Week 66: Chandler's 1913 Christmas Celebration
As the Christmas holiday approaches, I thought it would be fitting to look back at an early Chandler Christmas celebration. Chandler’s first Christmas, in 1912, was a quiet affair with most residents choosing to spend time with family and friends in other towns. By Christmas 1913, Chandler’s crown jewel, the San Marcos Hotel, was completed and newly opened. The community was eager for its first public Christmas celebration.
Festivities began on Christmas Eve in the upstairs music hall of the Monroe Building, today’s El Zocalo restaurant. The room was packed to capacity for the featured entertainment: a series of tableaus of the nativity story. The Chandler Arizonan newspaper reported that it had been beautifully done “and made a great impression on the audience.” The evening came to a close with the decorating of a Christmas tree and the arrival of Santa Claus. Afterward, Joseph Loftus and George Peabody, manager and assistant manager of the Chandler Improvement Company, hosted a dinner for leaders of the company to discuss the future of the town. At the dinner, Loftus pronounced that the future of Chandler had never looked so bright.
On Christmas morning, community members spent time with their families. But later in the afternoon they started to gravitate to the San Marcos. People came from far and wide to celebrate, arriving from as far away as Phoenix, Mesa, Ingleside, and Tempe.
The San Marcos put on quite a Christmas feast. It began with oyster cocktails. Entrees included prime rib, Columbia River salmon steaks, beef tenderloin, “young Chandler ranch turkey,” and baked suckling pig. Sides were mashed potatoes, glazed sweet potatoes, asparagus hollandaise, peas, mint julep frappe, heart of lettuce, and a waldorf salad. For dessert, diners could have their fill of Christmas pudding, hot mince pie, caramel ice cream, and assorted cakes. Additionally, there were vegetable, nut, and cheese plates. There were two meals served that day in order that all the townspeople could participate and enjoy the bountiful feast.
After the second feast there was a dance in the hotel’s ballroom. Hotel guests, mostly wealthy businesspeople from the East coast and their families, and townspeople alike danced the night away doing the turkey trot to ragtime music. It was one of the few times in the early history of the hotel that Chandler residents were welcomed into the San Marcos to rub elbows with the wealthy elite visitors.
The town celebration was so popular that it became tradition in early Chandler. Despite a rainy Christmas day in 1914 which delayed the festivities until the following day, revelers feasted on 19 turkeys and 22 chickens. Candy, nuts, and other treats were given to the children.
While the celebration has changed over more than 100 years, the community still comes together to celebrate the holidays around our world famous Tumbleweed Tree.