One hundred years ago (on December 16, 1925), the students of Grinnell College started a new holiday tradition by hosting a special Christmas dinner for local children from the Uncle Sam’s Club. The Uncle Sam’s Club was a local organization that had been created by Grinnell students at the turn of the century to provide programming, education and recreation to local kids at time when there were very few such programs or services. It proved so successful that, within a few years, they had raised enough funds to build a large clubhouse on the south side of town, where more than 50 students a year volunteered to work with hundreds of local kids on everything from art classes to Sunday school to sports leagues.
The holiday dinners became an annual tradition that grew in size, so that by the 1950s, there were as many as a 150 children attending these Christmas feasts, held in the Cowles Dinning Hall (pictured here). The meal consisted of roast meats, served with almost a dozen different side dishes, and capped off with special ice cream for dessert. These meals took on added importance during the 1930s and 1940s, when the Great Depression, and then the rationing of the war years, made this kind of holiday feast more extraordinary and appreciated. The tradition also grew to include after dinner entertainment—ranging from variety shows to magician acts to movies—as well as distributing Christmas toys.
It may be hard to believe, today, but the holiday calendar used to be even more packed with events, parties, festivals and fetes that Grinnellians somehow managed to squeeze into the last week of the semester. And among these, the Uncle Sam’s Club Dinner always proved to be a favorite.
