My, How Time Flies

La Verkin, Utah—One night when I was sixteen years old, Father gave a Christmas party for his own children and their families and the nearest neighbors. We danced. My brothers were the musicians. We knew it was Father's aim to end the party at ten o'clock, which he did right in the middle of a square-dance by ordering the musicians to stop. But Father didn't know that my brothers had lifted me up to the clock many times that night. Each time I turned it back thirty minutes. It must have been past midnight when the party broke up.

"Julia's Christmas," from the Christian Olsen family record, Our Pioneer Heritage, 14 (1971): 199

Christmas was a time of joy and giving. In pioneer times, even when there wasn't much to give, it was still a time to make memories.

Illustrations by Paul Mann, lettering by John H. Clark, photoprops by Tammy Coleman, and photography by John Luke