FARMINGTON – Sitting around a table after wrapping heaps of presents for Operation Santa Claus, a group of 90-something-year-old Pierce House residents reminisced about Christmases past.

“We spent two days making colored rings out of paper,” Gladys Lovell, 94, remembered. “We used to string popcorn.”

Lovell, who grew up on a farm, decorated the tree with only homemade things as a kid, she said.

“Gifts were homemade,” she added. “Necessary things.”

Martha Wasgatt – at nearly 98 the assisted living home’s oldest resident and a Christmas Eve baby to boot – chuckled along with Lovell.

“We waited for Santa because we had a big orange in the toe of our stockings,” Lovell said.

“And we didn’t buy Christmas trees; we went right out and got them,” Wasgatt remembered. “There were no artificial trees in those days.”

Christmas lights were different back then, too, she said. “We used real live candles.”

Using live candles is dangerous, she said. When she was growing up, the tree was only lit on Christmas Eve, and the kids’ job was to inspect each candle that night and make sure none caught the tree on fire.