Holiday Feasts & Festivities 
2008
During the 1880s all but the smallest homes had a dining room. This was a time when a certain formality was highly regarded and details were important even if it was just the family. Here the family demonstrated its "civility" by sitting down together at a table covered with a cloth, set with the best dishes.
Holidays have always been times for traditions. These traditions can be based on ethnic ties, family associations, and locations. And what would a holiday be without something to eat! The drawing shows the tradtional plum pudding, carried in triumph to the table.
By the 1880s southern Wisconsin is no longer the frontier, dependent on what can be raised here. Everybody's favorite, oysters, showed up at private parties and public dinners. Stores stocked exotic foods shipped by boat and train. New brands manufactured in the 1880s included:
Gold Medal flour, McCormick spices
Philadelpia Cream Cheese, Coca Cola
Maxwell House coffee, Wesson Oil
Calumet baking powder Log Cabin syrup
Aunt Jemima pancake flour, Red Star yeast
Still most families were eating locally grown and raised foods - roasting a goose they had fattened, bringing out the preserves and pickles from the pantry and the squash and parsnips from the cellar and garden.
If a hostess needed inspiration, cookbooks and magazines offered suggestions such as this one from The Ladies' Home Journal.
Everyday meals were usually simple, with soup, meat, and dessert courses, but celebrations called for a more elaborate menu. Families added fish, game, salad, and fruit courses to suit their tastes and pocketbook. More courses meant more dishes and serving pieces, some of them highly specialized. If oranges were being served, specially shaped spoons were needed. Families owned celery vases for the seasonal and pricy vegetable.
Oysters on the Half Shell
Clear Soup Custard and Spinach Blocks
Olives Celery
Deviled Spaghetti
Roasted Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing Cranberry Jelly
Sweet Potato Croquettes
Peas Served in Turnip Cups
Ginger Sherbet Lettuce Salad Cheese Balls
Toasted Crackers
Plum Pudding, Hard Sauce
Coffee Bonbons Almonds
The dining room needed a table, preferably expandable, chairs and a sideboard. Most families didn't expect all these pieces to match. The sideboard provided storage and display space. The hostess placed dishes for later courses and displayed desserts on it. A removable and easy to clean crumb cloth protected the rug. It could be made from a printed woolen cloth called drugget, or oilcloth.
The war years meant rationing of food and appliances, but once the war was over, people bought all kinds of things. With electric refirigerators now common, cookie recipe requiring chilled dough became poplular. Cooks baked favorite cookies like decorated cut-out and "thumbprints," a favorite after WWII. Chocolate chips introduced in 1930 made chocolate chip cookies a national favorite. New foods appreared:
Uncle Ben's Converted Rice Cheerios
Ragu pasta sauce Chiquita bananas
frozen French fries Cake mixes
French's Instant Potatoes Nestle's Quik
Maxwell House instant coffee
This stove includes both an electric range and a wood burning oven. On the floor near the table you can just make out an electric toy stove. Plugged in, the toy's oven and burner provided enough heat to cook and bake.
1940s
During the 1940s, an informal, relaxed style of entertaining was fashionable. In many areas, especially college towns like Platteville, housing would have been in short supply in the years right after the war with veterans going to college under the GI Bill. All available houses and aprtments were full to overflowing, many with small children as the baby boom began.
With the end of the war, Americans could once again buy decorations from Europe. The tree is decorated with ornaments from Germany, Poland and the U.S. The embossed paper wall decorations came from Germany
The radio supplied a continuous stream of entertainment from soap operas, mysteries, children's programs, dramas, sports, music, news, and comedy shows.
1880s
Christmas trees of the 1890s
Families decorated the tree with a mixture of ornamments - homemade and store bought - paper, ribbons and fabric, tinsel and glass. Besides ornaments, look for gifts for the family, candy and treats.
Family and friends exchanged gifts, but if they had a tree they often hung the unwrapped gifts on the tree as part of the surprise and to add color to the tree. Most trees were decorated in secret, admired, and then stripped of gifts and candy all in a day or two. You can find the beaded pin cushion, feathered penwiper, stuffed dog, wheat sachet, and the dimensional pin holders, the jockey cap and star. The pincone is a candy box. You'll find the orange, candy dots, ribbon candy and maybe a cookie.
1920s and 1930s Standard gauge train layout, original and reproduction
Children's activities at the museum
Drop the clothespin in the milk bottle
Making ornaments to take home
Building a stacking boat
The Children's Choir
Platteville High School Blue Notes
