Lifelong resident shares tales of Novi’s Christmas past

NOVI — When we think of Christmas, we often think of massive amounts of decorations, and lights. However, that wasn’t always the case.

During the World War II era and the years that followed, Christmas was celebrated in a much more simple and intimate way.

“There weren’t even Christmas decorations outside like you would think of today. Not even wreaths or that kind of thing. Coming out of wartime, I think that people just felt like decorations might be too frivolous. You know, they wanted to pay their money for necessities, and a lot of times, especially in the ’40s, you still had ration books,” lifelong Novi resident Kathy Crawford, 81, said. “So, people weren’t spending money on decorations. They might spend money on a few toys for the kids, but there wasn’t a lot done outside, anyway, as far as decorations go.”

Crawford recalled that although she lived on a farm and was never lacking in food, many people were in need of food, and so that took precedence over holiday decor. According to Crawford, Novi didn’t even have a city tree until the late 1960s.

“Things were pretty much family-centered and church-centered,” Crawford said.

She said there were only two churches in Novi during the 1940s, a Baptist church on Novi Road, and the Methodist church was on Grand River Avenue.  She said there was always a Nativity play at church, and even the Novi school would have reenactments of the Nativity. Aside from performances of the Nativity, there were no Christmas programs or pageants. Schools would have the children do a Christmas craft to take home to their parents, but that was it.

“We kids loved the Christmas music and Christmas caroling and that kind of thing,” she said.

Christmas caroling began in November and went on past Christmas into the new year.

She said many people would take the streetcar down to J. L. Hudson’s  on Woodward Avenue in Detroit to see “the real Santa.” She said people would usually kick off their holidays by going to Detroit for the Hudson’s Thanksgiving Parade.

“You enjoy all the decorations downtown, but Novi didn’t really have any (decorations) back in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s,” Crawford said.

According to Crawford, people started to have a little bit more money in the late 1950s and began to decorate a little more.

Christmas trees, she said, were always present inside the home, but few had lights. She said her family always had a tree with lights and tinsel, but that was the only Christmas decoration. Most people in Novi cut their own Christmas tree down from their property at that time.

“We never went to a tree farm to get a tree. We just went back to the woods and got a tree,” said Crawford.

Artificial trees came about in the late 1950s. At that time, people started to use aluminum trees. She said that they were very popular in the 1960s.

She said that, traditionally, families would go to church on Christmas Eve. She recalled that they would always hear “big jingling bells” at the very end of the service, and somebody would appear dressed in a kind of a “scuzzy” Santa outfit and hand out a white box of candy to every child. She said that as kids they were always happy to get that candy.

“I knew that that Santa was kind of a Santa helper. He wasn’t the real Santa, because that Santa was (in) downtown Detroit at Hudson’s or in the Hudson’s parade. That’s where the real Santa was,” Crawford said.

Christmas Day was celebrated with “special food,” and the company of family and friends. She said that the family would gather for a huge breakfast with ham, biscuits and gravy, etc. She said that after that, as they lived on a farm, the adults would go about their usual work day, such as milking the cows. The kids would play games, such as Monopoly, and card games. TV didn’t come around until the 1950s, so around then they got a small black-and-white TV and would watch Christmas programs.

“There’s so many changes just because of the technology and everything else,” Crawford said.

She said that the most noticeable changes came as the roads and cars became better. That’s when more people started venturing into other communities for Chrstmas programming. Around the 1970s, she said, as the city was organizing and becoming less rural, they started having more stores and Saturday with Santa.

Former Mayor Bob Gatt said he doesn’t recall the city of Novi having any grand Christmas celebrations when he came to the city in 1975.

“It was a tiny little city at that time, I think, like, 12,000 people,” Gatt said. “But my fondest memories of the holiday period really do revolve around the Police Department. There were, like, 16 of us and four or five dispatchers, and we were like a family. We decorated the police station, and everybody brought food in. … That stands out in my mind as maybe the most prolific and fun days during the holidays that I ever experienced. We all came together and celebrated that special day.”

He said they almost always all had to work on the holidays, but no one felt neglected as they all celebrated together, with the company of their spouses.

Gatt said that in more recent times he enjoyed the Spirit of Giving at City Hall, which started around 2005. He said it was a “congenial and familial” celebration, and he liked its smaller size.

“I like that the city is recognizing the holidays and that now we have a lot of stores,” Crawford said of the contemporary holiday season in Novi.

“There’s a lot more now than we ever had as kids, so I like all that,” Crawford said.

Cameras weren’t prevalent in the early days of Novi, so there are few photographs of what Christmas was like back then, Crawford said.