building) on East Monroe Street.

The 29-block-long parade began at the school, then snaked its way through downtown on East, Main and Center streets. Guiding the “monster figures” were 100 boys from the Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home (ISSCS) in Normal, and another 100 from Bloomington High School.

According to The Pantagraph, the event drew 30,000 spectators. Given the fact the combined population of Bloomington-Normal was under 40,000, out-of-towners must’ve comprised a significant number of parade-goers.

“Highways leading into Bloomington were marked by streaming lines of traffic,” reported the newspaper.

The parade was led by the Sons of the American Legion color guard, followed by marching bands from Illinois Wesleyan University and a procession of jumbo-size inflated Gros letters spelling “Welcome.” There also were bands from ISSCS and BHS.

The state-run orphanage showed off its drum and bugle corps, and the BHS marching band included state champion baton twirler Esther Hileman, her sister Jane, and George-Jean Sperry.

The Pantagraph referred to the balloons as “grotesque monstrosities” and “freaks,” clearly playing up the parade’s strangeness — this long before the computer-generated image overload of the present age.

“Small children were sometimes frightened by some of the weird balloon figures,” added the paper, “but their fear soon changed to shouts of glee.”

Jean Gros remained in the parade business for at least another decade. In 1948, Time magazine even offered a brief profile of the showman, noting that his “department store parades” had recently marched through Niagara Falls, N.Y., Wheeling, W.Va., Columbus, Ohio, and dozens of other cities during the Nov. 1 to Dec. 15 holiday shopping season.

Regarding his parade balloons, the old puppeteer could only laugh. “Just like marionettes,” he told Time, “only a hell of a lot bigger.”

“In the matter of gentlemen’s costume there seems to be no specified rule,” continued The Pantagraph. “Black is always dress, but young men appear to good advantage by daylight in morning costume — dark coat and vest with light pants and necktie. Evening dress is always a compliment to the ladies, who generally wear their most bewitching toilets on New Year’s Day.”

Such starched gatherings were softened with a glass of sherry, champagne or something with a little more bite. In fact, this high-tone affair often deteriorated into scenes of well-dressed “men about town” stumbling from one upper-class home to another in a most ungentlemanly manner.

In the 1870s, The Pantagraph waged a stubborn campaign against serving drinks during this supposed mannerly, daylong fete. For New Year’s Day 1875, for instance, the newspaper called the practice of offering alcohol a “coarse and vulgar custom” and a “legacy of half-barbaric revelry.”

Befitting the patriarchal times, the teetotaling Pantagraph laid blame for tipsy males at the feet of their sober female hostesses.

“What ineffable diabolism is there in woman that should compel her on the annual occasion of man’s homage and chivalric devotion, to play the seducer with the wits of an angel, the wiles of a fiend, the modesty of St. Agnes, the success of a Lucifer?” asked a Pantagraph scribe. “Beware of the snake that lurks within the wine cup,” gentlemen were warned, “though that cup be offered by women’s dainty, jeweled hands.”

Even so, the newspaper continued to celebrate the more abstemious aspects of New Year’s calling, and each year published a list of the more prominent hostesses, as well as a list of ladies at each of these residences.

For New Year’s Day 1877, The Pantagraph reported that many homes open to callers were elegantly decorated with arbor vitae, ground pine, ferns and flowers. And although city streets were in good shape, many gentlemen callers preferred to walk from residence to residence. “Wines and liquors are now discarded almost entirely,” the paper noted approvingly, “excepting at the houses of some old-fashioned or too convivial folks.”

That same year, The Daily Leader, another Bloomington newspaper, demonstrated little interest in the use or misuse of alcohol. “Ladies, old and young, held levees in groups of 5 to 25, at residences in various parts of the city,” reported The Pantagraph’s competitor. “For the time, dull care was banished, and everybody seemed given over to the pleasures of the day. The elderly ladies and gentlemen entered as fully into the festivities of the season as the younger portion.”

By New Year’s Day 1883, The Pantagraph was reporting that “the old custom” of calling was on the wane, and by the following decade, Christmas had supplanted New Year’s as the centerpiece of the holiday season. Still, one wonders what we’ve lost, with New Year’s evolving into little more than a marathon of televised college football bowl games.

Back in 1877, The Daily Leader reported that 250 gentlemen—“including the majority of our well-known society goers and a full representation of solid business and professional men”—enjoyed a day of mischievous merrymaking. Apparently, Bloomington residents Dr. T.F. Worrell and Seymour Capen made quite the pair. The Leader reported that the good doctor “never smiled during the day, on the contrary he laughed until gallons of tears had coursed down his checks,” while his companion served as “the bottled effervescence of drollery, uncorked for the occasion.”

It was also a quiet Dec. 25 — especially from our 21st century perspective — for at this time the holiday was a poor cousin to the bigger, brighter and more buoyant New Year’s Day. Christmas was still big back in wartime 1861, mind you, just not the major spiritual and commercial celebration it would soon become, to say nothing of the all-consuming monster it is today.

On Christmas Day 1861, the Bloomington Post Office was open for three hours, and non-holiday events, such as the dedication of a natural history museum at Normal University (now Illinois State University) were held as a matter of course.

Christmas or not, there were signs of wintertime cheer. The Dec. 23 Pantagraph, for instance, reported the arrival of snow and with it sleigh rides and (at least for the younger and more romantic set) “visions of buffalo robes just big enough to hold two.”

And though celebrating the birth of Christ and unbridled, unapologetic materialism were not yet inextricably entwined as they are today, local businesses back in 1861 were most certainly looking to turn a tidy profit from holiday shoppers. “The various toy-shops and variety stores have put on their most seducing airs, and are thronged by affectionate relatives and friends, with a small sprinkling of ‘lovyers,’” related The Pantagraph on Christmas Eve, using an obsolete spelling of “lovers.” The newspaper also poked fun at those profligate shoppers saddled with holiday bills, referring to the “——-balance after Christmas,” the dashes a polite 19th century substitution for “damned.”

War or no war, Christmas Day still meant presents from St. Nick. “Young America … was in high glee,” reported The Pantagraph, “having received the usual quota of benefactions from Santa Claus, in the shape of toys, confectionery and such like.”

As today, the holidays were also a time when the haves looked to provide some measure of aid and comfort to the have-nots. The Pantagraph detailed the severe destitution of one family consisting of a mother and six children, the father gone, having volunteered for military service. “The mother is sick, and the family [is] in want of almost everything, a scant supply of bedding, a small stove, and a box for a table, being about the only household furniture,” noted the paper, adding that “a little aid would be an act of mercy.” A physician attending to the mother was looking to place the two oldest children in homes outside of town, though the four youngest were “too small to be of any aid,” the term “aid” presumably a reference to farm or housework.

A week later, The Pantagraph published a letter written Christmas Day from I.W. Wilmeth of the 39th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Capt. Wilmeth and some of his men were spending the holidays — he wrote with more than a hint of disparagement — “on the sacred soil of Virginia.” At or near Hancock Station (now West Virginia), on the shores of the Potomac River, Wilmeth and members of Co. C were “comfortably quartered in a very fine room of a secesh [secessionist] house, the man our prisoner.”

The 39th, which included 300 men from the Bloomington area, would see action at the Battle of Winchester, the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign. By war’s end, the regiment would lose more than 270 men to battle and disease. “This being Christmas night,” Wilmeth added in his letter, “we are having a small feast of good things — such as we could find on this rock-bound shore.”

Other volunteers were able to spend Christmas 1861 in Bloomington, enjoying a breather before returning to the long, bloody slog that would last another three-plus years and claim more than 630,000 lives. “A number of our Bloomington boys who are in the army, managed to get leave of absence, and are in town to enjoy the holidays with their friends,” announced The Pantagraph. “Go in, boys, and make the most of it.”

Running four attractively typeset pages, this supplement featured poems, short essays and observations on themes such as the inexorable passage of time, loves lost and found, the inevitability of death and faith in eternal salvation. Equally important, purchase of the “extra” was a charitable gesture, for the newsboys themselves pocketed all sales. “The publisher now most heartily renews his New Year’s greetings to his friends,” continued the 1859 welcome, “and leaves ‘The Offering,’ and its carrier to their abounding mercy and munificence — not doubting that the ‘News Boy’ will commence his labors in the New Year with a light heart, and with a purse replete with golden favors.”

The collections of the McLean County Museum of History include two pre-Civil War Pantagraph “News Boy’s Offerings,” one from 1859, the other from 1860. The latter features more than a half-dozen poems written especially for The Pantagraph, including “A Dirge” by Sallie M. Bryan, “The Problem of Eternity” by Dr. E.R. Roe, “Good Bye, Old Year!” by William H. Burleigh, and “In Perpetuum” (“forever” in Latin) by R.A. Oakes.

During this time, newsboys served as the main distribution network for most daily newspapers. Before door-to-door delivery and coin-operated boxes, most readers bought their newspaper from newsboys stationed on street corners, rail station platforms and other bustling intersections of commerce.

Generally speaking, newsboys (who were, in fact, usually adolescent or teenage boys) were not newspaper employees, but rather independent agents who purchased papers directly from publishers below cost with the hope of turning a profit on the streets. In Bloomington, as with most cities, newsboys sold papers within a designated area. “Fellow workers respected this right to territory, and if anyone tried to interfere on another’s territory, the boys ganged up and punished that offender,” noted a history of The Pantagraph.

In 1879, for example, the established newsboy Seneca Russell assaulted an older female competitor known as “Pop Corn Sal.” At issue was the right to sell the Sunday-only Bloomington newspaper called The Eye at one of the city’s railroad stations. “The result was that Seneca’s nimble fingers embraced the graceful curves of Samantha’s Grecian neck, and ‘sqoze’ it until her face turned blue and her eyes bulged out like a pair of Dr. Huhn’s best Brazilian convex spectacles,” reported the local press in the colorful prose of the day. Although “Sal” escaped Russell’s clutches, it’s unlikely she attempted another play on his turf.

And then there was Emerson “Bob” Calkins, one of the city’s last “character” newsboys, who died of tuberculosis in December 1907 at the age of 16. Called the “king of newsboys” by The Pantagraph, Bob worked the southern half of the east side of the Courthouse Square. “In the repartee of the sidewalk and curb ‘Bob’ never allowed anyone to get the best [in] a war of words,” noted the paper.

For decades, newsboys were generally considered one of urban society’s forgotten castes, and in larger cities they comprised a significant portion of the population of homeless children. In 1899, though, New York City newsboys famously organized a successful strike against leading publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

Back in 1860, the local “The News Boy’s Offering” included an essay by the Rev. C.G. Ames, a rather cheery year’s end reflection, though one leavened with a nod toward the waiting grave. “How they come crowding up — the twelve months’ procession of dear memories, kind words, friendly greetings, neighborly favors,” observed Ames. “New Year dawns; we will walk forth with unfaltering step to meet the unknown future; for the past is His pledge of unfailing goodness, and we will not fear, since ‘the Lord Jehovah is round about, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms!’”

“It was a beautiful sight to see the groups of fast trotters as they came flying down the smooth and beautiful avenue … the noble horses reaching the goal steaming and foaming from the race with distended nostrils and quivering muscles,” noted a Pantagraph scribe of Christmas Day 1878 along East Washington Street. “Many young ladies were out and looked their loveliest, the fresh air and the excitement deepening the crimson of their cheeks and lips, and adding luster to sparkling eyes.”

This scene brings to mind James Lord Pierpont’s classic (beloved or reviled — take your pick) holiday song “Jingle Bells.” Written in 1857, Pierpont captured the pre-automobile thrill of “dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh.”

Smaller sleighs were known as “cutters,” with many offering snug accommodations for two, and as such became a favorite for those in the throes of courtship. Groups of young men and women would also pile into larger sleighs for moonlit jaunts into the countryside. “Now the ground is white,” goes Pierpont’s song, “Go it while you’re young, / Take the girls tonight / and sing this sleighing song.”

Grace Cheney Wight grew up on the 400 block of East Washington Street in the 1870s and 1880s. “In the early afternoon, it seemed that every one who owned a sleigh and kept a horse turned out to enjoy the sport,” Wight recalled later in life. “Up and down they went from Main Street to the Illinois Central tracks — up and down and back and forth, until the short winter afternoon waned and darkness fell. Those who drove fast horses competed with each other in races and the jingle of the sleigh bells added to the gaiety of the scene.”

Speaking of “Jingle Bells,” Miss Fanny Bright and her companion weren’t the only ones thrown “into a drifted bank” whereupon they “got upsot” (that is, “upset”). Wight said one winter her father procured a crude sleigh made of pine. “He took my sister and me riding one afternoon and in turning around at the end of the course near the [Illinois] Central, spilled us into a snow drift at the side of the road. As I remember, that was our first and only ride.”

The heavy snows of December 1878 (including 15 inches on the 13th) left many area residents scrambling for proper seasonal conveyance. The Pantagraph reported that the price for sleighs and cutters “had gone up like mining stock when a bonanza is struck.” Double sleighs earlier priced at $20 were now going for $50 (or something like $1,200, in 2012 inflation-adjusted dollars). Other residents called on blacksmiths and carriage makers to re-purpose their wheeled vehicles. “Many of the buggies, phaetons and carriages of the city have been converted into sleighs at small expense and make good appearance and ride smoothly,” added The Pantagraph.

And what would the holiday season be without hearing those “bells on bobtail ring?” The city’s saddlery and harness makers were well supplied, “selling fine jinglers at $2.50 and $3.50 per string, two dozen to a string.”

On Jan. 11, 1879, Bloomington attracted some 3,000 spectators and participants to a “grand sleighing carnival” featuring free rides for children and 200-plus sleighs on parade, “many of them gaily decorated with flags and streamers.” These carnivals continued into the 1890s, if not later.

Sleigh rides and courtship (with the occasional marriage proposal) were often inseparable in the popular imagination of the 19th century. In 1860, The Pantagraph featured an open letter by an anonymous wit offering advice to “bashful young men” on this very subject.

“I had determined to have a sleigh ride with her I loved best,” wrote the mysterious suitor. “The evening was glorious, the moon in all its brightness. I knew that now was my time … I took her hand in mine; I felt the gentle pressure (here my heart leaped); I thought of happiness, dreamed of bliss. I bent forward my head until it was hid amid her luxuriant curls, and mastering my strong emotions, whispered to her ear, from the inmost recesses of my heart, ‘I’ll be hanged if I ain’t freezing!’”

Despite the troubling world of December 1950, area children were (as children should be) oblivious to the geopolitical mess made by adults, and instead concerned themselves with little more than Santa Claus and the presents he would leave under the Christmas tree.

Three days before the big day Santa found time in his busy schedule to make an appearance at the Normal Theater (see accompanying photograph) arriving on a Normal Fire Department truck just in time for the town’s annual Christmas party.

The early afternoon program included cartoon shorts geared toward “small fry tastes;” a Christmas carol sing along led by Harlan Peithman of Illinois State Normal University; and treats doled out by Santa himself. Unfortunately, the theater could hold no more than 620 children, which left 175 disappointed little ones on the outside looking in. Though they didn’t get a treat from Santa, they received a Normal Theater pass good for one free movie over the next two weeks. Poor substitute indeed!

The Normal Theater event was a town affair. The Normal Chamber of Commerce and the Normal chapters of the Rotary and Optimist clubs sponsored the annual party. Event organizers included Normal businessmen Ernest B. Allan of Hildebrandt’s Drug Store and A.D. Cline of Cline’s Coffee Shop.

One block from the Normal Theater on North Street was Hall’s Tog Shop, offering holiday gift suggestions ranging from Berkshire nylons for her to Wilson Faultless No Belt pajamas for him. Other Normal businesses got into the Christmas spirit. Normal Sanitary Dairy sold (in stores or via home delivery) eggnog and seasonal ice cream flavors like peppermint candy, black walnut, cranberry sherbet and date torte, as well as ice cream-shaped santas, sleighs, snowmen and Christmas trees.

Over in Bloomington, Livingston’s, one of three locally owned department stores on the courthouse square (Roland’s and Klemm’s being the other two), sold Mrs. Stevens Candy in two-pound decorative Santa tins for $2.50 (today, one can find these containers on eBay). C.H. Payne’s on West Market Street, at the time one of about 70 “mom-and-pop” corner groceries in Bloomington-Normal, advertised oven-dressed fancy ducks or geese at 62 cents a pound.

The Normal Theater wasn’t the only local stop for Santa back in 1950. The jolly old elf could also be seen at the Santa Claus village (more like a hut) on the courthouse square in downtown Bloomington. A few blocks away, at Holder Hardware, 105-107 North East St., shoppers could pick up a Wagner “Magnalite” turkey roaster for $19.95. For the kiddies, Holder’s had a Pennsylvania freight American Flyer electric train set (including locomotive, tank car, hopper, caboose and 120 inches worth of track) for $17.95 (or the equivalent of about $170 in 2012 dollars).

Back in 1950, The Pantagraph still maintained a “society page” whereby readers were kept abreast of the latest teas, balls and weddings of Bloomington’s well-to-do set. Thus on Christmas Day readers were treated to several dozen descriptions of upper-middle class holiday get-togethers. Visiting the Country Club Place residence of Dr. Watson Gailey and wife Louise, for instance, were daughter Janet, her husband Dr. Charles Branch and their two children from Peoria.

For the second year running, Floyd Millinger of 504 McKinley St., Normal, a Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad engineer, won the Jaycees annual outdoor decorating contest.

Bloomington dogcatcher Bill Ahlers temporarily suspended the practice of destroying dogs after five days in the city pound, thinking some of the strays would make ideal Christmas presents. Anyone was welcome to come by and pick up a dog—$1 for males, $3 for females, plus 50 cents extra for each day the poor creature was in captivity (the latter to cover the cost of food). The reprieve ended Christmas Eve.

On Dec. 26, The Pantagraph ran a Christmas morning photograph of Enos and Jane Anderson’s daughter Dorothy of 504 North Maple St., Normal, hugging her new dog “Jeff,” rescued from the pound. This begs the question: Who had a more wonderful Christmas, Dorothy or Jeff?

That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of distress — economic or otherwise — in the Twin Cities. The Pantagraph’s Goodfellow Fund was around in 1936, though the annual giving campaign was then spelled as two words. At this time, the “Good Fellow” fund provided fresh fruit and toys for needy children ages 12 and under, as well as canned food for families.

Many of these Good Fellow toys came from the Blooming-ton Municipal Recreation Board, a creation of the Works Progress Administration, one of the Roosevelt administration’s more significant New Deal programs. The Bloomington board and its Normal counterpart sponsored a Santa’s workshop whereby volunteers reconditioned used or damaged toys collected by area Boy Scouts. Sometimes this worked; sometimes not. One west-sider recalled opening his Christmas present, and to his dismay finding a single boxing glove. “What can a kid do with one boxing glove?” he asked.

Many of those fortunate enough to have steady employment in 1936 welcomed the hustle and bustle of holiday commerce and industry. America once moved by rail, and at the Alton Railroad Shops on Bloomington’s west side, passenger locomotives were given precedence over their freight brethren in anticipation of the year-end increase in ridership. Accordingly, seven passenger locomotives were “shopped, repaired and placed in service” from Dec. 9 to Dec. 22.

In the second week of December, Bloomington banker and nurseryman Grover C. Helm announced the arrival by railcar of a shipment of Rocky Mountain balsams. “The finest car of Christmas trees received in years,” declared Helm.

And what would the holidays be without family get-togethers centered on a traditional meal? Nierstheimer Bros. grocery (with two locations— 428-430 N. Main and 1402 W. Market streets) offered dressed goose and duck at 22 cents a pound, and in a nod to Bloomington’s old Swedish community, they also sold lingonberries and lutfisk.

Many big-ticket items were at rock-bottom prices, helped by the low demand for consumer durables during the Depression. Several local businesses, including J.A. Keck Furniture Co., were selling — “at the lowest prices in history!” — locally manufactured Ice-O-Matic electric refri-erators. “As little as $3.50 puts one of these big, powerful Ice-O-Matics in your kitchen … and 36 months to pay balance!” read one advertise-ment.

Chadband’s, a popular downtown jewelry store, promised “convenient credit at no extra cost.” Stern’s, which billed itself as “Central Illinois’ busiest furniture store,” o-fered a new 1937 Philco radio for $49.95, or as little as 50 cents a week on the installment plan. (By the way, that $49.95 would be the equivalent of $850 today when adjusting for inflation.)

This was a time when locally owned department stores C.W. Klemm, W.H. Roland, Livingston & Sons and New-market went head-to-head against national chains Montgomery Ward, Penney’s and Sears Roebuck, all of which were situated within a block or so of the courthouse square. Roland’s, for instance, featured a “toyland” in its basement stocked with things like the two-foot tall “Ma-Ma” talking doll for $3.98, and a Streak-o-Lite steel wagon with working headlights for $4.95.

On Dec. 23, The Pantagraph sponsored the 10th annual “Christmas Carol Sing” on the courthouse square (see accompanying photograph). The caroling began at 5:15 p.m. with an estimated 1,500 area residents (including 400 seventh and eighth graders) gathered on the west side of the courthouse.

At the Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s School, the state orphanage in Normal, Christmas Day festivities began at 6 a.m. with a brass ensemble parading from one residential cottage to another. Soon thereafter, members of the Louis E. Davis American Legion post and the local chapter of the United Spanish War Veterans distributed gifts to more than 800 children.

Several restaurants remained open on Dec. 25. For 80 cents (or about $13.50 in today’s dollars) the Quality Cafe, 414 N. Main St., offered an expansive Christmas Day menu that included extra fancy Gelbach roast turkey, stuffed baked Watertown goose, Brussels sprout hollandaise, fancy California asparagus tips on toast and homemade hot mince pie.

Unfortunately for area children with sleds under the Christmas tree, 1936 would prove to be one of the warmest holidays in memory. On Christmas Day, in fact, temperatures reached a high of 58 degrees.

The “Prairie Birds” (as Company No. 1 firemen were called) were known for their late December fundraiser that usually took the form of a lively (some thought too lively!) dinner and dance. More often than not, the event was held on Christmas Eve.

Given that the fire company was a voluntary association it had to raise funds for everything from uniforms to equipment upkeep. Yet the annual event also allowed the Prairie Birds to thank their benefactors, as well as showcase trophies, trumpets and other prizes (such as competing company banners) awarded at firemen tournaments, which were popular in the mid-19th century.

In 1857, the Prairie Birds hosted a Christmas Day dinner at the Landon House, an early hotel located at the southeast corner of Center and North (now Monroe) streets. Tickets were 75 cents and dinner began at 3 p.m. “They deserve encouragement in their efforts to maintain an efficient fire organization in our young city,” remarked The Pantagraph.

Two years later, 1859, the event was held on Dec. 30 at Phoenix Hall, a popular meeting space located on the south side of the courthouse square. “There will be ‘creature comforts’ for the inner man, eloquence for the mental man, and music for the electrifying of the soul,” promised The Pantagraph. The “supper” ran from 8 to 10 p.m., with Charles Kadel’s “sitting band” providing the music.

Running the length of the hall that evening were two tables “loaded with eatables, coffee, tea, confectionary, etc.” After the tables were duly “besieged,” toasts were made to Bloomington Mayor John M. Stillwell, Prairie Bird Chief Engineer Lyman Ferre, supporter Dr. William C. Hobbs and the city press. The final toast was a romantic homage to the fairer sex. “Their eyes,” it began, “they kindle the only flames we cannot extinguish, and against which there is no insurance.”

The annual event continued throughout the Civil War. Tickets for the 1861 Christmas Eve ball at Phoenix Hall went for $1, with proceeds — at least for this one year — set aside for the city’s poor. The Panta-graph noted that “though not largely attended” the affair “went off in the best manner, and from beginning to end was marked by a decorum and propriety seldom seen in any of our numerous entertain-ments.” (The latter comment was a guarded reference to the common use — and abuse — of spirits at many 19th century public events.)

The newspaper expressed frustration over the lack of public support for the Prairie Birds, chalking it up to the erroneous belief that “disorder and confusion” too often char-acterized firemen dances. “We believe it is one of the best interests of our city to encourage the organization and continuance of a good body of firemen,” lectured The Pantagraph, “and we do not think they are any more unruly or disorderly than any other class of citizens.”

The 1863 Christmas Eve ball was held once more at Phoenix Hall, with admission at $1, though this time around women were admitted free.

Prairie Bird Foreman Marion X. Chuse (a future chief of the municipal fire department) received a silver tea set said to be worth $75 from his fellow firemen. “He stood under a canopy of silken flags, flanked by the banners of the fire com-panies,” noted The Pantagraph, “and directly under the silver trumpet won by the firemen at Joliet, and surrounded by the members of the company in their beautiful uniforms; the whole forming one of the most beautiful sights ever seen in Phoenix Hall.”

For Christmas Eve 1867, the annual dinner was held at the company’s new engine house (located on the 100 block of North East Street — see ac-companying image), while the dance was at Schroder’s Opera House on the east side of the courthouse square. “The sup-per was one of the best that has been got up in the city for several years,” declared The Pantagraph.

Alas, it appears the 1868 establishment of a city fire department put an end, sooner rather than later, to the holiday tradition of Prairie Bird balls.

Back on Dec. 30, 1859, Pantagraph Publisher E.J. Lewis accepted the Prairie Bird toast on behalf of the city press. Lewis spoke of the city’s firemen “as soldiers engaged in a war with a powerful and insidious foe, who knew ‘no rule of warfare but indiscrimi-nate destruction,’ and against whom ‘eternal vigilance was the price of safety.’”

The first Goodfellow donations likely date to the 1927 Christmas season, though the annual fund drive did not take definite shape until the following year when some 200 families received gift baskets of foodstuff.

In the lean years of the Great Depression, The Pantagraph detailed the woes and wants of families in line for Goodfellow assistance (thankfully, these folks remained anonymous to readers). On Dec. 14, 1930, for instance, readers learned of five small and undernourished children from one unfortunate family in urgent need of milk. Others that year faced likewise dire circumstances. “An old couple, both in failing health, are caring for an invalid middle-aged son and rearing a grandchild whose mother, the wife of the son, is dead,” read the description of one Goodfellow family identified as “Case No 17.”

Several years later The Pantagraph redirected its gift-giving efforts to children facing an “empty stockinged” holiday. The larger idea was to retain “childhood faith in the goodness of Santa Claus” by ensuring that even the poorest boys and girls had something under the tree come Christmas morning.

Repairing and refurbishing second-hand toys was a common practice in the fund’s early years. Local Boy Scouts would scour Twin City neighborhoods for “used-but-serviceable” toys which were then reconditioned and “brightly enameled” by volunteer “elves.”

In 1932, Goodfellows raised more than $1,000 (with individual donations ranging from 20 cents to $40), enough to lift the holiday spirits of some 3,000 children from families “affected by a lack of work and other misfortune.” Boys and girls received a toy as well as some candy and one apple and one orange apiece.

A longstanding Goodfellow tradition is listing donors in the pages of The Pantagraph throughout the fundraising season. These lists offer proof of the fund’s broad range of community support over the years. On December 21, 1942, to cite a representative example, “Goodfellows” included a Unitarian churchwomen’s alliance, Beck Memorial Home, Bartenders Local No. 25 and community matriarch Hazle Buck Ewing.

Expressions of Goodfellow generosity were not always of the monetary kind. In 1950, 87-year-old Laura Eyer made 75 children’s scrapbooks to be given out as gifts, and industrial art students from Bloomington High School contributed 10 wooden trains. That year 487 children from 165 families received packages containing a toy and fruit (the standard apple and orange), in addition to movie tickets for one family outing to the Irvin Theater in downtown Bloomington.

Some Goodfellow traditions have not survived into the present, such as the community Thanksgiving Day prayer service which once kicked off fundraising efforts with a plate collection.

During the 1977 holiday season longtime Pantagrapher Charles Driver reflected on 50 years' worth of Goodfellow Fund drives, his career having stretched back to the first one in 1927. “My opinion of the project is that it’s just about the most important thing The Pantagraph has done over the last half century,” he wrote.

Each year one Pantagraph employee accepted the title of Goodfellow editor and took charge of the herculean fundraising effort. George Spray was one such tireless organizer and promoter in the 1950s and 1960s. “I’ve seen him put in 48 hours at a stretch on a distribution weekend, winding up by delivering leftover gifts to shut-in children at the various hospitals,” Driver recalled of Spray.

Putting in “yeoman service” on behalf of the annual drive was a rite of passage for many a promising reporter or editor. Before winning a Pulitzer Price for commentary in 1973 with the Washington Post, David S. Broder was a Pantagraph reporter and earnest Goodfellow elf. “In my opinion,” joked Driver, “Dave Broder did his best work one night when he demonstrated award-winning expertise in wrapping Goodfellow gifts.”

Currently in its 87th year, the Goodfellow Fund is still going strong. Last season’s fundraising total of more than $48,500 touched the lives of 1,551 area residents, including members of 70 Twin City families who enjoyed Christmas hams, fruit/snack baskets, fleece blankets and gift cards, as well as 20 homebound seniors who each received a plastic tub filled with household items, a blanket and gift card.

Please consider becoming a Goodfellow today. It’s a time-honored local tradition that still speaks to the charitable heart of the Christmas season.

Sponsored by the Bloomington Retail Bureau, stag night embraced the idea that although it was a man’s world when it came to politics, business, finance and other supposedly manly pursuits, men needed all the help they could get when it came to Christmas shopping.

For the Dec. 12, 1962, stag night, The Pantagraph offered in its pages a blank form in which men could pencil in the height, weight and various sizes (hat, blouse/shirt, skirt/slacks, glove, shoe, etc.) of their “little lady.” As evidenced by the use of the term “little lady,” stag night promotional material often carried such patronizing language all-too common at the time.

In 1962, downtown Bloomington was the area’s unrivalled shopping district, with local retail leaders Livingston’s, Klemm’s and Roland’s competing against national chains Sears Roebuck, J.C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, with all six stores situated on or within one block of the courthouse square.

Ward’s, located in the now-empty building at the corner of Front and Center streets, used young models for a “men only” stag night fashion show at its storefront windows, 6:30 to 7 p.m. There was also “continuous modeling” of everything from coats to negligees inside the store until 9 p.m.

“Fun nite for the boys” at Klemm’s on the north side of the square included door prize giveaways, such as a dyed squirrel stole by Annis Furs valued at $132.50 (or more than $1,000 today, adjusted for inflation). Stag night gift suggestions from Klemm’s included perfume (from Chanel, Jean D’albret, Elizabeth Arden, Prince Matchabelli, Corday and others) lingerie (Artemis, Kayser, Wonder Maid and Miss Elaine) and hosiery (Archer, Berkshire, Hanes and Ballet).

Next door to Klemm’s was upscale Roland’s advertising the likes of Bernhard Altmann long-sleeved cashmere cardigans and alligator handbags. “A word to wives and sweethearts,” read a Roland’s stag night notice. “Should he carry a dainty scent … he will have sampled the perfumes he’d like you to use. So be wise, don’t criticize.”

Three years earlier, on Dec. 9, 1959, Pantagraph society editor Joan Cullers hired out as a Livingston’s store clerk so she could write about stag night and its “boys-will-be-boys” mindset from a woman’s perspective.

“Once at the lingerie department, inhibitions dropped … and men shoppers fingered pink underthings without embarrassment,” observed Cullers. “They bought them, too. If it was a slip they came for, many men wound up with a nightie also tucked in the box.” Not unexpectedly, some shoppers wallowed in their own boorishness, with Cullers telling of “more forward men” who “ogled short-skirted and black-stockinged young ladies passing out free cigarettes.”

Back in 1962, Sears, located in what’s popularly known today as the Fox & Hounds building, enticed its stag night crowd with practical merchandise such as Kenmore portable electric hair dryers for $9.99 (the power manicure attachments cost $6.49 extra).

Department stores weren’t the only downtown businesses pitching their wares to helpless men on stag night. Frederick’s on the west side of the square handed out free bottles of perfume to its first 100 shoppers, as well as cigars, cigarettes, coffee and donuts to all. “It’s your chance to ‘live it up,’” enticed Frederick’s. “Shop with no interference from the women.”

“For your lovely lady … a lovely Lady Remington,” announced Biasi’s, a drug store on the east side of the square. The Remington electric shaver sold for $13.95 and came with two coupons, each good for a free cleaning and oiling by Biasi’s service department.

Several businesses not strictly part of the downtown retail scene also participated in stag night, including Clay Dooley, then located at 216 E. Grove St. (one block east of its current location). Although known as “The Tire Man” back then, Clay Dooley also sold home appliances, and as an official Sunbeam dealer pushed electric blankets, shavers, blenders, hair dryers and fry pans. There was even a “Miss Sunbeam” sales model on hand to assist stag night husbands, fathers and sweethearts looking for something special for that special someone.

Three months earlier, on Sept. 20, 1962, downtown Bloomington retailers got a glimpse of the future when K-mart opened a modern, 88,000-square- foot store near the junction of Illinois 9 and the “Belt Line” (now Veterans Parkway). K-mart, with its 1,000-space parking lot, was the first major retailer to locate to the city’s wide-open east side and take advantage of the nation’s postwar embrace of the automobile and “suburban” shopping. An even bigger blow to downtown came five years later, in 1967, with the opening of Eastland Mall.

Christmastime stag nights in Bloomington didn’t survive the end of the 1960s, a likely victim of changing societal mores and, perhaps more importantly, the decline of downtown Bloomington as the community’s unrivalled retail heart. 

“Christmas is here, and a clear beautiful day it is,” announced the Dec. 25, 1849 Western Whig (a predecessor to The Pantagraph). “The juvenile portion of our inhabitants are making good use of the day in following up the time-honored custom of demanding a Christmas gift from every one they meet. How their little eyes sparkle with joy as they survey their heaped up coffers.”

The notice ended with a traditional send-off: “Readers, one and all, we wish you a merry Christmas.”

Yet other than this brief mention, Christmas wasn’t much of a presence in the pages of this early Bloomington weekly. And in fact, Christmas was not even the focal point of the season. Attracting more attention back then was New Year’s Day and the tradition of “calling” on the homes of neighbors, friends and family.

One year later, Dec. 25, 1850, The Pantagraph wrote of Christmas that “its observance probably attracts less attention among the American people, than among any others who observe it at all.”

Bloomington’s fast-growing German community played an influential role in popularizing Christmas locally. By 1860 there were 536 German-born residents in Bloomington, representing a little more than 7 percent of the city’s population of 7,075. Germans tended to gather for special church services on Christmas Eve and hold lively gatherings, such as dances, on Christmas Day. German merchants were also quick to hold special sales in December on everything from children’s toys to fresh fruit.

Herman Schroeder, one of Bloomington’s leading Germans, attracted considerable interest each year with his Christmas tree, which was still a relatively rare tradition among non-German locals. As an accomplished nurseryman, Schroeder would bring into his house a live evergreen in a planter and later invite friends over to marvel over “O Tannenbaum” decorated with fruit and lighted candles.

On Dec. 25, 1857, Pantagraph Editor Edward J. Lewis offered a half-hearted apology for failing to pen an eloquent tribute to the season. “We are not ‘in the vein’ (meaning ‘not in the mood’),” Lewis wrote. “We wish all hands a merry Christmas — and that’s the whole of it.”

Others were not so Scrooge-like. (Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” by the way, appeared 14 years earlier, in 1843.) On Christmas Day 1857 the city’s free school staged a holiday program. Those in the large audience “were all apparently gratified at the music and elocution of the children; and the little ones themselves will long remember this merry Christmas” reported The Pantagraph.

Children were on the mind of Front Street merchants Hennecke & Wagenfuhr, who three days before Christmas 1858 claimed none other than “Kriss Kingle” himself had dispatched to their store “a sufficient amount of toys to supply the whole juvenile portion of our population.” (“Kriss Kingle” was an early spelling of "Kris Kringle.”)

The holidays back in the 19th century were also a time for mischief making. On Christmas Day 1859, for instance, The Pantagraph noted “an unusual quantity of drinking, and some of its usual accompaniment, rowdyism.” Incidents included  “a jolly serenading party, who chartered a four-horse sleigh, and, arming themselves with tin horns, gongs and the like instruments, drove ’round town until about midnight.”

Yet by 1860, the last Christmas before the start of the Civil War, the traditional trappings of the holiday had taken firm hold of the American imagination. “Christmas is coming!” exclaimed a notice in the Dec. 18, 1860 Pantagraph. “The great Christian holiday is coming around at a lively rate, and we shall soon hear its merry chimes, while our eyes will be gladdened with the sight of merry childhood gamboling amid evergreens and bright berries, and exulting over its stock of holiday gifts.”

Back on Christmas Day 1857, peace on earth and good will toward men were the last things on the minds of some local toughs. The Pantagraph described a Dec. 25 “knock-down” west of the city along Sugar Creek between some “American boys” and “Paddy boys” (the latter being a clumsy reference to Irish immigrants). At issue was a frozen stretch of the creek and who had the right to cut and haul away the ice.

“For half an hour, Young America carried the day,” related The Pantagraph of the Christmas brawl, “but the boys ‘with the rich Irish brogue’ received a heavy reinforcement — four to one, our informant says; and by dint of brickbats and shillelaghs finally drove Young America into a neighboring house, where they were finally relieved by the people of the neighborhood.”

“P.S.— Nobody killed.”