Glimpses of Some Past Christmases in Idaho Falls
1886 – An Eagle Rock auction company, C. Bunting, gave raffle tickets for various prizes to be awarded on Christmas Eve to whoever made purchases of $1 or more. The grand prize was a New York Standard nine-stop parlor organ. Additional prizes included a sewing machine, a 12-tune music box with stand, hanging lamps, clocks, and others. The man who won the organ, W. E. Muir, offered it “for sale – cheap, having no use for it,” in a classified ad two months later. [1] 1904 – At 5 am on Christmas morning there was a service at the Lutheran church, in Swedish, followed at 6 am by a second service, also in Swedish. The following day the children of the Lutheran church Sunday school performed a cantata of 27 numbers, for which there was an admission charge of 10 cents. [2] 1909 – “The Salvation Army of this city will do its share in distributing the Christmas cheer in this city…We seek out the most needful in the city, families in which Christmas cheer would mean so much yet seldom is pres