Mule on Toast (Without the Toast): Christmas on the Frontier

With Christmas almost upon us, many families are beginning to dust off their beloved holiday traditions: opening advent calendars, planning menus (that always seem to take 5 trips to the grocery store), trimming the tree, celebrating the Birth of Christ (more on a tradition centered around that story next week!), and of course, preparing for Santa’s descent down the chimney.

Christmas in the Wild West didn’t look too different….. at least in spirit – just more resourceful, humble, and occasionally mule-flavored. Long before the Gold Rush and cattle trails brought settlers westward, early frontiersmen were lucky if they got to celebrate at all. There were no town halls or carolers, but they did have their Bibles and a chaplain if they were lucky. 

One of the earliest recorded frontier Christmases comes from Zebulon Pike, whose 1806 expedition led him through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. His journal entry makes me grateful for my heater and warm socks: “Eight hundred miles from the frontiers of our country, in the most inclement of weather, not one person clothed for winter..… I will not speak of diet, as I conceive that to be beneath the consideration of a man on such a voyage. We spent the holiday as agreeably as could be expected.” Translation: “it’s fine, we’re fine, everything is fine.”

As you can see….. rather bleak. A far cry from the 1969 Better Homes and Gardens Guide to Entertaining menu recommendation of Christmas cheese chowder, assorted crackers, hard rolls, standing rib roast, Yorkshire pudding, broccoli with easy hollandaise, wine, frozen eggnog, and demitasse (after-dinner coffee).

By the postbellum period, as more Easterners were packing their trunks to head west in the swell of Manifest Destiny, Western Christmas began to echo the Victorian traditions that were popular back East. Tree trimming made its way into homes – although “tree” often meant pinon pine, juniper, or even a begrudging sagebrush. Decorations were humble as well: scraps of ribbon, strung popcorn, tin stamped by the children, and for those feeling bold (or reckless), candles perched on branches. 

Santa Claus, too, journeyed westward. While his origin story dates back to the 4th-century Greek bishop Saint Nicholas, it was the 17th-century Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam who brought “Sinterklaas” (anglicized “Santa Claus”) to America. By the time the 1823 poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas (better known as The Night Before Christmas) captured imaginations nationwide, Santa had become a household name. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol added even more cheer (and a few moral lessons) to the national holiday mood. 

Still, life on the frontier had to be practical by necessity, ensuring that gifts were often handmade and pragmatic. Children might find cornhusk dolls, knitted mittens, or even a prized peppermint candy. Gifts were rarely wrapped, as stockings were already in use and paper was a commodity not to be wasted. 

Yet even where goods were scarce, community spirit was abundant. Christmas offered a rare break from daily hardship and an excuse for miners, cowboys, and settlers scattered across the range to come together. Schoolhouses and churches hosted plays, holiday services, and dances, providing the chance to swap the monotony of life on the frontier for a night of laughter and festivity. 

Perhaps one of the liveliest celebrations occurred in 1858, when Richens “Uncle Dick” Wooten arrived in Auraria (just across Cherry Creek from the brand new settlement of Denver City). Denver and Auraria had been fighting like siblings over the only sled (boy, do I know what that’s like!), but Uncle Dick showed up with tin cups and barrels of notoriously potent, but free, whiskey known as “Taos Lightening.” The revelry carried across the creek until Denver settlers, unable to resist, wandered over to see what in tarnation was going on. According to one pioneer, “the whole camp got hilarious!” Later that night, Denver founder William Larimer delivered an hours long speech about the city’s bright future, saying it was destined to be the big city of the West – he was no doubt helped along by a cup or two of Taos Lightening.

And then there’s the legendary Christmas ride of “Portugee Phillips,” whose heroism in 1866  remains stuff of frontier legend. After the devastating Fetterman Massacre left Fort Kearny vulnerable to raids, Phillips volunteered to ride the 236 miles through a blizzard and hostile territory to Fort Laramie for aid. He arrived at 11pm on Christmas night – interrupting a holiday ball, no less – covered in ice and snow, with a near-to-death horse in tow. Reinforcements were sent immediately, and Phillips’ legacy lives on as a testament to the grit and bravery it took to survive the Wild West.

Christmas in the Wild West may not have had heaps of presents, twinkling lights, or Hallmark movies, but what it had was powerful: community, courage, humor in hardship, and the enduring belief that even in the harshest of conditions, Christmas was worth celebrating. Whether surviving on mule steaks, dancing in schoolhouses, sharing questionable whiskey with neighbors/rivals, or riding through blizzards to save a fort, the people of the frontier carried the spirit of the holiday with them.

Make the mule-tide bright,

Mountain Girl