Christmas Memories

Christmas Eve, my brother and me, 1960s

Over the past few days I was looking at some old photos that my dad took when we were children. All of them were slides that my father-in-law scanned for me several years ago. The quality of the images is very poor, but they did bring back memories of Christmasses (is that a word?) long time ago.

Both my parents had lost their homes in World War II. My mother had to flee from the border to Poland at the end of January 1945; my dad was never able to return to his hometown Marienburg (Malbork in today's Poland) after a year as a POW in a British camp in Belgium (his parents and younger sister had been able to catch the last refugee ship out of Danzig/Gdansk). My parents met in a small village in Lower Saxony where they eventually started a family. 

They didn't have much money - my dad had just earned his PhD and was one of two veterinarians in a country veterinary practice (nothing like "All Creatures Great and Small"), but with the little means they had they still made it possible to give us children a magical Christmas.

There was a tree in front of our rented house, and they put real candles on it. It was so beautiful. My mom also put some Wunderkerzen (sparkler) in it - nowadays they are mostly used on New Year's Eve. 

My mom with my brother, late 1950s

Here she is lighting the Wunderkerzen; my sister to the right

Later she would light the tree in the living room. There are not many ornaments on the tree because they didn't have many (there were more important things to spend money on) and the family ornaments were left behind in the war. But there was a lot of lametta (tinsel) because it was affordable.

A Christmas tradition in Germany is to have a Weihnachtsteller (Christmas plate) filled with chocolates, marzipan, homebaked cookies and nuts. We loved our Weihnachtsteller and I sure was delighted about the chocolate Santa.

My brother and I loved to bake Christmas cookies - well, I mainly loved to eat the dough!

1961

Later we moved to the Sauerland, Northrhine-Westphalia, where we lived in a nice flat. My dad had found a position as a vet with the county which is way more sustainable for family life - no more calls in the middle of the night, but still calls on the weekends. My parents lived in that flat for 42 years.

My brother with very short hair, because that was the only way to "tame" his abundance of locks

Sometime - I can't remember exactly when - we started a new tradition for the time "zwischen den Jahren" (between the years - the week from Christmas to New Year). My mom received a huge jigsaw puzzle of the Alexanderschlacht (the Battle of Alexander at Issus), a 1529 oil painting by the German artist Albrecht Altdorfer (you can see the painting here). I think it had arund 1500 pieces and if you look at the painting you can see how detailed it is, and assembling the sky was a real pain. It always took us several days to put it together, but every year we did. It was a family "venture", even my dad, who didn't enjoy puzzles very much, joined in every now and then. I once saw the original painting in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich - it's a truly impressive painting.

Here is my mother doing a puzzle - she always loved doing one in the colder season (this, of course, is not Alexanderschlacht and this picture was taken some other time during the winter).

This year I kept up the tradition, not with Alexander, though, but with a fun image of Yosemite, and on a much smaller scale (around 300 pieces only) and it was done within a couple hours on a chilly afternoon right before Christmas Eve.

My Christmas tree in my tiny flat while the Geek and I were dating.

Later, we established our own Christmas traditions when we had our own family. First Christmas with Kaefer.

Our German traditions mingled with American Christmas customs when we moved to California. Kaefer's letter to Santa:

Nowadays, the Geek and I don't really "do" Christmas. But this year, some neighbors and us started a new tradition - caroling in the neighborhood. We did that last Friday, and we had so much fun together. We caroled for more than an hour, going along the streets, singing in front of homes - it was joyful and so rewarding spreading some cheer. I can't share the pictures and videos because I don't know whether everyone would be okay to be out in the blogosphere.

Therefore just an image of our Christmas Eve drink - a delicious rosé champagne. Cheers to Bleubeard and Elizabeth at T Tuesday and to everyone who reads this.