Christmas Lake Publications, 2011, ISBN 978097409981

Christmas Lake: A History

The body being mostly water, it’s no wonder we have an affinity for fish stories.

Miles Lord tells more than a few. One winter day the fish swam to a hole in the ice below his house and poked their noses up for air; Miles knew a good thing and pulled out such a quantity as to fill a plastic fifty-gallon trash can.

With effort he hauled the fish up to the house, added water and salt, and let them steep for a week or two on the porch beside the bedroom while he sang the praises of smoked fish to Maxine and read up on how to do it.

When the day came he wrestled the tub toward the kitchen, but it gave way crossing the bedroom, dumping fish and saltwater all over the carpet. Maxine cried, “You throw the fish in the bathtub as fast as you can!” which, Miles says, turned out to be pretty fast.

For all of us who skated over its crappie beds or took its water up the snoot on a bad dive, Christmas Lake is our shared fish story. This history is an attempt to capture a few of those stories and convey something of what life at the lake has been like through the years: the pioneer days, the farm and summer cottage era, and modern times.

Peter Brown
August, 2011

Christmas Lake, deep and clear, lies a dozen miles west of Minneapolis, MN.