As the end of the old year neared, I swept the Christmas greens off the mantels and into large wicker baskets, dusted up the dry pine needles with a small broom, and tossed out the remaining bits of the beautiful holiday candles.
It’s over for this year, I say to myself as I stack boxes of decorations on the stairway to go to the attic.
Still, the essence of our holidays lingers.
I remember once asking a neighbor in early December if she had gotten her Christmas tree yet and was surprised by her answer: No, I don’t bother anymore, she said. I’ve given most of the decorations away and it makes life easier.
Maybe so, I wanted to respond, but don’t we need those rituals and traditions in our lives?
Starting with Thanksgiving, my Midwestern childhood was filled with the habits of the holidays, many of them originating in the far north of Germany, formerly Denmark, where my grandparents had grown up. With nearly my entire small town sharing this background, it was easy to see it as “just how we did things.”
Our cooking and baking were among the most important tasks.
As November gave way to December, a grandmother would pull out from the back of the fridge the leftover goose grease from the birds cooked for the Thanksgiving dinner. It was the key ingredient that gave the special crispness to her famous ginger snaps, admired in the neighborhood at afternoon coffee klatches. Another grandmother saw to the small, spicy pfeffernusse, and someone else to laying in the supply of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts, all still in their shells, to be enjoyed with the sweets.
Decorating was also a prescribed ritual. To this day I regret that I ever let go of the German Christmas ornaments brought out each year at the home of my maternal grandparents. The magic of Christmas Eve for me as a little girl began with our arrival at their house (only a few blocks away from ours), first of all to see the tree. The lights were less important than the artistry of the ornaments: delicate silver birds with long, wispy tails; pinecones made of a rich, amber glass, indented as if they were real, with green painted stems; and fragile fruits, also made of glass, in shades of purple, aqua and cranberry.
Best, though, were the presents that Santa always left beside the fireplace in the den of their Prairie Style home. Each year he squeezed himself down the chimney there, and at dozens of other homes in the neighborhood, in the late afternoon darkness of Dec. 24. A vague scent of pine hung in the air of the room, coming from a sparse arrangement of greens on the oak mantel, among the few boughs that could be gleaned in a part of the country nearly bereft of evergreens.
Back at my house, we had no fireplace, but we had our traditions. Our tree had been decorated earlier in the week. Though pretty enough, it featured more tinsel and lights and fewer of the historic ornaments. There was one article, though, that linked us with certainty to Christmases in Germany. He was our Weihnachtsmann — the name we always used for him, placed high up in the tree, the last item added; he was already old when I was a child, on his way to becoming truly fragile.
Our Weihnachtsmann is about 10 inches tall, wears a white robe with a few lingering sparkles on it, carries a bundle of sticks, and has an expressive paper face beneath his hood that I’ve always seen as somber. Mysterious, perhaps.
For us then, he was the spirit of Christmas, and now that I own him, he is a part of my identity — and that of my own family. He used to sit in the Christmas trees decorated by my husband, my daughters and me, but when he became nearly decrepit, I had him shadow-boxed, a dusty white figure set off by a rich red border in a gold frame. He is our family icon, and it is a joy to bring him out each year.
We all know him and he matters.
On our Iowa Christmas Eves, we always opened our gifts early. There was then a little homemade wine before a family dinner, and after the meal, we rushed off to services at the local Methodist Church, where my mother was the organist and choir director.
And on Christmas Day? Only the big dinner hosted by us or by relatives, followed by walks out in the country or, in later years, the televised ball games. The world would become quiet then, for the following week, as families and the community made plans to welcome the New Year.
For me, many of these traditions remain essential routines of this dark time of the year. Lending stability, contentment and the feeling of belonging when we need it most, they are habits I hope to pass on.
My husband and I spent this year’s holiday with a daughter and her family in Buffalo, joined there by other family members, too. Although she and her husband introduced some of their own ways of celebrating — raclette on Christmas Eve was among them — I felt right at home.
And I admit that when we packed the car to drive there, I included a few items I’d already made, to add to the festivities. After all, what would Christmas be without the pfeffernusse?
Mary K. Otto lives in Norwich.