By Shirley Bahlmann
Don Hales was born May 10, 1929 in American Fork, the oldest of five
children. He worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the U.S.
Department of the Interior, which meant they lived in various places, including
South Dakota, Washington D.C. and Alaska.
Shirley Ann Hales was born in California five days before Christmas in 1928.
At an early age, she discovered woodcarving. She carried a piece of wood and a knife
in her pocket most of her life. She and her identical twin, Mary Lou, camped, skied,
and hiked with their older brother, activities that continued after Shirley Ann
married Don.
The Hales have four children: Steven, Rebecca, Ann and Carolyn. They go on
regular weekday walks to this day.
Hales daughters in 1961 Ann, Carolyn and Rebecca Hales during Christmas season, 1961. The family was
living in Ogden where Don was assigned to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Don and Shirley Hales of Ephraim, both in their 90s, have stored up a lot of
memories over their long lives.
Some of their happiest and most vivid are Christmas memories. With their
family of four children, they forged a host of traditions, from hand-made ornaments
and gifts, to reusing wrapping paper, to children receiving stuffed stockings in their
bedrooms on Christmas morning.
Their children—Steven, Rebecca, Ann and Carolyn—have carried on many of
the same traditions in their families.
In an interview, both Shirley Ann and Don first talked about Christmases
during their own childhoods.
Don and Shirley Hales at home in Ephraim. They are both 93 and will observe their
75th in 203.
Shirley Ann’s father passed away when she was 3. “Our grandparents came
to live with us, while our mom taught school,” she says. “We didn’t have much
money, but we were always happy, and took turns opening our few Christmas
presents to enjoy seeing what everyone else got. That made opening gifts more
special—and it lasted longer.”
Shirley Ann and her twin, Mary Lou, did everything together from dressing
alike to wondering if some of their intended Christmas presents were being held
back for their birthday.
Don’s father brought home a real tree every year. “I don’t ever remember
having an artificial one,” Don said. “We’d hang our stockings and the next morning
find an orange, candy and a little toy inside—a wooden whistle or something like
that.”
After the Hales were married, Don continued the tradition of bringing home
the family’s Christmas tree, usually from a tree yard, but occasionally they cut one as
a family affair.
While out in the snow, the family started building snow horses. It was never
snowmen because it was more fun to sit on the rounded backs of their snow horses
and pretend to ride them. Snow horses became a family tradition.
Don and Shirley Hales with their adult children. From left are Rebecca Hales Schmitt,
Steve Hales, Paul Rousculp (with dog), Carolyn Hales Rousculp, Shirley, Don and Ann
Hales Gardner.
“We made a lot of homemade Christmas decorations,” Shirley Ann added.
“We didn’t like things that rip easily, so we made dolls out of cloth instead of paper,
painted small gourds, and I did quite a bit of carving ornaments.”
“Our trees also had a lot of wooden decorations that Carolyn (their daughter)
made out of Alaskan birch with a scroll saw,” Don said. The decorations included
eagles, moose and bears.
Years later, while visiting Alaska, one of their daughters, Rebecca, saw a
whole wall of Carolyn’s ornaments for sale, “I felt like telling complete strangers, ‘My
sister did this,’” Rebecca said with pride.
Don said the nicest tree he remembers the family having was one he cut
down in Oregon, one of the places he was stationed while working for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. They were living in a log house.
Their daughter, Rebecca, says her own family’s nicest tree came the year her
husband was unemployed. “The Scouts were selling trees,” she said. “We planned on
a spindly ‘Charlie-Brown type, but the Scoutmaster claimed he had given those trees
away. He picked out the most beautiful Christmas tree we ever had. I think he paid
for it, but I’ll never know for sure.”
Besides tree decorations, Don’s and Shirley’s family made presents. When the
scattered siblings came home without their gifts done, they hid behind chairs to
shield their creations from one another and finished them moments before handing
them out.
“We made things like embroidered dish towels that represented things we’d
done, places we’d been or experiences we’d had,” Carolyn explained. “We’d crochet
different things and sew nightgowns—just lots of variety.”
“Nobody said they were good, but…” Rebecca quipped with a laugh.
“We use the same gift wrap year after year,” Carolyn said. This thrifty
tradition has seen decades-old wrapping paper passed around the country. Even
though it’s wrinkled, it’s recognizable.
“My son and his wife were so excited to find paper where the tape would just
peel off,” Carolyn said. “I have that in my wrapping paper box to use again this year.”
In 1981, Shirley started a tradition that she has carried on for decades. She
carved a wooden baby Jesus in a manger for each of her children. The next year she
carved and wrapped another piece of the nativity as a family gift, reusing old
wrapping paper.
Shirley Ann continued her labor of love, hand carving an item for a nativity
for her children and grandchildren, each year for 12 years until the sets were
complete.
Even though none of Shirley Ann’s children have developed her woodcarving
skills, her daughter, Ann, sewed dresses for her mother’s hand carved dolls, and two
grandsons have taken up carving.
Wherever they were living, the Hales’ carried on their tradition of leaving the
fireplace sock-less and choosing one of Don’s socks to put in the children’s
bedrooms because he had the biggest feet.
Did their father mind his children using up a fair number of his socks?
“He didn’t have anything to say about it,” Shirley Ann quipped.
Rebecca remembered that when waking up Christmas morning, “You’d feel
around and find out if the sock was fat to know if Santa had come.”
After the Hales’ children were all living on their own, Don and Shirley Ann
moved from Oregon to Ephraim (against Rebecca’s wishes).
“They could have moved to Michigan by me,” Rebecca said. But the Hales
parents made it up to their daughter in 1999 when they were called on a mission to
Michigan for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and spent Christmas
with Rebecca’s family.
In recent years, both Rebecca and Carolyn and their families have relocated
to Ephraim themselves.
Not every Christmas in the Hales’ family was picture-perfect. “I was really
sick when we left on a road trip to spend Christmas with my parents in D.C.,”
Carolyn said. “My husband got sick, too, so we stopped at a motel.” When they got
back on the road again, two sons got sick.
“After we arrived, my mom got too sick to enjoy seeing my husband open the
marvelous wooden Geppetto she’d carved (for) him. Dad got a cold, my son got a
cold, and by the time we got home, my other son had pneumonia.”
Rebecca also remembered the camping trip they took as kids with down
sleeping bags they had received for Christmas. Everyone was excited to use them.
When son Steven got sick in the back of the car, Shirley Ann anxiously called over
the seat, “Did you get it on the sleeping bags?” Fortunately, he didn’t.
Christmas is amazing for Hales’ family. It’s love, warmth, music, laughter, joy,
homemade goodies and remembering the Savior.
There’s one footnote. It concerns the hand-carved wooden nativity pieces
Shirley carved for so many years for children and grandchildren.
“I’m not making them for all the great-grandchildren,” Shirley Ann said with
a smile. “There are too many. They’ll have to inherit.”
