Curling Ribbon

Today my daughter asked me to list all the Christmas traditions we had when I was a child. I guess I've been all over the place with BLOGging the traditions we enjoyed, but I don't want to be repetitive again (pun intended).

Mom did a lot of the wrapping. Daddy only wrapped those presents that were specifically from him (not from him and mom), and I've already talked about how perfectly he wrapped gifts.

Anyway, mom wrapped all the gifts, but left the best part for me and my siblings. At least I considered it the best part of the wrapping. The wrapping paper was often used -- we were very careful when we unwrapped our gifts because the paper was used again and again. Mom even ironed it!

Back in the 40s and 50s paper ribbon (now called curling ribbon) was extremely popular. I mean silk and satin ribbon was as well, but it was more expensive than the paper ribbon. Department stores had whole departments that sold only ribbon. But I digress.

Mom bought the paper ribbon and she would wrap it around the gift, then asked for one of our small fingers to hold down the ribbon at the place she was going to tie it. Then she'd curl the ribbon around our finger and pull, and then we would pull our finger out of the way and the ribbon was tight.

But we weren't finished yet. We had to curl the ribbon. I know you all know what that means, but I'll explain anyway. It's when you take the flat part of the scissor blade to the back of the ribbon, hold the ribbon taught, and pull against the ribbon. It curls.

This was brought to my remembrance today as I curled ribbon myself, and held my finger down while I tried to get the ribbon tied tightly. There is a little slack, but mostly the ribbon was tight.

After all the gifts were wrapped and the ribbon curled, mom would put on the name tags. No adhesive backed tags in those days. They all had a small hole punched in one end, with a small piece of twine strung through to attach to the package. If we ran out of ribbon, mom would just scotch-tape the tag in place. After the gifts were tagged, they were placed under the tree, or on the shelf of the small buffet that was in the bay window (now residing in my back hall).

Those gifts weren't just for us children -- we really only got one or two gifts from mom and dad -- usually just one. They were for church members, Sunday school students, and her sisters and brother and their children. The pile really was quite high.

Mom and dad had a Christmas account -- they had those back in the "old" days. You would deposit as little as $1 a week, and after 50 weeks, you would withdraw your "savings" plus interest (about 3 percent) and you would have a wad to spend on Christmas. Mom and dad put away $2 a week for Christmas gifts. That was a lot of money back then. One hundred dollars would buy enough gifts (nice ones) for everyone on mom's list. I know that Betsy Wetsy cost only $5 back then.

That's another tale -- I wanted a Betsy Wetsy doll in the worst way, but I wanted a boy doll. I had enough girl dolls. So mom bought the Betsy Wetsy and made a boy outfit for it. It was a green tam hat, with matching overalls, and she made a shirt out of a piece of pillowcase. She was so talented at the sewing machine. No patterns, either.

She wrapped it, and after it was wrapped I was permitted to "curl" the ribbon -- not knowing that the ribbon I was curling was for my own present!