In the memory of one of the grandmothers who is lending, for an hour or so, the dignity of her presence to the party, Christmas was the homiest of the home festivals. The whole season was a simple preparation for the only really passionately anticipated event of the year–New Year’s Day. On Christmas there were family gatherings, with long dinners of prairie chicken and whatever frivolities the clever housewife could concoct, with no fresh fruit, no nuts, no out-of-season vegetables, and no skilled French cooks. The ‘hired girl’ was a blessing (or the curse) of only the few wealthy homes. The caterer had never been heard of, and when he finally did make his appearance fifty or sixty years ago he supplied nothing except ice-cream. In the wealthiest households a fiddler might be had in, but not guests outside the family. Usually some member of the family had enough talent to play the simple music which the dances required. And such dances! Square, sedate, but hilariously thrilling to grandmother as well as granddaughter. There would be no extravagantly glittering Christmas trees. Very few families except the Germans had a tree at all. Boughs of evergreen were tacked over the doors and the windows, gathered from the great woods north and west of the city, the woods which are now a part of the most populous miles in Chicago. If the family happened to live on the north shore of the river and was bid to a family Christmas on the south shore, it dragged itself, of necessity, across the Chicago River on a hand ferry at Rush Street, or crossed at Dearborn Street on a bridge operated by hand cables. And whether the party were joyously gay or not, as moral upright villagers they must needs be at home and in bed by ten o’clock, or, if distance and utter levity demanded, they might possibly sneak in at midnight. While the tree is still on the lake front, it will watch the mobs rushing into the city on New Year’s Eve for the bacchanal which has come to be the American custom of welcoming in the New Year. In the old days, every one was so excited about New Year’s Day that they hadn’t time to waste on its eve. In the rare households where the ladies of the family were not receiving, a basket was hung on the doorknob in which the callers left their cards. Otherwise, the ladies, furbelowed in their most extravagant gowns, ‘received’ and kept an accurate account of the number and names of the gentlemen who honored them. The days after New Year’s were spent in comparing notes and–for the beaux–in recovering from hot toddy and fried oysters and chicken salad, which the fair hostesses had probably spent half the night before preparing.