An Early Christmas Blog

When I was three, the winter seem to be snow filled. I remember Mama making ice cream with snow. She mixed it in a bowl with some powder. I cannot remember the name of the powder, I just remember her adding it and vanilla. She then set the bowl outside to refreeze.
As it grew closer to Christmas, a hog was butchered and Papa and Mama made sausages by stuffing the boiled, seasoned meat into the cleaned and boiled intestines. I did not realize that the sausages would be hung upstairs in one of the unused and unheated bedrooms. When I was six and allowed to go upstairs, I saw the sausages they made that winter hanging in rows across the unused bedroom.
I do not remember the Christmas tree from the year I was three. I do remember that my paternal grandmother gave me a special gift. I can remember her white hair pulled back into a bun and her blue eyes alight and sparkling as she snapped the little heart locket around my neck. I didn’t know it then, but the word on it read: Baby. I still have the necklace, and my daughter has worn it, and so have both of my granddaughters.
The Christmas that I was four, Papa was building something upstairs. I had heard my parents talking in German about gifts. Somehow the words kinder and stuhl (German for chair) had stuck in my mind. I opened the door to the stairs (I wasn’t allowed to use them) and yelled up, “Papa, are you making a stool?”
“You’ll have to wait until Christmas Eve,” was the answer. Somehow when we returned from church, there was a red, child’s chair under the Christmas tree. Of course, we had to wait until the candles were lit, the prayers said, and the Christmas carols sung before receiving any gifts. Mama played the organ and my oldest brother played the accordion. The chair lasted until I was about six and had outgrown it.
When I was five, we were living on my grandmother’s rental farm. My younger brother at the age of four still called me “girlie” because he could not say Marilyn. He wanted a black, stuffed Scotty dog as his Christmas present. I had heard Papa and Mama speaking in German and had heard the words for dog and black. I assured my brother that the black Scotty would be under the tree. He, of course, ran and asked our parents if it were true. Mama came storming into the bedroom we all shared (children under the age of six slept in the same bedroom as their parents because of the Iowa cold) and accused me of searching through the closets. I denied doing such a heinous thing.
“Then how did you know what your brother is getting?”
“I heard you and Papa talking about it. You bought it at the General Store.”
“We were speaking in Deutsche. You mean you understood that?”
“Ja, Muder.” A really silly response, but I felt so grown up using their language. After that my parents quit speaking in German when we were around and I lost the vocabulary that I had possessed.
Papa always said the prayers in German, at times the Pastor would recite part of one of the German hymns during the service, and sometimes on Christmas Eve (and other occasions) my parents would harmonize while singing German hymns or songs. Whenever there was a special event in our family, we would hold another service at home. Part of it would be in German. At the table, my father would say his prayer in German. The rest of us said our prayer in English, but Papa would use German words to identify the foods. Sometimes, they would even speak in German. Yes, they were both born in this country. So was my paternal grandmother, but certain customs lingered.
It was all the familiar family celebrations and the Deutsche words that the immigrant families used that I incorporated into Earthbound and Gather The Children. My parents did not make beer, but my maternal grandfather had done so until prohibition. It was another tradition so that too wound up in Gather The Children.
You can take a look at those two books right here on Goodreads or you can go to my website at http://maricollier.com/