Memories of past Christmasses

I know exactly when it started.  Heidelberg, Germany - 1984. I was backpacking around Europe for a year or so, with two friends for about half the time.  We had left London and taken the train, boat, train to Belgium - it was before the Eurostar chunnel - and slowly making our way westward.

In late November it was getting cold.  We were shut out of our hotels during the day so would spend the time walking for miles and miles, breaking the day with a meal or a drink somewhere warm, visiting the odd museum or site.  But something happened when we crossed the border into Germany.  Something lovely.

Every town and city we visited had a Christmas night market!  Lots of little kiosks all lit up and full of lovely little pieces of jewelry or fabric or paintings.  Hot grogg, and mulled wine and cider.  Big pretzels.  And dozens of Christmas ornaments, all made of painted wood or woven straw and unlike all the slick, shiny decorations from my North American childhood.

I fell in love with these tiny ornaments, even more so when I was told what they meant. 

Like this chap.  Everyone knows that he is in the form of a nutcracker, but this was before the hockey player versions, or dentist versions or rock guitarist versions. I found him in Heidelberg, Germany, a really nice university town in the North. 

We were travelling on the cheap, and not buying anything discretionary except postcards and stamps, but I swallowed hard and put down the cost so that I would always remember Heidelberg.

he has a nutcracker lever in his back that really works

Then I came across this Pine Cone Ornament, which means motherhood and fruitfulness. It was extremely inexpensive and so now it reminds me of Munich, which had the biggest Christmas market I experienced

the use of straw indicates fertility - maybe because it denotes a successful harvest?

In Germany, a glass pickle is traditionally the last ornament to be hung on a Christmas tree, usually by the parents or grandparents in some unobvious place.  The child who finds the pickle ornament gets a special present and is able to open their Christmas presents first. Talk about opening the door to sibling rivalry!

My husband has never been a big fan of this glass pickle
so it is going bye-bye in our cull of stuff

Mushrooms that look like they came out of a fairy tale with their white and red polka dots are hung on Christmas trees to reflect a reverence for nature. They also symbolize good luck in the New Year.  Switzerland seemed to have similar traditions when it comes to tree ornaments.  I remember Zurich and Lucerne, and Interlaken when I see this little mushroom, as well as all the other places I visited in Switzerland that year.

Walnuts and Acorns are common on Christmas trees too.  Not real nuts, but glass ones.  The acorn in particular, because it comes from the sacred oak tree and represents rebirth; the birth of the Christ child. Acorns also represent the gift of life and luck, so who wouldn't want one of these on their tree? Especially when it is a nice reminder of Nuremburg, a city that itself went through a rebirth not so many decades ago.

The chimney sweep is a lucky symbol, and popular as a New Years gift.  I bought him in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a small mountain town in Bavaria, southern Germany, where I spent Christmas in 1984.



he used to carry a wee ladder but it's long gone

Three girls staying in a bed and breakfast in a small German mountain town.  We went out for a long walk in the woods and finally made use of what I thought was a frightening little saw on one of our Swiss army knives.  Two kept watch while the third cut down a stunted little tree, which took a lot more time and effort that it should have. We set it up in the window, and hung our socks, in which we had agreed to fill, keeping to a strict budget.

Stumbling our way through butchers and grocers and bakers with our halting and inept German, we gathered the items that would make up our dinner Christmas day, our landlady graciously allowing us the use of her kitchen as she would be out for Christmas dinner herself.  We had also gathered little secrets for each other, and had wrapped each one in bright paper.

Then on Christmas Eve, we put on the only 'nice' outfit we brought, wrinkled and shapeless after weeks in the bottom of our packs.  Wrapped up for the outside chill, we walked in single file, following each other by the light of the moon reflected on the snow, until we came into the town with its lights and cleared walkways.  I'd never been to a midnight service before, as my family was not religious, but it seemed the right thing to do here.  Reckoning on a full church, we had planned to get there a little early, but nothing prepared us for the wealth of humanity inside.  We had to work our way to the back of the room, and a kind man ushered us into his seat, all three of us squashed together, insisting against our objections that we, as visitors, sit while he stands.

It wasn't a particularly long service I think, but not knowing the language it seemed quite interminable, especially as German is not a particularly harmonious language.  At the end, there was a quietness, and all the lights went out, all except those covering a large tree in the back.  At some silent sign everyone in the room stood and started to sing 'Silent Night', in German of course, and unaccompanied.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard and I cried like a baby.

Our walk home was warm and silent, each still taking in the beauty of the night.  The next morning, we were kissed by our landlady at breakfast, and each given a rose.  We opened our little gifts, went for a walk, then got in the kitchen to prepare.  Even a glass of wine, and we toasted our journeys, both external and internal, before tucking into our roast chicken and apple strudel.

That Christmas day is almost 30 years in the past, but its talismans remain.  My little wooden Christmas ornaments go on my tree every year, reminding me of a place and time that played a large role in forming the person I am today. 

Late 19th Century Rocking Chair

Not a lot of things came through my father’s side of the family. On his father’s side, there was a large family: 9 siblings and my grandfather was #6. His family was based in Ontario but Grandpa Rob was sent off to join a brother in Saskatchewan when he was a teenager and probably a bit of a handful so why not pack him off to be of use on a farm? There he met my grandmother, who was #8 of 10, although 5 of these had died within a year. This is one of the saddest parts of life before or at the start of the 20^th century.

Neither family had much to begin with and whatever there was usually went to the eldest child. So this rocking chair made its way into the family sometime early in the depression years, before my father was born in 1935. It was made in the USA sometime in the late 19^th century, and my grandmother bought it in a second hand store in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.  The seat has been replaced a few times, but the back is original. The Kennedys had one like it in the White House early in the 1960s, and it became fashionable. It’s nice to think we had an ‘original’, as we were rarely trendsetters ourselves!

My father remembers sitting on it as a young boy, facing the back and with his feet sticking out under the woven back and on the rockers so he could rock it “like riding a racehorse”. My memory is of it coming to my house was when we moved in 1967. We were a family of 4 children, two boys two girls, not that large in the 1960s but considerably large by the standards of the early 21^st century. How medicine has changed birth rates over only 100 years!

The house we moved into when I was 9 was considerably larger than our previous house, and we didn’t have a lot of furniture at first, so that rocking chair was almost the only thing to sit on besides one couch, both placed in the otherwise bare living room. Later on it moved to other rooms and other houses until my brother passed it on to me. It’s a very comfortable rocking chair and I am still trying to decide exactly where it will go in my house. At the moment it is in the living room, beside a lamp for reading but also within sight of the TV and the fireplace.