Christmas Memories Part I: Church

Being baptized as an infant and raised in a very devout Christian family made it very natural for me to learn very early that Christ is the reason for the Christmas season. Thus church attendance and church activities were (and are) at the core of my Christmas celebration.

I do not remember any special emphasis on the church season of Advent, though we thought a lot about getting ready for Christmas.

At the heart of the Christmas activities was the Christmas program at church on Christmas Eve. It was led by the children of Zion Lutheran School. By today’s standards it was really simple and would be considered terribly boring. We had no manger scene or reenactment of the visit to the manger. No one played the role of Mary. It was very old-fashioned Martin Luther catechism inspired stuff. The children’s program had 3 important components.

The first was to tell the Christmas narrative through the format of questions and answers. The teacher asked the carefully prepared questions. He called upon students (one by one). Each gave the carefully prepared answer. I still remember the German question (though I do not remember the correct spelling of the German words) that always began the program “Welches hochest fest feiren wie in diesen tage?”(What high feast do we celebrate in these days?) Thus the Old Testament prophecies were recalled and the infant birth story up to the visit of the Wise Men was recalled.

The second element was that most (maybe all?) of the children had to memorize their “Christmas piece.” These were rhymes of poetry. In groups of about 4 students each we would march to the front of the church and recite our piece. There were no mikes and it was a big church so the instructions were drilled into us “Speak slowly and very loudly.”

Thirdly, of course, we had to sing the carols. It amazes me to recall that when we were in the upper grades we always sang in two and even three part harmony.

The Christmas Eve service was usually early in the evening. A huge (30 feet tall) cedar Christmas tree was decorated and in my early years adorned with hundreds of lighted candles. Two special ushers were seated right next to the tree with buckets of water handy should a fire erupt. After the close of the service came another highlight. The ushers distributed a Christmas bag to each of us children. These were plain brown grocery bags, but they were filled with incredibly wonderful gifts. Even during the deepest part of the Great Depression we each got at least one stick of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum, an orange, an apple, some nuts and some ribbon candy. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

The thoughts of those bag contents and trying the figure out what to eat first and what to save occupied our minds not only during the worship on Christmas Day but even on the mandatory-to attend service on Second Christmas Day services on December 26th.