THE WEATHER OUTSIDE WAS FRIGHTFUL

HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS in Sedona are a tradition as old as the town itself. Shops and restaurants deck the halls, and Tlaquepaque glows from the light of 6,000 luminarias. Winter promotions encourage visitors to enjoy a jeep tour, hike to a vortex or warm themselves with a cup of hot cider under glittering patio lights. But holiday cheer looked a lot different in the early days. Because everything was different, including the weather. It was both colder and snowier, which would have made the idea of spending time outdoors sound a little crazy.The daughter of one pioneer, for example, recalled watching her wash water turn to ice when it hit the ground the winter she stayed with her father in Oak Creek Canyon. When the snow was deep, which it often was, another dad wrapped his daughter's shoes in gunnysacks to keep her feet warm, she recalled decades later.

"They would have snow on the ground from the 1st of October until late March at Indian Gardens," says Paul Thompson, whose grandfather J.J. settled in Oak Creek Canyon in 1876. "They'd get snowstorms sometimes even into June."Paul's father, Albert, recalled trudging to school along a trail the mail carrier had broken with his mule after a memorable storm in 1915. "The mule took mighty long steps coming downhill," he wrote. "I just could not step that far in the deep snow. I had to almost crawl from one mule track to another. I made it, but I was tired, putting it mildly." As late as 1947, the snow was so deep that workers reportedly could stand atop it and put the roof on the new market at Indian Gardens without using a ladder.

Surviving those harsh winters required months of preparation. "Mother made lots of sugar syrup before we had any fruit to put up for the winter," Albert's sister Clara wrote. "We dried tomatoes, corn, pumpkins and even string beans. We strung them like beads on a string and hung them up to dry."

Her father bought flour by the ton, several hundred pounds of sugar and barrels of green coffee beans, which they roasted. One year, the creek stayed up so long that the Thompsons ran out of flour. J.J.'s horses bogged down in what now is the Village of Oak Creek while he was on his way to the closest store to buy more. It got so late that he had to stay overnight with the Armijo family, who sold him 100 pounds of their own flour to see his family through.

By the time the holidays arrived, settlers were ready to cut loose, and the schools were where they gathered. The first was built in Red Rock in the early 1890s. In the early 1910s, another opened on Brewer Road in Sedona. And for a very short time, a school operated during the summer months in Oak Creek Canyon.

Residents went to the schoolhouse to vote and to attend potlucks, plays and dances. Before churches were built, traveling preachers conducted worship services and kids attended Sunday school there. Social clubs met at the schools. And every year, students at the Red Rock and Sedona schools presented a Christmas program with readings, plays and music.

Many years later, teacher Edith Lamport Croxen recalled the Christmas celebration at the Brewer Road school in 1915. Students decorated a tall spruce with tinsel, candy and popcorn balls, she wrote. "Our Santa was one of the local fathers, all dressed in his red suit with white trimming, who talked to the youngsters and distributed their gifts," she recalled. "Of course, our program was followed by the usual dance in which everyone took part.... At midnight a fine lunch was served. The coffee had been made in a five-gallon can over an open fire outside."

Local talent provided the music, she continued: "Frank Derrick, the left-handed fiddler; Walter W. Van Deren, another fiddler; Jesse Purtymun played the accordion; and Albert Thompson played the accordion, too. After all the good time, which lasted until the wee small hours, the little ones, who had been sleeping, were awakened by their fond parents. Then all departed for their separate homes, tired and happy."

While Croxen was spending the Christmas holiday with her family, a three-day storm left 64 inches of snow in Flagstaff, 37 inches at Indian Gardens and 2 feet all over the Verde Valley. Worried about getting back to school in time for classes to resume, the young teacher endured a difficult, multi-day journey back to Sedona. Arriving tired and weary at 9 p.m., she was surprised to find lights on in the schoolhouse. Snowbound residents had organized an impromptu dance, which was well underway. "They were really surprised to see us," Croxen wrote. "No one had been out of Sedona since the beginning of this big storm."

In a 2005 newspaper article, Sherman Loy was asked how people entertained themselves at Christmastime in the early days. Loy's mother, Frieda, played the piano, he said, but the Thompson family was the real musical bunch. Several Thompsons played multiple instruments, including organ, piano, accordion, fiddle and guitar, and because J.J. had emigrated from Northern Ireland, the family's music took on a Celtic flavor.

The dancing reflected the widely varied backgrounds of the settlers. Polkas, waltzes and "a kind of two-step" were in the mix, Loy said. But mostly, residents practiced an early form of ballroom dancing called the round dance, which could include a French gavotte, a Polish mazurka or a Bohemian schottische.

Loy's maternal grandparents, Henry and Dorette Schuerman, had emigrated from Germany. When they settled at Red Rock, they brought their German traditions with them, says Loy's daughter Kathie Loy-Gouhin. Those included decorating a tree with Christmas ornaments and lighted candles.

Christmas trees, in fact, originated in Germany in the 16th century, and Protestant reformer Martin Luther is credited with adding lighted candles. As late as the 1840s, Christmas trees were rare in America, because New England's