Shayna HepnerFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-30-2018

Place item was collected

Hyrum, Utah

Informant

Jenifer Youmans

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Jenifer was born in Kaysville and moved to Logan when she was in 7th grade. She is a working mother of three children. She is the manager of a local bakery in town. Jenifer married the love of her life twenty-two years ago in the Logan, Utah temple. She is the third of three daughters in a family of of four children.

Context

Jenifer has spent Christmas at her Grandparents houses in Nibley, Utah for all of her childhood. When she got married she would switch off spending the holiday with her family one year or her family the next year. Jenifer would spend the holiday with not only her immediate family, but her extended family as well.

Text

Growing up my dad loved to put up Christmas lights on the house. Every year he would put them up but we were not allowed outside to see them. When he was finished, he would wrap me and my sisters in our pajamas and blankets and him and mom would take us outside in the dark. We would stand in the front yard with mom and watch as dad turned the Christmas lights on for the first time of the year. Even though I was still little, I never got tired of watching the lights come on for the first time. It felt like that was the start to Christmas. I remember going out every year to pick out the best Christmas tree for our house. We would sometimes spend hours looking for that perfect tree. To this day I will only buy a real Christmas tree. To me it just isn’t Christmas without the smell of a fresh cut pine tree smelling up the house. I think that is my favorite part of the Christmas season. I remember on year when my family did not have a lot of money and we couldn’t afford to buy the shiny ornaments that everyone else had. Instead of buying ornaments, my mom learned to make some. We had so much fun making our own special ornaments. My favorite one we learned how to make was an ice cream cone. We would take a styrofoam ball and glue it to a ice cream cone. Then my mom learned how to make this frosting that got hard. After they were done we would put hooks through the “ice cream” part and hang them on the tree. My mom would always get angle hair which is just spun glass, and put it on the tree every year. It kind of looked like spider webs but it looked so pretty when the lights were on. Mom never put too much on just so we could see the ornaments. On Christmas we would drive from Kaysville to Nibley to spend Christmas with my moms family. Mom and dad would only let us bring one toy that we got for Christmas because they didn’t want to pack all the toys with us if we were just going to be there for a couple of hours.

Texture

Jenifer’s face lights up with joy when she was talking about the Christmas trees. A few days after the interview she thanked me for helping her remember exactly why she will only have a real tree. She was very enthusiastic about going to get this years tree and even thought of making the ice cream cone ornaments with her own children this year.

Course

ENGL 2210

Instructor

Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G1: Holidays

EAD Number

1.13.2.2

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