The Mr. Dog Blog — Family Tradition

I am eternally grateful to my brother, Jason, for inspiring me to publish "Mr. Dog’s Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn." As I wrote to him on the book’s acknowledgements page: “...this book simply wouldn’t be, were it not for your sly suggestion to me one Christmas morning.”

Though Jason carefully avoids the limelight, I know what a softie he is about "Mr. Dog’s Christmas" and I really wanted him to share his thoughts here on the blog. So I pestered and guilted him the way only a big sister can. He relented and delivered this: the most beautiful recollection of our childhood Christmases—and Mr. Dog’s place there—that I could have hoped for. Thank you once again, little brother.

~Betsy

by Jason Luther

I didn’t grow up at the Hollow Tree Inn, but my hometown was still a pretty nice place and Christmas was always a special time of year. I grew up in Ukiah, a small town in Northern California. Ukiah had four seasons and winters were generally crisp, cool and rainy.  Every year or two a large, cold storm would send a few inches of snow our way, just enough to let us make snow angels and eat a few bowls of packed snow drizzled with maple syrup.

Jason, about age 5, mugging at the Christmas tree farm.

We lived in a large house shaded by a massive oak tree and our home had most everything anyone could need, but it didn’t have central heating. All winter long we’d huddle together near a roaring fireplace, the only source of heat in the house. There, in the mornings, my folks would read newspapers and sip coffee while my sister and I read books or groused at each other. In the evenings my folks would sip cocktails and unwind by the fire while my sister and I did homework or groused at each other. At all times a dog or two and a cat would make an uneasy truce and lounge warily near the hearth for warmth.

Our folks worked long hours throughout the years but they always made sure that Christmas was special. They really went all out. As kids we could count on finding bulging stockings hanging under the mantel and lots of beautifully wrapped gifts under the tree. Our tree was tall and full bodied, with an array of ornaments and colored lights covering nearly every inch. The tree always had everything; everything except tinsel… It never had tinsel.

There are a few long-standing traditions in our Christmas routine: Christmas mornings we always throw some terrible Pepperidge Farm fruit turnovers in the oven before checking out our stockings and opening our gifts. We invariably forget about them till they’re burnt, and after we scrape off the burnt bits we usually inhale the turnovers too quickly, torching our tonsils in the process.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our most meaningful Christmas traditions happen on Christmas Eve. For decades now the traditional Christmas Eve dinner has been Mom’s leek and potato soup, served with crusty bread. After the meal we settle down comfortably in the living room for one of the holiday’s highlights: the reading of the story we’ve always called “Mr. Dog’s Christmas,” but which is officially titled “Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn,” by Albert Bigelow Paine. My dad has done the reading for many, many years now and as we watch him ease into his comfy leather chair, take a sip of brandy, and clear his throat theatrically a few times, we all know that Christmas is really coming.

The feeling and meaning of the story change and grow with time and age. As a youngster the story seemed longer than it really is, the way a sprawling childhood home seems much smaller when revisited in adulthood. As a kid, the end of the story signaled bedtime and the beginning of a fitful night’s sleep while old Saint Nick worked his magic. It’s not that we were anxious for the story to end, but we knew the ending signaled the coming of the Christmas morning extravaganza.

Betsy and Jason on Christmas morning, 1972

As an adult, I find myself wishing the tale were a page or two longer, so I could learn a tiny bit more about Mr. ‘Coon, Mr. ‘Possum, the Old Black Crow, and their faithful and fun-loving friend, Mr. Dog. I’d use the extra time to linger over my father’s voice as he reads, pausing in all the right places and landing the all-too-familiar punch lines with quiet joy. I’d steal glances at the faces of the assembled family and friends, taking them all in and watching their pleasure in being present in a special time and place and moment. I’d add these images and feelings to the other Christmas scenes that play in my head like a flickering movie reel, living images of family and friends and pets, many still present and many no longer with us.

I wish I could tell you more about the story and its meaning to my family, but I can’t, because I haven’t time. All I can say is that the story and the ritual of its reading have meant a great deal to my family over the years, decades, and generations. Long after we’ve outgrown the bicycles, lost the tweezers from our Swiss Army knives, and dropped off the funky sweaters at the Goodwill, what remains are the people, the pets, the foods and smells, the places and times and rituals, all of which help make each Christmas something to remember.

Long before The Slanket, we enjoyed these sleeping bag-like robes, decked with B.Kliban's iconic sneaker-wearing cat—very convenient for staying even warmer near the fire, but not as enduring as Mr. Dog's Christmas, or all the wonderful memories of Christmases past.

Greetings, dear Reader!

This week I welcome back Henry Cordes, who has his own memories to share about growing up in a "Mr. Dog Family," and some nice thoughts about keeping stories and traditions alive.

Enjoy!

My family has quite a few Christmas traditions. There’s the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding we have for Christmas dinner, and the figgy pudding my grandma makes. She douses it in liquor and lights it on fire; it’s very exciting. Many families leave out cookies for Santa, but we always left out a little cognac as well. And then of course there’s Mister Dog, the tradition we will soon share with you.

Little Henry, big tree. How the Little Fellows do slip away from us!

On Christmas Eve as a little kid, I’d sit with my family by the fire in my red and green striped pajamas while the adults sipped their drinks and talked and admired the tree. And at some point my grandpa would shuffle over to the bookcase and take down a very old, battered volume and say, “I think it’s time for Mr. Dog, don’t you?”

Mr. Dog's Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn first appeared in this 1898 volume of stories by Paine

Albert Bigelow Paine’s “Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn” is but one in a series of story collections he wrote over two decades about Mr. Dog and the other Hollow Tree folks. Researching Paine in order to write a short bio about him for our book, I learned that he wrote these stories for his three daughters, and that “Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn” was to be the last story in his beloved series. But even as his older daughter grew up and began to lose interest, his younger daughters kept demanding new stories. After publishing “Mr. Dog,” Paine and his illustrator J.M. Condé went on to create two more books. As Paine wrote in the preface to the very last in the series:

Until we started this project I’d assumed I was probably one of the last of the little people who would ever come along. Paine put Mr. Dog down on the page over a century ago, and in the natural course of things even the best loved relics fade from memory. What makes this project so exciting for me is stepping back, like Paine and Condé, to breathe new life into some well-loved characters. It is my sincere hope that our republication, and Adam’s wonderful new illustrations, will bring this gem into the hearts and memories of many more Little People, and that Mr. Dog may become your Christmas tradition too.

Greetings, dear Reader!
My guests this week are Henry Cordes and his grandfather, James “Doompa” Luther. Henry interviews his grandpa on the topic of Christmases Past.
Enjoy!

HC: Hey, Doompa! I’d love to know more about how “Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn” became a tradition in our family. Do you remember who gave the book to your family in the first place? And who first read it to you?

JL: I think the book came from my mother's family, but no one still alive seems to remember. It must have first been read to me when I was about 5, when we lived in Sierra Madre, California. I say that because in my imagination the porch of the Hollow Tree Inn has always been the porch of that great old house we lived in then. The upstairs hallway there, with the bedroom doors opening out onto it on one side and a banister on the other, was always where I imagined the three Hollow Tree regulars poking their heads out to see if there was anything in their stockings.

Henry’s grandpa, wee Jim Luther (right) with his big brother, Jack. This must have been taken right around his very first Christmas.

HC: You moved to Berkeley not long after that, right?

JL: Yes, in 1942 we moved to a place in Berkeley on San Mateo Road. It was a two-story place, too. We had plenty of Christmases there. I remember my Dad setting up a spindly WWII era tree and testing the lights. Getting ready. I think this was the place and the time and the age when the expectation of Christmas really started to take hold in me and grow each year. After that was an even bigger place, with four stories if you include the big basement with its monster, octopus armed furnace and the huge attic, on Indian Rock Avenue, Berkeley. Wartime Christmases with uncles in uniform and other family and others passing through heading off to somewhere out there or going east, maybe home, afterwards. Newspapers with big headlines. Fireplace, big stairway, adults kind and friendly to us kids and our dog, Sandy. Everybody drinking something in front of the lit-up tree and warm fire. Phonograph going. My brother, Jack and I getting to stay up late a lot.  Sometime in there we moved to a house on Shattuck Avenue, around the corner from Oxford Elementary School, where Jack and I went together for a couple of years. I know we enjoyed our Christmases there and at school—giant Christmas tree in the hall with all us little kids around it singing carols.

Jim (lower right, about age 6) with brother Jack and their parents—Henry's great grandparents—John and Betty, at home on Indian Rock Avenue in Berkeley, CA.

HC: Tell me more about your dog, Sandy.

JL: Sandy is what I remember most about our places on Indian Rock Avenue and Shattuck Avenue. He was our ready-for-anything Samoyed, who was constantly breaking out of our backyard and coming over to the schoolyard to look for Jack and me and cause havoc; he never hurt anybody, just wanted to play, herding big crowds of squealing, laughing kids back and forth across the playground. More than once, I was allowed (told) to leave school for long enough to get him home.

HC: What was Christmas like after you left Berkeley and moved to the country?

JL: In 1946 when I was 9, we moved to a two-story house near Fair Oaks, in Sacramento County. It was colder there in the wintertime than it had been in Berkeley. The house had a fireplace that we used a lot, and we had good Christmases there; one year I got a brand new Monarch bicycle, straight out of the pictures in the magazine ads. Then in 1951 we moved to suburbia: Arden Park, halfway between Fair Oaks and Sacramento. We lived in a small but comfortable, modern, one-story ranch style house on Las Pasas Way. Fireplace and plenty of room in front of the picture window for the tree, carols going on the Magnavox, but no upstairs to look down from. Christmases were still fun, but some of the childhood wonderment was fading a little. By age 14, I felt an obligation to be awkwardly cool. Fortunately, my little sister Joan was in just the right age-range, and that kept the Christmas innocence going for us.

Cultivating his cool. Jim, age 11.

HC: When did you start reading “Christmas at the Hollow Tree Inn” to my mom? Was that when you lived in Ukiah? What was Christmas like in those years?

JL: Your mother was 9 when we moved West Standley Street in Ukiah. And of course she and your uncle Jay had lived in a couple of places in Sacramento County, and up on Fircrest Drive for two years when we first moved to Ukiah. And there were Christmases with plenty of Mr. Dog at those places, too. But it was the Standley Street house where she spent the most time as a child and as a teenager. The fireplace there got good use because the only other heat was from electric wall heaters, which we tried to avoid using because they were so expensive to operate. Your mother can tell you about staying huddled a few feet from the fire, wrapped up in a sleeping bag because it was so damn cold everywhere else in the house! There was almost always a cat and one or two dogs. I think that Christmases were wonderful for all of us there, I know they were especially fine for me: lots of tree-lights and well-used old familiar ornaments, bringing back the Christmas memories as we got them out anew each year. Smelling the Christmas Tree smells, listening to the same familiar records of carols and Dylan Thomas’s reading of “A Child's Christmas in Wales” each year. Presents, all kinds of toys and games, and lots of wonderful things to drink and eat, especially your grandmother's famous Christmas roast beast and Yorkshire Pudding. And always Mr. Dog by the fire on Christmas Eve.

HC: Much like Christmas has always been for me. So you’ve been the official Mr. Dog reader for a long time now!

JL: I guess I have! I started reading it to your mother and then your Uncle Jason when they were small, before we moved to Ukiah. Except possibly for one year (with reminders sometimes from Mrs. Dog) I've continued to read it all these years. And my audience has grown, of course, to include your dad and your Aunt Jean, then you and your cousins, Joon and Jory—and often guests who stop in for a Christmas Eve visit. One Christmas I even read it twice: your mother was in New York and insisted on a private reading over the phone.

1993: Henry’s first Christmas, with his Doompa in the house on West Standley Street, Ukiah, California.

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