"Raggedy Ann Doll" A Personal Christmas Story

Raggedy Ann

This story occurred in Munising, Michigan in about 1958. My sister, Kathleen (Katie) was about 4 years old at the time, and I was 12. That year for Christmas Kate wanted a Raggedy Ann doll from Santa Claus. She had read about Raggedy Ann in a story book or something and it captured her imagination. There was nothing else she wanted for Christmas that year. A Raggedy Ann doll was her entire list.

Unfortunately, that year there weren’t any such dolls to be had in the stores where we lived (Munising was a town of about 4000 with only one department store. My mother drove forty miles to Marquette, Michigan, a larger town of about 40,000 people, where there more shopping choices. No Raggedy Anne dolls were to be found there. As Christmas grew closer, panic began to set in. We all tried to convince Kate that there were much better dolls to be had….more expensive and fancier dolls than a plain old Raggedy Ann. They had dolls that would wet their pants (go figure), dolls that would cry, and dolls that would close their eyes when you laid them down…. No takers, because Kate would not change her mind. Only Raggedy Ann would do.

In desperation, my Mother called the large department stores in Milwaukee and Chicago- Macy’s, Gimbles and such. They didn’t have Raggedy Anne dolls for sale in 1958 either. So Christmas Eve came with no apparent solution to our family’s quandary. That night after the “little kids” (Kate and Mary) went to bed with “sugar plums dancing in their heads”. My Mother, Mike, Chris (the older kids), and I stayed up into the night and made a Raggedy Anne doll. My Mother would sew the little cloth legs on her sewing machine, and we kids would stuff them with old nylon stockings. We cut some red yarn to fasten on the head for hair, and sewed buttons on the head for eyes. We were all worried that Kate would detect our amateur work and somehow be disappointed.

The next morning, we were all “hyped up” in anticipation as Kate came out to the Christmas tree.  I will never forget the look on her face.  She was so excited and happy to get her Raggedy Ann doll that she didn’t even notice the lumpy arms and legs, or the imperfect hair. I think that Christmas was the first time in my relatively young life that I actually thought more about giving than receiving.

I now reflect on the wonderful gift that our Mother had given to her three older children that year. Certainly not the personal presents our parents had given to us, because I don’t have a clue what any of us got that year, but it occurred to me many years later that Mother really didn’t need our help in making that doll on that late Christmas Eve so many years ago.