Grandma Lill's Christmas

Grandma Lill's Christmas


I remember Christmas of 1953 on the farm, but only snatches of it.  Someone, probably Uncle John, had gone up into the woods and cut a Norway pine and it had been erected on a metal stand in the living room in front of the large picture window that looked west down Farmer's Valley Road, which approached from Highway 71.  You could see the lights from anywhere outside the house on that side, of course, but you also saw them the instant your car crested the little hill about a quarter mile down the road.

Grandpa Two had died, I believe, but Grandma Two, Elsie, was picked up in Westby by someone and was staying about a week.  She had one of the beds in the large bedroom right above the kitchen.  This is where I saw her inject her insulin into her thigh.  I am not certain whether Aunt Donna was available, but Aunt Jeannie was certainly there, as was her son and my cousin, Danny.

Danny was an infant yet.  Jeannie had divorced Tom Sullivan, but there was a rather big package under the tree from his dad.  There was nothing from my dad, who was living in Iowa somewhere.

There were, of course, lots of gifts from my grandparents, my mother, and her siblings, as well as from Grandma Two and from Carrie and Si, who drove up from La Crosse, about thirty-five miles distant but not as simple a drive as it is nowadays.

Grandpa Lee's brother, Hazel, was there as well, probably having ridden with Carrie and Si.

We celebrated Christmas eve in our family.  I was the only child old enough to be cognizant of the plan.  The adults would talk incessantly all day long, even as they prepared dinner.  Lill and Lee had a table that could spread apart and take two or three extra "leaves", boards that were inserted to make the table longer.  They were all in and her best dishes and silverware, all scrubbed and polished, were on the table, along with cloth napkins.

I had been snooping and shaking gifts for a couple days, holding them up to the light to speculate on what might be within.  As Danny got older and more aware, and as the other children of my generation came along and matured, they all got chances to experience this magical anticipation.

Grandma Lill's eyes would twinkle as she watched, but there was no early opening of gifts.

Finally it was time for dinner.  Everyone came to the table.  Danny was placed in a high chair; I'm not sure he was even walking yet.  Then the food was passed around.  A typical Christmas dinner was either roast chicken or beef, served with plenty of mashed potatoes and gravy, stewed carrots and onions, and likely a huge bowl of boiled green beans. Guests would have brought large pots of meatballs and a variety of desserts.   In addition to that, cakes and cookies abounded.

Grandma Two, Grandma Lill, and Aunt Key, of course, all knew how to make lefse, the Norweigan potato treat.  I loved it with butter on it, but some of the adults placed meatballs in it and rolled it up.  Christmas would not be complete without it.  Lefse was the shape of a bit cloth napkin, made of a potato mixture and rolled flat and dried before a brief dry-baking, which put little brown blemishes all over it.

When the meal was on our plates, the Norweigan prayer was read, Lill and Aunt Key leading and everyone else chiming in:

                    Y Jese' namn….gar vit il boord
                    A spice drek….put id toord
                    So faar ve mad.....ost til gon
                    So gud til aar…..Y Jese' namn          AMEN!

Then Aunt Key would insist on everyone singing Silent Night together, just the first verse:

          Silent night...holy night
          All is calm...all is bright
          Round yon virgin, mother and child
          Holy infant so tender and mild
          Sleep in heavenly peace,
          Sleep in heavenly peace.

Now the feast began in earnest.  Lots of laughing.  Lots of chatter.  Lots of good food.  And the grand finale was always Aunt Key's cranberry cobbler.  She always brought it, and while she was able, no one ever had the audacity to prempt her or copy her recipe.

The anticipation was nearly killing me, but when dinner was done, we didn't yet get to open the gifts.  Lill and Carrie and any number of the other women present slowly and thoroughly did the kitchen clean-up and the dishes.

There was always a huge platter of left over chicken or beef and it went right out on the porch along with extra plates of lefse and desserts.  It was cold out there so it was like a refrigerator attached right to the house.  These ladies did not make small batches of cookies.  There were trays of everyone's interpretation of sandbackles, sugared hats, snowmen, and the little peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's kiss pressed into each one.  The snowmen had little candy buttons going down their fronts.  The Norweigan hats were spackled with various colors of glistening sugar or chocolate beads.

When all the kitchen work was finally finished, we gathered into the large living room for the opening of gifts.  Danny got lifted up to put the little angel on the very top of the tree.  It was always the youngest child present that got to do this and my time was over.  Then there were a few Christmas songs sung just to whip the anticipation into a frenzy.

Presents were passed out and people took turns opening one, starting with the youngest.  Nowadays we take turns one gift at a time but in those days, when there were only two or three very young kids and we were rambunctious boys, they let each child open all his gifts in one shot.  That way we could play with our toys afterward and not detract from the adults enjoying their turns.

Of the many, many gifts, several of them would be practical in nature.  I would have gotten at least one pair of pajamas, made by Grandma Lill.  They would be flannel and very warm.  I would open a package and in there would be several pairs of socks.  One or two homemade sweaters would be in the mix.  These gifts would be tossed aside without much enthusiasm, and the adults would laugh.

Lill and Lee would get boxes of Keeley's chocolates.  They came in a yellow box with brown lettering and each crème-filled chocolate was individually wrapped, half in yellow paper and the other half in brown.  The yellow ones contained white crème and the brown ones contained chocolate crème.

The most pleasing gifts for a six year old child with about a four-year-old maturity level were things like a plastic airplane or navy ship, a model car, toy soldiers made of green plastic, perhaps a cap-gun.  A cap gun had a trigger that operated a hammer which slapped up against a "cap", a little dot of gunpowder which made a snappy report as it quickly burned.  The caps came in a roll and when you shot one, the action of the trigger advanced the next one up onto a little plate for the next shot.

I would have gotten some edible treats as well, perhaps a box of chocolate covered cherries to be doled out as I could handle them.

Danny's large box from his dad was opened.  He was hardly even aware that it was for him, but tore at the paper because it was fun.  The box inside contained a nice, big, red wagon, a Radio Flyer.  It was awesome and I was green with envy.  I had gotten nothing even close.  Uncle John got busy putting it together.  The wheels had to be put on and the handle fastened into a yoke in front.

It was astonishing and my nose was a little out of joint as Danny was picked up and placed into the wagon, hardly even knowing what it was all about.

Not to worry!  As it turned out, it was as if the wagon was meant for me, because after that little introductory ride, it was of little use to one who could not yet walk!  That wagon stayed at the farm and I rode it all over the front cement deck any time I wished, until Danny was old enough to actually play in it.  We had more fun together in that wagon, pulling it up the hill toward the pump house, both climbing in and rolling down, trying to miss Grandma Lill's bushes and ultimately jack-knifing and both falling out into the grass.  Over and over and over.

I hope Tom Sullivan was told just how much fun he enabled when he sent that Christmas gift to his boy.  I'll bet Grandma and Grandpa got some chuckles watching from the kitchen window.  But that fun was all to be had the next summer when the snow was gone and the grass was a lush mat upon which to land.

As it got late, we would be put to bed, but that was fun, too, because I  could watch and listen through the grate in the floor.  My mother and I were living right above that room and our heat came up through that grate, so it had to be left open.

Gradually, people like Carrie and Si and Great Uncle Hazel, would head home and you could listen to them shifting through the gears as they drove down the dirt road and their taillights finally disappeared over the little hill.

There would be a grating sound as Grandpa Lee shook out the embers in the basement furnace and some loud clunking as he threw in two or three "all nighters", chunks of wood that were large enough that they would take a long time burning and supply us with even heat all night long until he had to get up and repeat the process.

Ultimately the laughter and clinking of dishes from late night snackers would subside and my mother would creep into the bedroom and slide in with me.

Christmas might be over, but there would be lots of treats as we finished up what Grandma Lill didn't send with people.  It would be days and perhaps even weeks before I lost or broke all my toys.  I would be warm at night with the pajamas and during the day with the sweaters.

And that Radio Flyer wagon of Danny's lasted years and years.

All the magic of Christmas, for all those people, was created mainly by the efforts of Grandma Lill and in retrospect, I just sit and wonder how she did it all, from tilling and planting the garden to the endless food processing and cleaning of the house, to hostessing and cleaning up afterward.  She seemed tireless and all the while her eyes would twinkle with the joy of it all.