From gatherings in a country church to festive downtown lighting, with traditions both modern and ancient and as varied as the people who settled here.

The holidays are a focal point for faith and community on the high plains.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) So Christmas was always an important season in the high plains, even in the pioneer days.

And it was celebrated in various ways by various ethnic groups that had moved in.

The early Christmases in the high plains were very simple.

They're mostly family affairs and families would get together.

There was exchange of gifts, but they weren't too big because they were homemade.

At Sebelius Lake, there's a Prairie Dog State Park.

And there is a site there that's on the state register of historic sites, which is an adobe building probably dating from the late 19th century.

And there's a living history program regarding Christmases put on there.

My name is Michael Richards, president of the Norton Living History Museum.

So in honor of these people here, the Spencer family that lived here, we honor them by showing what Christmas would have been like.

So we take an 1890s Christmas, we've researched it, done our homework.

It was pretty barren time.

So this was a good break during the hard cold winters of Kansas, where the family got together.

Their big forte was they had a big meal here.

They loved that, okay?

But Christmas only lasted one day, the 25th.

After that, the 26th, it was all packed up gone and you were back to work doing what you needed to survive out here.

Keep the animals fed, the fires lit, food on the table.

So when Christmas did come, it was a big time.

It was a joyous time for this family.

In this area, we had a lot of different nationalities that came up here.

We had the German group, we had the Czechs, the Poles, and they would all interact here.

And that's how they got to know each other.

They honored each other's traditions.

Hi, I'm Heather Collins, and I am the vice president for the Norton Living History Museum.

And we just are trying to get you to step back into 1890s with us.

And so we really focus on the traditions that they would have had.

In this room in particular, I start with the Irish traditions because the Spencers were Irish.

So we talk about the welcome candle.

We might have some of the kids light it because the youngest family member would light the welcome candle.

We talk about leaving seed cakes out.

It turned into leaving cookies out for Santa, but back then, you left seed cakes out for Mary and Joseph.

And the welcome candle was to let them know that you had room even though the inn didn't.

But then we also, we talk a lot about Czech traditions.

We do things like floating walnuts.

We have little candles in a walnut, and you light it and you try and get it across a pan of water without the candle blowing out.

If you make it across, you're gonna have a good year.

And that is a lot of fun.

We've had families do it with us, and then now it's part of their tradition at home.

We talk about the apples.

Yeah, everybody would have an apple at Christmas.

You cut it across and all at once, you flip it over.

And if you have a star, you're gonna have a good luck year.

If you have a box, you're gonna have a bad luck year.

On the plains, especially, in 1890s, stuff like oranges were really rare.

And so for Christmas, the whole family would get one orange, slice it up and candy it, and everybody would get a slice of orange for Christmas.

And everybody would get a slice of orange for Christmas.

It was pricey.

If somebody gave you citrus fruits and stuff, you were well loved.

That's a pricey gift.

So most kids haven't tried a candy bunch.

Most adults that we have come through have never tried it.

So we make a bunch of these, and we have everybody try one.

Have experienced that 1890s with us.

We make handmade gifts, because a lot of your gifts, especially on the plains, would have been handmade.

There was no store to go to.

So we make some handmade gifts, and anybody who wants one can take one home.

Hats, scarves, little yarn dolls, just whatever we come up with at the time.

Like these, these are Dresdens.

They're all handmade.

The kids make them.

That, handmade.

The mom would take time, Sarah, with the kids before Christmas.

They'd steal a couple hours here and there, and they'd go out on that kitchen table and make decorations and get ready for Christmas.

So that was a big lead up, too.

They had to have simpler things, and so we try to share that with everybody.

The simpler things.

We cover their traditions, the ones that they held during Christmas time.

Magic Lantern Show.

I have kids that come today.

Now these are kids that have big computers that have more computing power than Apollo flight had.

They know more about, you show them this, and it dazzles them.

They have no idea how it works or anything else, and where's the electricity, where do we plug it in, anything else.

It's a kaleidoscope that's used at the end of the show for this.

They learn about different cultures.

This slide, it's a panel.

It's hand-painted glass.

It's a Christmas scene.

It shows Germany in the 1890s.

So, but they brought all that with them when they came here.

Again, it's just to bring these traditions back and share them with everybody.

We want everybody to remember these traditions and to maybe start them themselves.

We're bringing them back.

We're showing them how people did it.

And the true grit and tenacity it took to do it, and the family cohesion it took to do it.

That's what we're celebrating here.

This house was built for family.

We were built for family, and that's what we wanna honor.

We wanna honor their integrity, their drive, their tenacity, and their love for family.

That's all we're showcasing.

They're just regular people like us, but you're coming into a regular person's home in 1891.

It's Christmas at the Adobe.

Before the days of settlers, early holiday revelers on the plains were the soldiers guarding posts along the trails crossing Kansas.

So my name is Ben Long.

I'm one of the park rangers here at Fort Larned National Historic Site.

So we're here at our Christmas open house event that we have each year.

We try to keep some of the traditions alive that some of the soldiers might have had.

Obviously we have our carriage rides and Santa here, which they wouldn't have, but it would have been a day off for them.

They could enjoy some games, things like that.

It might also be one of the only times in the year they get to see the officer's wife and get to spend time with his family.

We do have accounts of the officer and his family coming over in the mess hall and eating with the men.

Sort of keeping some of those traditions alive.

It's a special time of year.

Having a day off definitely would have been, would have been a blessing for them.

We do have a cooking demonstration going on.

There's my pie.

Oh my goodness.

Probably have keep rotating that too, don't you?

Oh yeah, because the heats only on one side.

So if you don't rotate it, it gets burned on one side.

Obviously they would have been cooking all year round, not just for Christmas.

We've got blacksmith demonstrations going on as well.

Those things are sort of little bonuses for folks that come out here and get a slice of life from the 1860s.

They say Christmas comes but once a year But don't you believe it's so Along with open houses and reenactments to remind us of history, the culture of the old West carries on at holiday celebrations, like the cowboy Christmas poetry gathering in Stockton.

Every day is Christmas in the West Every day is Christmas This poem is entitled, "The Star Above the Stable."

It was way down in December, coldest evening of the year.

I'd been out on the road, now heading home for Christmas cheer.

The family was waiting for all the Christmas fun, but I had to say no wait.

There's some chores still to be done.

I went out to the barn and I went to feed the beasts, but I saw a giant star that was shining in the East.

It made me think about those nights those centuries ago when another shining star lit the heavens with its glow.

That star would lead the wise men as they went upon their way till they found the baby Jesus who'd been born upon the hay.

For every day is Christmas in the West Where I live on my home, home on the range where the deer and the antelope play Just as in the old days when the wise men traveled far, I'd been guided to the stable by a bright and shining star.

It wasn't long before I had my cows and horses fed and I went into the family where a joyful prayer was said.

After all, it is our families which bring us such great light, but it was the shepherds who heard the good news first that night.

So we give thanks for all the livestock folks attending critters day and night, and especially for families who bring our homes such light.

So in the spirit of the Christ child, I'm wishing you the best for a joyous Christmas season and a new year richly blessed.

Where the deer and the antelope play Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day (audience applauding) The Christmas season on the high plains has changed quite a bit in the last 150 years.

It used to be that it was primarily a religious thing and for families, the programs that were held were primarily in schools.

The school kids in the one room country schools or two room country schools would get together and their parents would come in and the children would give skits.

Don spoke about one room schools with doctor of education, Richard Mosier.

In the school house, Mosier himself and his family attended and later renovated.

Well, a unique thing, and I knew when you were restoring this, I was talking to you.

There was no electricity in the school, but when they had Christmas programs and stuff, because there was some wiring in the school and you said that somebody would bring a generator or battery, the old glass batteries and hook them up so you could have lights for the Christmas program.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, Christmas time was a favorite time in this school and it was in all of them, as far as I know.

Or in this school, at least each student would have an individual part.

They would have some kind of a poem or some kind of a story or presenting some kind of thing to the assembled parents, which were arranged around here.

We were responsible under the supervision of our teacher to prepare some kind of gift for our parents before that night.

And of course, we had almost always made them out of Apple boxes.

And because the sides of the Apple box were only about a quarter inch thick, but it was an impressive time.

And then the whole crowd, and then usually there was time for the whole student body, all 12 or 15 of them, to go to the center of the stage and then sing Christmas songs.

It was a good time.

And then usually sometimes, not often, not every time, then we'd have someone come ho ho hoing through the door and dressed in appropriately and he would distribute candy and that sort of thing.

But you never forget those kind of things.

From country schools with no electricity to fully illuminated downtown displays, holiday celebrations evolved with the times.

My name is Kathy Albert, and I'm the retired director of the Wakeeney Travel and Tourism Committee.

Yeah, Wakeeney has been known as the Christmas City, the High Plains for a long time now.

The first tree was actually put up in 1950.

It was mainly, it was the brainchild of Art Krause.

I've been told that he could make anything.

He could do anything.

And then he teamed up with Jake Heckman, who was the local banker and also an artist.

They designed and built the tree supposedly in the basement of Krause Hardware Store, especially Heckman was very particular.

Everything had to be just the right proportions, the right colors, the right everything.

The light bulbs in 1950 that they used, they couldn't get the colors that they wanted.

So they hand dipped all the light bulbs.

And the two of them were kind of the brainchild behind us, but it was a community.

Everybody pitched in and helped all the business people, helped build this tree and helped get everything ready to go up.

And then for several years, they kept adding.

And I found a really interesting newspaper article that said in 1958, they decided that they had reached perfection and they were going to stop because they didn't want to overdo it.

And so basically nothing was added until in the late 1990s.

The same decorations are used today that were built back then in the 50s.

And so it's a very traditional Christmas display.

The tree, it's hard to explain to people.

It's made of fresh greenery, but it's not a real tree.

It is a framework and the greenery is wired to it.

And then the light bulbs for the tree are wired to that.

And then it goes together just like an artificial tree.

Some of the guys that work for the city have been putting these decorations up for years and know exactly how they go.

And then they pass that on to the next generation.

But on that, usually it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, they come in and there will be at least three bucket trucks if not more in the main intersection downtown.

They'll be putting the pole up in the middle of the intersection.

Then they will start putting the tree together.

There's garlands across the street in all four directions.

And I think I remember the blue lights are supposedly the heavens.

And they come out from the white stars.

There's four white stars at the top of the tree.

And they're each like five feet in diameter.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, there's a full day of events that day.

I mean, it starts with a craft fair up here at the fairgrounds.

There's events at the museum, at the library.

They have wagon rides for the children, train rides.

But then at 6 o'clock is when the tree itself-- Santa comes down Main Street, lights the tree.

And then he proceeds over to the North Pole Park downtown.

And he has a permanent home now there.

Very nice.

So that people come to town in the middle of summer and say, why are you called the Christmas City of the High Plains?

Why?

And so now you can take them in.

And they can take their picture there on the little porch in front of Santa's house.

Then we put up a-- it's a big picture of the tree.

So people could actually visualize what that tree looks like during the summer when they come to town.

Or they can take pictures in front of it.

People that are originally from Wakeeney, they want to come home for Thanksgiving.

Because then that way, they can go to the tree lighting and bring their families to see what things were like when they were growing up.

People get engaged in front of the tree.

They take pictures.

So there's a lot of family tradition goes around that tree.

We are at Vincent, St. Boniface Parish here in Vincent.

It's 5 and a half miles south of Victoria and 2 miles east.

Father Callistus, he came to our parish in 1927.

And he stayed until 1980.

It's very rare that a priest ever stayed at a parish for 52 years.

So he started the nativity in 1927, beginning with a stable made from a nearby pear tree.

He got this started because it was a love from when he was a young child.

And he said their Christmas tradition was to go travel to other towns, to other churches, and see their crib setups.

And when he came here, he started his own.

And it just kept growing and growing.

I remember one of the older parishioners, Mr. Ryusky.

And he said he could remember father sitting out here in the driveway and out here on the sand road.

And he would be picking all of these little pebbles up.

And they had to be just a certain size.

So there are quite a few that are made from those little pebbles.

So the lumber company told me he would go down there and scrounge every little piece of extra wood that they had, every piece of paneling.

So he would go down there and pick up the little pieces of wood and then build these little buildings.

And then he would glue these little rocks and things on them.

I just remember him saying that his way of bringing the world together-- he wanted to bring the country together.

And so that's why we have a rock from every state.

And then he said, well, we have people celebrating Christmas worldwide.

And he started collecting from everywhere.

Most of the rocks over here in the window are from areas where our young men had served.

We, after Father Callistus passed away, we found a stack of letters that he had written to priests, to nuns.

And he was asking for something from that country or something that he could put in this crib so he could represent that country too.

Because he wanted the whole-- after he had all of the 50 rocks, he wanted the whole world to come together for Christmas.

One of my favorite stories is this particular piece of coral that comes from Queensland, Australia.

It's wrote on the back of it.

It's kind of faded, but it says coral from the famous coral reefs in Queensland, Australia, from Father Rudolph on November 20, 1957.

So we always knew that was on that rock for years.

We know that Father wrote a letter to Father Rudolph.

And I know that he offered him some kind of monetary incentive to send something back.

In the letter that we read from Father Rudolph, he said, don't worry about it.

We're doing quite well.

We're OK.

So don't send me any money.

But if you want to send me something, it sure would be nice to have a good old American cigar.

So we know he sent it to him because we found a second letter thanking him for the cigar.

So we found many, many, many letters telling us about a lot of these rocks and corals.

Every year, we're getting more-- one of the servicemen was stationed at Christmas Island.

We got something from the Berlin Wall a couple of years ago.

We got something from Alcatraz.

So people are still bringing us different items from unique places.

The children of the parish do a lot of the work putting it up, especially with the heavy lifting, getting stuff in, the high school kids.

And they're a major stake in putting it up every year and taking it down.

So much of what you see on the nativity, almost all of it was assembled by children.

We had a few brothers who were both in high school.

And they just started building.

And they made two little caves you could see up here.

One has sheep in it, and the other one has deer in it.

And something has never been done.

We've always put the crib together.

They wanted to make some caves.

And so fine.

That's great.

Do it.

It gave them a feeling of accomplishment, something they could say, hey, mom and dad, grandpa and grandma, I did that.

That means a lot.

Throughout December, on the Sundays of December, we have the nativity open.

And yes, people come from far and wide.

When people do come to see you for the first time, it's not just a five or 10 minute visit.

They take it in all.

And they could be here for an hour and still see something every minute they haven't seen the minute before.

And it's going to take more than once.

You can look at this for a long time.

You're not going to see everything.

So this is a 52-year collection of one man's vision of a worldwide Christmas.

And so he built it according to that.

And he died in 1980.

And today, we still assemble the nativity in his honor and his memory.

It's just a labor of love that he started.

And we continue that today.

[MUSIC PLAYING] It's kind of interesting taking a look at sort of the Christmas traditions of the past and how they inspire the present and also how they're different from the present, too.

People, yeah, have a different-- hopefully, we can put aside everything and come together and work together.

And that's what this tree has done through the years.

Yeah, it's always been very, very special to us.

Father ingrained in us this, bringing the world together, bringing the people together.

Christmas was a culmination of the year.

It was the biggest event of the year in their lives.

It brought the family together.

People were snail mailing back and forth now and getting together and finding out who was doing what throughout the year and all of that.

And the family is together.

And that's the biggest thing.

The High Plains of Northwest Kansas, Christmas is an important holiday as is New Year's.

So it's a week for people to come home and reunite with the family.

And so the board of the Friends of Cottonwood Ranch and myself wish you a very happy holiday season.

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