Taking a trip back in time to fireplace cooking and hand-made Christmas ornaments, this past weekend’s Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site event gave Eastern students and area residents the chance to see what the holidays were like in the 1800s.

The 26th annual Prairie Christmas Celebration took place Saturday and Sunday from 1-4 p.m. Participants listened to Christmas carols and viewed a 10-to 15-foot tall Christmas tree decorated with dried apple and orange slices, tin angels and home-made ornaments, which were common Christmas tree decorations in the 19th century.

Mother Lode and the Shape Note Singers sang Christmas carols such as “Go Tell It On The Mountain” and “Silent Night” to guests. The all-woman band played with a guitar, a fiddle and a bass fiddle, and people dressed in clothing of the time danced around and sang along.

In another room, Don “Pappy” Horne whittled wood into toys and figurines that would have been made at the time.

“I think the thing I like about the past is it’s something different than the hustle and bustle nowadays,” Horne said. “I’m into the old ways and it gives the public something to see that was done in the 1800s.”

At the Lincoln Log Cabin, the men wore knit caps, trousers and down coats while they stood outside butchering a hog. Women dressed in white cotton caps, cotton long-sleeved shirts, long cotton print skirts and a waist apron made sausages.

Children dressed in their pajamas sat around the fire in the two-room cabin listening to Tom Lincoln tell stories.

“I think this place is really neat and it was fun watching them make sausage. It was fun,” D’anna Pawlenko, a sophomore graphic design major, said.

At the Sargent Farm, men and women stood bundled up and huddled together singing Christmas carols on the front porch of the two-story home. In another building, two women and a little girl baked an applesauce cake, cookies and cranberry cole slaw. Their baked goodies and ingredients sat covered up with checkered cloth on the table as the women explained to visitors how they prepared the food.

Inside the Sargent home, two women cooked cookies over the fireplace, showing visitors how to bake the cookies and letting them sample the finished product. Visitors were also taught to make garlands by stringing popcorn and cranberries with needles and thread.

“We just came out to look at Christmas ideas and get Christmas gifts. I thought it was pretty,” Mary Frick, a Villa Grove resident, said.