Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

We have something in common with early Texans.

Christmas, and the month of December—in large part—was the time when Texans gathered.

Cynthia Brandimarte is program director for Texas historic sites. Unlike today when a short trip by car or plane gets us to our holiday destinations, travel was difficult for early Texans.

And so when you traveled, you tended to stay. People had time at Christmas to do that—to travel and spend weeks.

Which makes the few days that most of us get off at Christmas seem like a rip off. Early Texans made good use of this block of time.

It was then that they celebrated not only Christmas, but other special events, and planned weddings for the month of December.

Since Texas was mostly rural in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and there wasn’t a lot of farming that could happen in December…

It almost gave 19th Century and early 20th Century rural Texans an excuse not to work. And thus to play a bit more, and socialize a bit more, than they had time to do during many other months of the year.

How will you spend your Holiday? Tell us at passporttotexas.org.

From all of us at Passport to Texas, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The custom of decorating trees for Christmas took root in German villages during the sixteenth century.

A lot of Germans, as you know, settled Texas. And they brought a tradition with them of the tabletop Christmas tree.

Cynthia Brandimarte is program director for Texas historic sites.

When you look at interior photographs of Texas houses, you see many tabletop Christmas trees ornamented for the season, particularly in German households in the late nineteenth century Texas.

Ornaments were handmade then, and small gifts often dangled from branches. Eventually, the tabletop conifer gave way to larger trees that became “floor models,” and the decorations sometimes mirrored the day’s events.

You saw more and more seven or eight feet trees that were placed on the floor. And because we had just ended the Spanish American war in victory, there was a fashion in the early part of the twentieth century to decorate trees with a few American flags here and there. We have photographic evidence for that.

What kinds of ornaments will hang from your tree this year? Tell us about them at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… we record our series at the Production Block studios in Austin, Texas, and For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Holidays challenge the creativity of gift-givers everywhere. If you have nature lovers on your list, gift giving is easy—and the giving is twice as nice.

A sixty-dollar Texas State Parks Pass is a thoughtful and sensible gift for your outdoor enthusiast. Pass holders enjoy twelve months of unlimited visits to more than ninety state parks and historic sites. They also receive discounts on camping, park store merchandise and recreational equipment rentals. Money spent on the pass supports your Texas state parks.

For thirty dollars each, you can give the drivers on your list a conservation license plate. Twenty-two dollars from every sale goes directly to help fund conservation efforts in Texas. The horned lizard plate, in particular, funds research and conservation of non-game species such as the horned lizard.

Give every outdoor lover on your list access to more than a million acres of public land—with the Limited Use Permit—for the ridiculously reasonable price of twelve dollars. The permit holders receive twelve months of access to Texas’ wildlife management areas, where they can fish, hike, bird watch, cycle, and camp.

When you give one of these gifts, you delight the receiver, and help support state parks and conservation in Texas. Details at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

If your Christmas activities have become a ho-hum jingle-bell bore, maybe it is time to take your celebration to the next level—the lower level—of Longhorn Cavern.

Every year we do what we call our caroling in the cave, and what that is, is a Christmas party for our visitors.

Pam Plant is the event coordinator at Longhorn Cavern State Park in Burnet. She says everyone needs to leave any Scrooge-like tendencies at the door for this all ages holiday hoedown.

I mean, it’s Christmas. It’s time for us to let the kid in us come out.

Visitors participate in trivia games for prizes, until it is time to descend into the cavern singing the Twelve Days of Christmas.

We have various artists who will be coming out doing these concerts, and most of them will do the sing-a-long Christmas carols that the audience really loves. Toward the end of the caroling or concert segment, we hand out candles, and the guests come out of the cave singing silent night. Once they return back to the surface, we have a feast that awaits them. We’ll play some more games, give out our big door prizes, and then we end the whole evening with a reading of The Night Before Christmas.

The concerts at Longhorn Cavern State Park are December 17, 20 & 21. We have complete details, including cost and times at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

It all starts with the first catch…

Kids don’t start with large mouth bass, they start with crawdads. This is what I call a gateway species; it leads to greater nature appreciation in adults.

…but first, you have to go out to get one. Nathan Johnson is coauthor of new field guide, Texas Crawdads. He’s worried that kids today spend too much time indoors and are missing out on the fun of nature. A lifetime creek adventurer himself, catching crawfish seems the perfect way to open kids’ doors to the outside.

It’s more than just catching crawdads. They’re going out there and their adventuring. It’s discovery. When I was a kid, the geography of my life was defined by which creeks and woods were within bicycling range of my house. We’d considered those creeks our creeks and our woods and we’d explore.

And taking that sense of ownership a step further; he’s encouraged young folks to contribute to conservation efforts as well.

I talk to cub scouts and I tell them: you can make a difference, you can begin to record the crawfish of your state so that you can increase the awareness and the knowledge and the biodiversity. The work you do is just as important as the work that state biologist does with their inventories. All we gotta do is put it in their hands and say go.

You can leave a comment with your crawfish catching adventures on our website passporttotexas.org

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Texas Crawdads
http://www.texascrawdads.com

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