Christmas Memories II: Good Food

My memories of Christmas food and drink are all positive and wonderful. I was born in 1927 so my early years were during the Great Economic Depression and we were poor-but I never felt poor at Christmas and especially not when it came to the matter of food.

My first memories are of Mother making homemade candy. At the top of the list is wonderful divinity candy, then chocolate candy and finally date bars. All were filled with pecans which we had gathered earlier in the year at Grandma Doering’s farm and then cracked and made available in abundance for Christmas baking.

And there was always stolen and fruit cake and lots of cookies. Homemade bread was just a common daily part of the diet

The primary meat was, of course, fresh pork. We raised our own hogs and slaughtering hogs was a big deal in early December. We had to pick a colder day to ensure the meat would not get bad. The neighbors (Schwausch, was their name, I think) came and helped. I was always just a bit taken aback when the hogs’ throats were slit but that was overcome by my love of fresh pork. We had wonderful sausage, fresh pork cutlets, incredible hams and all the rest.

The term “all the rest’ included what we called bone meat. When sausage was made the flesh was all taken off the bones, but always a little remained. These bones were preserved and especially when money got tight these bones were cooked and served usually with boiled potatoes and red beet juice.

We had a smoke house, a simple shack of about 20 feet by 30 feet with a tall roof. We always used the bark of the trees as the source for the smoke, because it burned slowly and produced a lot of smoke.

The sausage was always stuffed into thoroughly cleaned intestines. We even used the stomach of the hog and filled it with stuffing. And I especially loved the fresh or smoked bacon which was always sliced very thick and then fried-but not too crisp!

Christmas was time for dad to buy the once a year bottle of whiskey. Parts of our county were dry-so he had to drive to a liquor store near Jarrell to get the annual bottle of Jack Daniels. I recall my Mother’s disapproval of this practice-as she was convinced that we could not afford it (and my Mother, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary seemed to often fear that we would “drink too much”. The only way the Jack Daniels as drunk was in eggnog. Of course, the eggs and the milk were fresh and the milk was supplemented by a generous amount of additional fresh cream. There was often an argument as to whether or not the eggnog should be cooked or drunk raw. Eggnog was front and center at the Christmas Eve party at Grandma’s house after the children’s service. Two large bowls were always in evidence, one with the whiskey already in one bowl and the other bowl alcohol free. It was a daring adventure for me as a kid to accidently take my eggnog from the wrong bowl.

Frankly- I do not remember Christmas dinner. What was important was all those homemade cookies, cakes and candy.  Glorious memories!

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.