A Welsh Christmas in Toledo - Maybe

A Welsh Christmas in Toledo - Maybe by Alan Borer

Of the four kingdoms that make up the “United Kingdom of Great Britain,” the smallest and perhaps least known is Wales. A bump on the west side of the main British island, it is sometimes thought of as poor and backward. That, of course, depends on your perspective; one person’s “backward” is another’s “traditional:”

The Welsh people maintain most of the traditional customs associated with England such as holly, mistletoe, pudding, carols, Christmas stockings, oranges, crackers and lots of snow.

Christmas traditions did not always survive for many generations when they crossed the Atlantic. In one Toledo family, they may have.

The Christmas card shown here was sent on December 23, 1912 from Delta in Fulton County from Mrs. Charles Watkins, whose given first name we do not know. Her husband was a farmer and later a railroad inspector. Mrs. Watkins lived near the Michigan border, but we know nothing of how they became friends.

The card was sent to Mrs. George Groff. In 1912, the Groffs lived at 905 West Woodruff, near the intersection with Lawrence Avenue. The husband, George Groff, was an electrician, who owned his own small electric shop. George’s wife, Mary, was a homemaker. Like the Watkins, the Groffs had no children. Neither of the Groffs were lifelong Toledoans. The couple lived in Toledo from at least 1900 to 1920. By 1930, they had relocated to Delaware County, which was George’s home. Born and raised on a farm, George Groff worked as a young man in dairying, and may have returned to his native place as the Great Depression took hold. In any event, he went back to farming, on land that is now covered by the Columbus suburb of Lewis Center.

Mary Groff was Welsh. Born Mary Christian in Wales in 1873, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, with her family the next year. Her father, John Christian, may have been a coal miner; the majority of Welsh immigrants followed that trade. We do not know if the young Miss Christian lived in a particularly “ethnic” community. “Though never a prominent ethnic group in Michigan, many Welshman settled . . .in Detroit. . . . A Welsh community later developed near Grand River and Chicago avenues, and in 1919 the Welsh United Presbyterian Church organized in Detroit.” Mary Christian married George Groff, an Ohio boy two years younger than she, in Port Huron, Michigan, September 7, 1899. A few months later, on June 1, 1900, the census taker found them living in Toledo on Dorr Street. Mary died in 1947 and is buried at Worthington, Ohio.

We have no idea whether Mary Groff kept up any Welsh traditions in the Delaware County countryside. And while Christmas in Wales mostly followed the English pattern, some traditions were decidedly unusual:

In some rural areas a villager is chosen to be the Mari llwyd. This person travels around the town draped in white and carrying a horse's skull on a long pole. Anyone given the "bite" by the horse's jaws must pay a fine.

There is little evidence that this custom was carried to America. Germans brought Santa Claus and the Christmas tree; the English gave us Christmas cards and holy and ivy. Each culture has its own Christmas traditions, but whether Mrs. Groff celebrated any Welsh ways in the new world, we cannot say. I am sure she appreciated the Christmas card from her friend in Delta.