Wisconsin author LeAnn R. Ralph remembers it very well.

"When I was growing up on our dairy farm forty years ago, stores didn't put up Christmas displays until day after Thanksgiving. No one was really thinking about Christmas shopping before that," Ralph said. "In fact, my mother felt so strongly about it that she didn't even like to hear word 'Christmas' until after we had finished eating Thanksgiving dinner."

Ralph's new book, Christmas In Dairyland (True Stories From a Wisconsin Farm), celebrates Christmas during that simpler time.

"Back then, happiness was baking cookies, decorating Christmas tree, and eating lefse that my mother had made," Ralph said.

Lefse (pronounced lef'suh) is a flat potato pastry brought to this country by Norwegian immigrants who settled in Wisconsin. Ralph's mother was daughter of Norwegian immigrants, and their 120-acre family farm was homesteaded by Ralph's great-grandfather.

"When I was a kid, people enjoyed simple pleasures. The Sunday school Christmas program was an event at little country church just down road from our farm that was attended by nearly everyone in neighborhood," Ralph noted.

"At time, if someone had told me Christmas season was going to change so drastically that you would eventually get Christmas catalogs in mail in August and September — and that you would find Christmas decorations on sale in August and September, too — I wouldn't have believed it," she said.

"I also would have never thought that dairy farming would change so much. I always took it for granted that we lived in 'America's Dairyland,' but today, most of small family dairy farms have disappeared," Ralph noted.

According to statistics from United States Census of Agriculture , Wisconsin has lost two-thirds of its dairy farms since 1969. Forty years ago, Wisconsin had 60,000 dairy farms. Today, only about 20,000 dairy farms remain.

As we drove along dirt road north of our farm one Sunday afternoon, color of sky reminded me of Mom's silver cream and sugar servers when they were tarnished and needed to be polished again.

Since morning, sky had been cloudy, but now at mid-afternoon, clouds had grown much thicker and darker. Earlier in December we had gotten a little snow. Several forty-degree days had melted most of it, and landscape was a combination of dun-colored grass, black tree branches and russet color of certain oak leaves.

Every year in December, Dad and I went on a Christmas tree expedition, and we were on our way now over to what we called our 'other place' to cut a tree. During summer, I made frequent trips to other place, a second farm my parents owned that was about a mile away, to help Dad with haying or just to tag along when he checked on corn or oats or soybeans.

But after school started, I rarely went to other place, and it always took me by surprise how different it looked in winter. Instead of green alfalfa and timothy and clover waving in a warm south breeze, what had grown back after third crop was now brown stubble that trembled in face of a north wind. The fields were strangely silent now, too, without songs of meadowlarks and bobolinks, and bobwhite quail which lived in narrow section of woods lining road.

We were only about five minutes into our journey when Dad shifted pickup truck down into first gear and then eased into field driveway. The rutted track that ran along edge of hayfield was so bumpy that a merry jingling came from glove compartment -- probably a few bolts and washers, along with a couple of wrenches and maybe a screwdriver or two. When you're a farmer, you never know when you might need a wrench or a screwdriver or a bolt.

"Is it going to snow, Daddy?" I asked. Now that we had gotten past trees lining road, sky had opened in front of us again.

Dad leaned forward to look up through windshield.

"I'd say there's a pretty good chance," he replied.

"How much?"

My father shrugged. "Don't know. Maybe quite a bit. Wind's out of east. And that usually means we’ll get at least enough to shovel. Could be a lot more, though."

When we reached pine plantation at other end of field, Dad turned truck around, driving forward a few feet then backing up, then driving forward and then back again, forward and back, until we were facing in direction we had come. He let engine idle for a few seconds before shutting it off.

"Daddy?" I said, as we started walking toward rows of planted red pine. "When do you think it will start to snow?"

Dad stopped and tipped his head back. "Soon," he said, "that wind feels raw and damp."

When my father said 'soon,' I was not expecting it to start snowing within next ten minutes. At first, while we were cutting tree we had selected, only a few random flakes drifted to ground. By time we reached truck and had securely stowed our Christmas tree in back, it was already snowing harder.

"If it keeps up like this all night, you won't have school tomorrow," Dad said as he started truck. He slowly let out clutch, and soon we were retracing our route along field driveway. He turned on windshield wipers, and with each pass -- clickety-snick, clickety-snick -- wipers cleared an arc through wet flakes plastered to glass.

After we had pulled onto dirt road, Dad shifted into second gear, although when we reached 'Y' -- where you could either turn left to go toward our farm, or right to go toward house that had at one time been part of our other place -- he shifted into first gear again.

"Hope we make it up hill," he said, glancing at me. "Wet snow makes road kind of slick."

It was touch and go for a few seconds when back wheels started spinning, but finally we reached point where hill leveled off. Trees grew on both sides of road here, and to right, a steep bank gave rise to a small wooded hillside. "Look," Dad said, pointing toward bank. He inched over to side of road and stopped.

I peered through curtain of falling snow. The bank looked pretty much same as it always had -- exposed tree roots, patches of moss and bare spots where flat sandstone rocks had slid toward road.

"What do you see?" I asked.

"Wintergreen," Dad answered. He shut off truck and opened door.

Wintergreen?

The first time I had tasted wintergreen, I decided that it was my favorite flavor. Peppermint was a little too sharp, although candy canes at Christmas were all right. Spearmint didn't taste like much of anything. Wintergreen, it seemed to me, was just right. In my opinion, Teaberry gum was best, with wintergreen Lifesavers following as a close second.