What We Learned from Playing Leit

The Sears and Roebucks Catalogs

Playing leit was such fun! We were invited to Aunt Tillie’s home for Sunday lunch. Anytime we were invited into other homes for a meal, it was a treat, for sure. There were sure to be plenty of delicious, home-cooked food, homemade desserts, and different toys with which to play.

Aunt Tillie was a widow; she wasn’t my aunt. She was the mother of our aunt Annie by marriage. She lived with Aunt Annie, who was also widowed at a young age. Kind and genteel, she handled our noise and chatter with ease, and I felt cared for and noticed.

Some of us were too short for sitting at the table, so Aunt Tillie did what all mothers did. She pulled out her Sears and Roebuck catalogs, placed them on chairs for the younger ones of us, and we hopped onto the additional height. [Back then, catalogs weighed four to five pounds and were approximately four inches thick with 1400 pages.]

Those paper Leit

I noticed that Sears and Roebuck catalog, and eyed it wistfully, It was different than any we had, and I was certain there were many leit [Pennsylvania dutch word for people and pronounced “light”.] inside those pages. Leit that we’d enjoy playing with, if only we could have that catalog.

Sometime during the afternoon visit, Aunt Tillie offered the catalogs to us. Bless her!  When I think of Aunt Tillie now, I remember those catalogs. She had no idea what a treasure she handed over that Sunday afternoon. My sisters also remember that Sunday afternoon. One sister remembers that we had spice cake with caramel frosting for dessert.  All of us remember the catalog. “That,” one sister says, “was the best gift anyone could ever give us!”

“When I had my tonsils out,” she says, “I was promised a catalog. They carried me into the sewing room (where there was a cot) and left me to go get another tonsil-free sister. I promptly got up to find the catalog and fainted.” For a four-year-old, a new catalog was the best treat, especially as a reward for “being a good girl when you have your tonsils out.”

Searching the catalogs for playing leit

That Sunday, we took those catalogs home with us. I’m sure my older sisters claimed first dibs in turning the pages to find their own leit. When we looked for leit, especially if there were men or women, we looked for arms that were bent. That’s because we’d cut those arms loose from the body and paste another piece of catalog paper behind them. [Notice the man on the left whose left arm can easily hold a baby]. How easy it was to slip a baby or a toddler (also cut out from the catalog) into those arms.  All of our families had a boatload of children, and we needed fathers and mothers with arms to embrace those many children!

Problem-solving from playing Leit

[The mother on the right is also capable of “holding” a child when her arms are cut away from her skirt and an extra piece of catalog paper is pasted behind. At this, we were pros.]

My sisters and I spent hours playing together with our leit. We sorted out life’s problems as we played with these paper cutouts from a catalog. Sometimes we had a disabled child, just like one of our classmates in school. Other times we had a particularly defiant child, just like one we observed in church. We copied and mimicked and sometimes made fun of these people in our lives. We laughed out our frustrations as we acted out things in our daily lives. Sometimes one of us played the part of a teacher or an incident that occurred in the past. We learned about each other and our fantasies, our frustrations, and our dreams – all while playing leit.

Simple things bring out expression

Because we had to work to get those leit cut out of catalogs, and we had to fix them so they’d do the job we assigned them to do, we spent a lot of time preparing for play. There’s something ingenious about a child setting his own stage so he can play rather than having the stage set completely for him. It brings out creativity that is often dormant when a child must make do with what he has. That’s what happened with us in playing leit. Today, playing leit is still one of the best memories of all six of us, now in our sixties and seventies.

best play for children

I couldn’t get my children to enjoy playing leit like we did. Perhaps it’s because we had four boys and only two girls. They did, however, find creative things to do – and often I heard them act out problems in their world through play.

I also discovered that our children play better with fewer toys. Less choices makes them appreciate what they have. There are fewer toys to pick up at the end of the day, and creativity increases when they have less instead of more. Play is a wonderful medicine for children. It helps invigorate their minds, work through emotions, and replenish their souls. Do this for your kids – provide them with fewer toys and more room for imagination.

Photo credits: Alice Orendorf (my sister) who still has a catalog from way back when.