A Mormon Christmas
The Nauvoo scriptures for the family library
Give the books that a family in Nauvoo could have read. Open the 1840 Book of Mormon beside a later edition and read the passages Joseph Smith revised. Leave room on the shelf for the next generation to do the same.
Choose a set · from $290
Choose your Christmas set
The Nauvoo pair
1840 Book of Mormon and 1846 Doctrine and Covenants
$290Order by emailWith The Gospel Reflector
The Nauvoo pair plus Winchester’s Philadelphia volume ($45)
$335Order by emailWith The Book of the Law of the Lord
The Nauvoo pair plus Strang’s Beaver Island volume ($65)
$355Order by emailThe complete collection
The Nauvoo pair and both companion volumes
$400Order by email
Questions about a gift order? Write to Samantha@MormonChristmas.com.
Four matching volumes for the Mormon collector
John Hajicek and friends produced this set of fine rare reprints 35 years ago. Only a few remain, and collectors are scrambling to find any of these volumes, now rare like the originals John collected. Two companion volumes extend the collection to Benjamin Winchester’s Philadelphia printing office and James J. Strang’s press on Beaver Island. All four facsimiles are printed and bound to match in sewn brown hardcovers.
The Book of Mormon
Joseph Smith, Jr., translator. Third edition, carefully revised by the translator. Nauvoo, Illinois, printed by Ebenezer Robinson and Don Carlos Smith, 1840. 571 pages.
This was the last typesetting authorized by Joseph Smith. If you have the replica of the 1830 first edition, you need this revised one beside it.
The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Joseph Smith, President of Said Church. Carefully Selected from the Revelations of God. Nauvoo, Illinois, printed by John Taylor, 1846. 448 pages.
The Nauvoo volume includes the additional revelations from 1835 to 1844. If you have the replica of the 1835 first edition, you need this expanded one beside it.
The Book of the Law of the Lord
James J. Strang, translator. St. James, Beaver Island, Michigan, 1856. 336 pages.
This volume reproduces the expanded Beaver Island edition, with Strang’s explanatory notes. Sheets of the original printing survived the destruction of the press after his assassination.
The Gospel Reflector
Benjamin Winchester, editor. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, printed by Brown, Bicking & Guilbert, 1841. 316 numbered pages.
Winchester issued the Reflector twice monthly from January 1 through June 15, 1841. This volume gathers all twelve numbers in the same brown hardcover as the Nauvoo scriptures and the Beaver Island Book of the Law.
Open the household notebook.
At the table
A useful record of a holiday meal preserves the menu and the recipe as well as the occasion. Date a handwritten recipe, identify its author when known, and retain the changes made by later cooks. A family’s revisions can be as revealing as the first version.
Menus, table photographs, china, silver, linens, and serving pieces describe the material setting. They also remind us that hospitality depended on somebody’s labor: planning, preparation, cooking, serving, and clearing the table.
The things brought out each year
Record who made or acquired an ornament, when it entered the household, and the story attached to it. An inherited object, a recent purchase, and a reproduction can all have a place in family memory; their histories should remain distinguishable.
A photograph of an object is more useful when accompanied by its dimensions, materials, condition, and the words of the person who remembers it.
Music, books, and recollection
Keep the title and edition of a book beside the memory of reading it. Identify a musical recording or printed arrangement rather than preserving only the name of a familiar song. Written recollections should retain the speaker’s name and the date of the account.
These details allow a later reader to distinguish the tradition itself from the way a particular household observed it.
The historian as host
John Hajicek’s professional life began in hospitality. His experience included the Playboy Resort at Lake Geneva, the Marc Plaza, and Hyatt Regency hotels in Milwaukee, Tampa, and Kansas City. He managed Tampa’s Tobacco Company from 1985 to 1988, became director of restaurants at the Harbour Island Hotel in 1988, and also worked as a sommelier.
That practical education remains present in his interests in food, furniture, gardening, and a well-appointed home. He brings a collector’s attention to the objects around a table and a historian’s curiosity to the recollections that accompany them. His house combines modern art and furniture with original books and artifacts; the garden is part of its everyday life.