Today’s guest blog comes from Bill in Minneapolis.
I was standing in line yesterday at Ingebretsen’s, the 90-year-old Scandinavian market on Lake Street, as I have for at least 40 Christmas seasons. There were about 35 people in front of me in line and at least as many behind. Now, I hate standing in line. There is almost nothing I want badly enough to warrant standing in a long line. But, as I waited, I suddenly realized I was enjoying myself– enjoying the understated camaraderie and the people watching. I was having such a good time that, when my number was almost up, I considered trading with someone else further down the line.
I’ve thought about why I might have reacted so uncharacteristically, for me, and I think it’s because Ingebretsen’s at Christmas is one of the last outposts of a kind of Christmas I remember from my very early childhood and a kind of Christmas that has mostly vanished. I may be projecting here, but I suspect a lot of the others standing in line were feeling the same way. None of the other customers were under 50. We all came, presumably, from families where lutefisk, Swedish meatballs, Swedish sausage, pickled herring, sylte, and the like were de rigueur at the holidays and we find ourselves struggling to hold on to customs that have mostly fallen away. I noticed that, as I waited my turn, almost no one was buying lutefisk. Even 30 years ago, everyone there would have been buying at least a little.
Lutefisk is hardcore. When I was young, Christmas Eve dinner always included lutefisk and Swedish meatballs as well. There always seemed to be anxiety surrounding the preparation of the lutefisk– whether it would be overcooked or “just right”. The distinction always seemed moot to me.
My dad was born in Robbinsdale and spent his whole life there. My father’s parents lived about 2 blocks away from where I grew up. His only brother was unmarried at the time and lived with them. My grandfather was born in Sweden and my grandmother was half Swedish and half Norwegian. All their friends were either Swedish or Norwegian. When I was very young, the universe was Scandinavian.
I remember that any social gathering with my grandparents also included a number of close friends and assorted unattached bachelors and maiden aunts, all of whom had last names that ended with -son or –sen. I think of those early social gatherings whenever I hear this:
I was the only child in our immediate family group. That meant that Christmas in our family was essentially adult centered. That, in turn, meant that it was primarily focused on the dinner, or on the run-up to the dinner. No presents were ever opened until the dinner was done and the plates cleared. It was excruciating to be the only kid. I had lots of time and opportunity to observe.
Most of the Christmas traditions I remember have fallen away. The lutefisk is gone for certain. My kids, who are adults themselves, know next to nothing about Christmas as I remember it. It has been assimilated into the general commercial culture. The tang and comfort of reenacting the rituals of a distinct tribe are largely vanished. I came along at the end of that chain of tradition and when I’m gone, it will be gone from our family completely.
Once again, I may be projecting my own sentiments, but that’s the undercurrent I felt as I stood waiting my turn at Ingebretsen’s. Beneath the festivity, beneath the joy at finding common ground, a kind of wistfulness that the Portuguese call saudade.
What tribal rituals will you be among the last to observe?
Trail Baboon 
I too have Swedish heritage but having grown up in New Zealand I didn’t experience the Swedish traditions around Christmas….until last year when I visited for the first time. I must admit that some of the foods were acquired tastes but the tradition and ceremony around it all was beautiful.
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oldvogue – I like your blog. Welcome to the Trail!
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Why thank you! I feel very welcome indeed!
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Welcome to the trail, old vogue, Just read a couple of your post to your blog, what fun. I was especially interested in the one about King’s Cross. Sounds like a place I must visit if I ever make it to Sydney.
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old vogue, what were Christmas traditions in New Zealand where you grew up?
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I must say that Christmas traditions in New Zealand are a bit generic. It is mostly all about enjoying the outdoors. Lots of seafood for lunch and then heading to the beach – although this year we’ve had nothing but rain. So I’ve been driven to more eating and champagne drinking!
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stick your head back in old vouge your brain fits in around here if tyour blog is an indication of the stuff rattleing around in there. welcome
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My dad was a Swede, but from a family that had moved from Kandiyohi to many places in Montana and North Dakota when he was growing up. My mom was not Scandinavian. The only Scandinavian traditions I experienced came when we went to visit Grandma in Montana in the summer – no Christmas traditions – but some really good cookies, rice and sausages.
One of the rituals that seems to be passing away is the church potluck. I remember many from my childhood. Now when churches (or even friends) try to have one, many of the foods come in deli containers because fewer people have time to cook. I don’t know that I will be the last one to remember (my daughters have good memories of a few), but it does seem sad that there are fewer.
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Morning all. Bill, your pieces is such a nice treat.. I wasn’t expecting a new posting today since it’s Sunday, so a double treat!
I didn’t grow up here. I hale from a place filled with Germans and Italians (St. Louis), so I had not even heard of lutefisk or lefse until I moved here. Having moved away from my clan, many of the “traditions” that I grew up with have already fallen by the wayside; since the traditions that Teenager and I observe are all first-generation, I assume they may fall away quickly when she is off on her own.
The one tradition that I miss is going out to look at the holiday lights. When I was a kid, we would pile into the car on Christmas Eve and start driving around, beginning in our neighborhood and then expanding outward. We would drive slowly whenever we saw a good display and “ooh” and “aah” at the pretty colors and interesting ways people had their lights set up. After a couple of years my dad had some little cards printed up that said “We enjoyed your holidays lights. Merry Christmas” and we would put them in the mailboxes of homes with particularly splendid lights. My family still does this in St. Louis, but I’ve never been able to convince the Teenager that this is a good thing to do.
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I’m willing to bet, vs, that the homeowners who received those cards appreciated them.
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Good morning. That’s a good one, Bill. Thanks. We didn’t bake any saffron bread they year which is a Christmas tradition that comes from my mother’s family. I think we will make it again for Christmas some time, probably next year. We make it almost every Christmas. It is a fruit cake that includes saffron giving it a yellow color. My Grandmother and my mother always made it at Christmas. Apparently it is a traditional English Christmas treat.
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Our Christmas ritual is almost gone too. When I was young, we’d relax on Christmas Eve during the day. We would often go skiing or sledding or ice skating on the lake and drink hot chocolate when we got back home. I loved Christmas Eve because that’s when we got to open presents. We had only oyster stew on Christmas Eve – very simple.
When the dishes were all done (by me), we could finally open presents. We followed the same ritual every year. One of the adults, usually Mom or Dad, would go get a present from under the tree and give it to someone else. That person would open his or her gift, then go get one for someone else. We took turns opening one gift at a time in that way until all the gifts had been opened. Then we’d have hot chocolate and cookies or lefse.
In the morning on Christmas Day, there were presents from Santa. There were always oranges and apples, plus one small gift and one large, exciting gift. We would open our gifts, eat breakfast, then go to church. We stopped going to church completely when I was 11 and we’d moved permanently to the lake house.
After church, Mom would get the turkey or goose in the oven and I’d set the table. Our grandparents, and sometimes our only three cousins, would come over for Christmas dinner.
My brothers married wonderful women who can’t stand oyster stew. My niece and nephews don’t care for it either. I’ve always loved it. I tried to keep that tradition alive but finally realized it wasn’t worth it. Even Mom said she didn’t care if we kept that tradition. I felt defeated, but I’ve accepted it now. The only thing we still do is take turns opening gifts. No one makes oyster stew or lefse except me anymore.
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From what ethnic tradition is the oyster stew, Krista? I’ve heard of it before, but have no idea where it originated.
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I think it’s from the British Isles – oysters would have been common fare for poor folks. My maternal grandmother had some British blood and it was her recipe. She was also a descendant of one of our more inglorious presidents, William Howard Taft.
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Krista, William Howard Taft was our greatest president! He weighed 340 pounds and had to have a special large bathtub installed in the White House because he couldn’t fit in most tubs.
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Of course! I’d forgotten about those fine qualities!
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It’s in LE Wilder books; I think in Plum Creek. Seems odd. But mother’s childhood included oyster stew at Christmas. Canned oysters no doubt. I read a history of Maine. In the late 1880’s as a source of some money other than the forests, they canned lots of seafoods, like oysters. This you will love: lobster was considered junk food, so they shipped it to New York to be feds to prisoners.
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I’m not sure PJ, but it is probably a tradition that started in the US . . . specifically along the eastern Seaboard in such states as Maryland.
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A cursory online search says oyster stew is as old as the Romans and that the Indians may have taught it to the Pilgrims. As a Christmas tradition it’s origin is unclear and disputed.
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My father’s family were Dutch/German, and Oyster stew was a staple. My town was manily Norwegian and German, and the grocery stores and butcher shop had gallons ( I am not exaggerating) of fresh oysters that they sold in white paper containers, so I wonder if Oyster Stew is a North Sea tradition?
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makek that “Mainly”
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I think so, about the North Sea link – we (Norwegians) had it on Christmas Eve when I was growing up…
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Wonderful blog and photos, Bill, thanks. I especially love the photo of the Christmas tree. Tinsel is one of the traditions that has pretty much fallen by the wayside after real tinsel was replaced by that plastic stuff that clings to everything.
I have always loved Christmas, and have enthusiastically participated in many old Danish traditions. Some of those have been influenced by living in the US. For a period of roughly forty years, I hosted a Christmas Eve dinner and Scandinavian Christmas. Newly divorced when the tradition started, I invited Swedish and Danish friends to my celebration along with their Israeli, Japanese, and American spouses or significant others. One of the Swedes, Tage, is married to a Jewish woman, Naomi, and soon she began inviting her sister and father to the celebration. Another Swede is married to an American of Japanese descent. My Danish friend, Gitte, is married to an Israeli man, so it didn’t take long for this celebration to evolve into a multi-cultural phenomenon. Over time, this core group of celebrants began having children, and what had initially been a dinner for eight to ten people, grew to as many as twenty-two.
Every person or couple was asked to bring something for the dinner without which it wouldn’t be a traditional Christmas meal for them. The Danish Christmas Eve foods where especially well represented, and roast pork with caramelized small potatoes and red cabbage, were a mainstay of the dinner. So was the dessert, ris-a-la mande, a delicious sweet rice pudding with a lot of whipped cream and slivered almonds and served with a cherry sauce. Hidden in the rice pudding i one whole almond, and the person who gets the serving of pudding with the whole almond wins a prize, usually a marzipan pig. There’d always be lots of this rice pudding, and of course, no one would let on that they had found the whole almond in their pudding till all the pudding was gone. Another dish that became a mainstay of the dinner was a Swedish dish, Jönssons frestelse, brought first by Naomi, and later, when Tage and Naomi moved away, by Naomi’s sister. Lutefisk was included only a couple of years (no one, including the Swedes, really liked it); besides it tended to make the house stinky.
After dinner we’d all join hands and dance around the Christmas tree and sing an assortment of Danish, Swedish, and American Christmas songs. The Swedish ones were especially popular with the kids because they are vigorous and so much fun. Heck, we prided ourselves on probably being one of the few places anywhere where the Chanukah song was included in the Christmas dancing around the Christmas tree celebration. The evening would end with the gift exchange, glögg and cookies and a very special glow.
All of this is history now. The kids are all grown up and have moved away, and some of those friends have retreated to warmer climes, but I know the memories of those Christmases hold a very special place in the heart of everyone who ever participated in them.
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Nice memories, PJ. I like the thought of singing carols from different cultures.
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very nice pj
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I’ve always wanted to try Jansson’s Temptation. Your Christmas tradition, as it evolved, sounds really lovely. Because we never moved away from our immediate family, we never had an opportunity to create our own traditions. Instead, as members of, first, my grandparent’s generation and then my parents generation fell away, the old ancestral ways became more and more dilute with little to take their place.
The one thing that may survive into the next generation and beyond is rice pudding. I still have the recipe that my grandmother used to make it for my Swedish grandfather and my mother used to make it for my father. I like it a little too much. When I was waiting for my turn at Ingebretsen’s, I noticed that one could buy ready-made rice pudding there, with or without raisins, at $4.99 a pint! If it’s half as good as the rice pudding I make, a pint would be a single serving. My daughter who does’t cook has developed a fondness for the stuff and my daughter who does cook seems to be coming around, so there’s hope for its continuation.
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This video will give you some idea of what the dancing around the Christmas tree was like. We sang all of the Swedish songs your hear in this clip. It was a good way of working off some of the calories that had just been consumed during our extravagant feast.
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One tradition we continue is for someone to be overworked at this time of year, a tradition I passed to my daughter, and now that her husband has entered the ministry, to him as well. Between the two of them, counting funerals and nursing home chapel services, they have to do about 20 services between last Wednesday and next Wednesday. Obviously we need to go over to basbysit, which we will when my wife is up to the drive, today looks likely.
We are dropping most of the rich food traditions. Out of six of us one is diabetic and has colitis, one is a kidney donor and has to be careful, one is gluten-free, one is being teased about his weight and needs/wants to cut down, as indeed do others of us. So not much sweets, although it is a Lutheran tradition to flood the pastor’s house with baking and candy. Much will simply be thrown away. What can will be donated, but not much can. But to fair, where they work, they also get things like eggs and meat.
We did pass on a nice tradition to a third generation. I am a devoted fan of Tolkien. My son read the four books in second grade. My second-grade grandson announced last week, after seeing ads for the movie The Hobbit, that he wanted to read the book. So yesterday he started. He read about 1/3 of the book and announced it is great and cannot wait ti finish it.
Have a good holiday, all. I will not be on much over the next few days.
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hope he enjoys tolkien. the hibernation to get lost in that 1/3 at a time is wonderful proof you have a true reader.
tough giving up on the food traditions. would be interesting to see wat few options fit all requirements.
nice to have a traveling preacher to visit the shut ins
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My daughter wears herself out visiting shut-ins. And then gets complaints that she does not visit them, which happens to all pastors.
Tomorrow I am making pancakes for lunch ans pizza for supper because the kids love both of those meals by me. I will eat something else. Tuesday it’s ham, baked potatoes, cardemom bread from my wife, green bean casserole (but not THAT one). Mostly it is that there are few cookies etc. around.
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My grandson comes home with second-grade level reading as homework that he is supposed to read with his parents. So he does it as a comedy routine (Blah, blah, blah is his favorite punch line for this) and practices his foreign accents. He has a very good teacher who wants to challenge him. She said she was going to assign something else after the first of the year. I am sure when she hears how he spent his vacation she will get right on it.
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That little guys sure sounds like a real character, Clyde.
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there must be an online reading group he could get involved in where age wouldnt matter. i have encouraged my daughter to try this with writing groups . she doesnt like the kids classes because they are all at a different level and the big folks intimidate because she is obviously young at the class room level but online its the brain at work. could be just the ticket for mr tuxedo. i love the picture of blah blah blah and the accents. i like that kid
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Having kids go home and read to their parents in primary grades is sound pedagogy. (The problem is that the kids who need it the most are not likely to have parents who will cooperate. Another example that the problem in our schools are really almost all in our homes.) It is only the level of what he is reading. He does not need a discussion group but simply to read more advanced materials for the activity. Second grade teachers are very overworked folks. But it will be adjusted next month.
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Excellent blog, Bill. I hadn’t known you were such an elegant writer.
Traditions are things we share with those we love, and now I live alone, cut off by one thing or another from all of those I love. So I do not practice or preserve a single Christmas tradition, which is remarkable mostly because my family (the one I grew up in and the one I helped create) always adored Christmas with a passion others sometimes found excessive. When it came to Christmas cheer, Christmas traditions and good old fashioned Christmas love we were immoderate (and proud to be).
But the traditions are safe. My daughter is a fierce traditionalist with Christmas customs. She absorbed the best of all the Christmas traditions that our families practiced and now she honors them in Portland with her new family.
I am amused by one tradition from my father’s family that died totally. We would usually drive from Ames to Des Moines to celebrate Christmas Eve with my dad’s parents and his brother’s family. After we had savored a fabulous dinner, the children (three of us) were shooed off to a back bedroom because it was time for Santa to make his appearance. We would wriggle and giggle with little ears up against the bedroom door, waiting impatiently for the chubby guy in the red suit to come. My grandparents had a baby Boston bull terrier, a bug-eyed black and white dog named Skippy. Skippy was famous for two things: his chronic flatulence and his intolerance of intruders, especially Santa Claus. As we waited in that little bedroom there would come a frantic chorus of barking from Skippy, barking that was proof that Santa had arrived. Everyone knew Skippy only barked at strangers. When Skippy went quiet again, we emerged from the bedroom to find the tree surrounded by gay packages that begged to be opened.
When I was old enough to become sentimental about Christmas memories, I quizzed my parents about family traditions, including how they made Skippy bark. They didn’t remember! The only surviving adults from that time are my aunt and uncle . . . and they can’t remember the barking, let alone what caused it. Why, oh why, did Skippy bark? I’ve had to accept the fact that this is one Christmas tradition that will forever remain both a sweet memory and an enigma.
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Years ago I came across some Christmas songs by a gospel singer named Danniebelle Hall on an anthology of Christmas music. I’ve always loved her voice. The Christmas album she recorded in the 70’s is long out of print, and seemingly hasn’t made the jump to being digitally available – at least the iTunes store doesn’t have it. A few of the songs have recently cropped up on YouTube, but not the whole album. Here’s a sample:
Danniebell Hall died around twelve years ago. I hope she will continue to be remembered.
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Beautiful!
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powerful. thanks linda
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I have always loved the harmonies of the Roches. I try to imagine what doing the dishes in their household sounded like. A lot better than at our house, that I know for sure.
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Perfect.
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I love the Roches — such beautiful and precise harmonies. They always sound bigger than just 3 people.
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Robin and I have been working on a list of Christmas songs one can sing using the words to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,which,as everyone knows, is the Ur-song of Christmas carols.
In the original Rudolph, the melody and the phrasing breaks at “Then one foggy Christmas Eve”, so you have to make slight adjustments at that point, but here’s what we’ve come up with so far for the All Rudolph, All the Time concert:
Lulay, Lulay
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
God Rest You Merry Gentlemen
And for a big finish,
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
Any others?
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The Holly and the Ivy kinda sorta works.
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john fahey is the guitarist that i discovered in the 60’s and just fell in love with. his christmas albums led me to his other music and other guitar players like him.
my family traditions were from an irish family that grew up in the fargo surrounded bythe norwegians and the swedes. the irish traditions were simply to get together for visits with family. family was everything. my grandfather was a tee toddler who let others drink and never drank himself so the visits form irish relatives were odd in that the drink was explained but never spoken badly about. the lesson was there if you wanted it.
my moms family was all about show. lots of big deal presents and big dinners but no personal interaction or sharing of stories or tradittions
my house is a combination of both, we have story telling by the adults with the children having enough before the story is over, the family get together is all we preserve. this is the forst one with a family member missing. devin the oldest who moved to california is waiting tables on christmas eve , day and boxing day. we told him to be ready to skyp charades with us when he is done. that is a new tradition that we started about 10 years ago. charades is the biggest laugh we have all year without a doubt. thanksgiving christmas and easter.
wonderful blog bill. stick your keyboard in more often.
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My dad and his brother learned to make the lefse from his sister (since Helga, my grandma, was already gone), and they kept the family in the good stuff for decades. Dad taught Joel and me, and I’ve made it once. My sister and I might make it sometime, but after that, it’s likely gone. It tastes SO much better than the store bought stuff. But when you come right down to it, it’s really the melted butter over the fish and potatoes that is the main event. Well… actually it’s that combination all wrapped up in the lefse, with the butter dripping down your arm. And you can get that whether it’s homemade lefse or not.
I’ll be on sporadically for the next week – Sister and Nephew visiting. I’ll have to show her your enjoyable blog piece, Bill – we almost always try to get to Ingebretsens.
Have a great Christmas, Babooners!
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There are many old recipes that depend heavily on butter and salt, or butter and brown sugar, to make something ordinary taste especially good. A lot of these foods get modified to make them healthier – mashed potatoes with chicken broth instead of butter and milk, or sweet potatoes with orange juice in place of brown sugar. My personal belief is that the food rules should be suspended for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and your birthday. Butter dripping down your arm is something we should all experience once in a while.
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Amen, Linda.
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Greetings! A couple traditions I remember that just won’t come back, was my sisters and I always sang with the guitar group at Midnight Mass at our big church growing up. Two of my older sisters played guitar along with a couple other group members, and about 2 or 3 of us girls were just there to sing. We sang most Sundays at church, but the Midnight Mass service on Christmas Eve and 20-30 minutes of pre-Mass music were special and relatively well-rehearsed. After Christmas Eve dinner at home and opening the gifts, us girls would get dressed up and do our hair for the Midnight Mass service. It was a special family bonding thing and singing all those beautiful songs together was heartwarming. Only one of us actually attends church now.
With 7 siblings, we always picked names to buy presents for, but once we were all adults, that faded into the White Elephant Gift Exchange. You had to wrap something you currently had in your home (could not buy it). Everyone would pick a number and either choose a gift from the center or steal someone else’s opened gift they coveted. There’s always 3-5 items that are actually fairly nice that many people want, so it turns into total mayhem. Of course, the goofy items are a source of great hilarity.
I know Jim’s family (Scandinavian/German) always had oyster stew Christmas Eve. I love all seafood and would make it, but those precious oysters are way too expensive now. My family also did the driving around to see Christmas lights around Christmas Eve. When Jim drove limousine, they had a special route of the best Christmas light displays in the Twin Cities, so we’ve done it a couple times on our own. But gas is so expensive now — it ‘s hard enough to keep the tank filled just to get to work and back.
Lovely memories, everyone. My son’s girlfriend is singing at her church’s Midnight Mass, and I’m tempted to attend just for the spectacle, drama and music that I miss about a Catholic Midnight Mass. God bless us, everyone.
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Oops — that was actually me (not James). Thanks, Bill, for a great blog.
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us girls was the give away.
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axel anyone? fur dose woo groo up here axel is special
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Smile.
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Afternoon–
There are some great stories and memories here.
I remember my parents helping with the church lutefisk dinners. They would pick up 30 gallon plastic barrels of it and we got the barrels afterward. They had to be scrubbed good and left outside for awhile for the smell to go away but then they were useful for things. That tradition ended quite a few years ago at the church.
We have a tradition of going to my wife’s aunt and uncles on Christmas Eve. They have Oyster stew but the people that want to eat it are few these days. It’s become more of a joke in trying to force some child to taste it.
I had a tradition of giving the cows extra hay and patting each on one he head on Christmas eve. That was the last thing of the night; finish milking and cleaning up, give them hay and a scratch and with them Merry Christmas, then turn out the lights and head to the house. That’s all gone now.
And evidently I can’t make Friendship bread starter anymore. Just dumped out the second batch of dead starter… It wasn’t bubbling and just didn’t smell right.
Trying yet another new batch with different flour. It has been interesting doing research on starters.
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What kind of flour are you using? Does it have enough gluten?
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Linda, this mix is King Arthur unbleached flour out of a new bag. The prior mixes I don’t know; I just used the flour out of the container (no bag) so I’m not sure what exactly it was. I’d guess it was a regular plain flour as that’s what we usually buy.
I just don’t know. It’s a mystery!
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Are you aware, Ben, of the old European belief that the animals can speak at midnight on Christmas Eve? When you scritched their heads, they should have said, “Thank you!”
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Barn full of cows, extra hay and a pat on the head, a scratch and lights out is such a warm picture, Ben. I can smell the barn already.. Merry Christmas!
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I’ve heard that the animals can speak at midnight. I was never down there at that time but I’d like to believe they did.
It was a good picture Robin. A cozy barn is one of the things I miss from the cows.
Good story today Bill. Thanks for the Sunday Bonus!
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I grew up in Japan during the 50’s where there was no Christmas tradition in the larger culture. There was a tiny contingent of foreigners and Japanese who did celebrate, but without all the commercial whoop de doo.
Christmas eve in my family was a quiet but mystical time – my father would have scared up a little fir tree from who knows where(?) and wrestled with the strings of ancient lights while we listened to him muttering and cursing long into the night. We kids would decorate the tree with the annual argument about the tinsel (sent from “America” by a thoughtful grandmother) – whether to throw it in handfuls or drape it one strand at a time.
We also “built” a fireplace every year, coloring bricks and flames onto a long roll of brown paper and wrapping it around a card table in the corner. Santa always came down that chimney without fail 🙂 We would eat corn chowder (with oysters) for supper and read the nativity story and “Night Before Christmas” and then all head off to the one local church for the evening service.
No electrical lights anywhere in the chapel, only hundreds of tiny handheld candles – then everyone would disperse, walking home still holding our little flickering lights.
I still remember those early mystical Christmas eves as clearly as if they happened yesterday. There were blessed pockets of stillness and silence in the midst of busyness. Nowadays, Bill and I have many more widespread family connections in the area and holiday logistics can get pretty hectic. If those early holidays were hectic for my parents, they managed to hide it well and make magic for us. The Japanese word is “natsukashii” which translates as “nostalgic” but is more fragile than that. Those earliest experiences made such deep impressions but are so ephemeral. Now it’s our turn to make magic for the little ones in our life and I hope we’re up to the task!
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You’re so right, Robin, many traditions are about making magic for the little ones. This is one time of the year that I miss not having children or grandchildren. But somehow, I’m very sure that you and bill are up to the task for the little ones in your family. Wishing you a magical Christmas.
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I’ve been enjoying all your reminiscences. This is a time when our memories are especially vivid and it’s good to share them, if your audience is receptive.
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Thanks for the bonus blog. A surprise to find a new one on Sunday – but it seems appropriate, given the spirit of the season!
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i had all but forgotten the fun we had with my middle child. lord knows how he ended up being the one it was thrust upon but we started it with him and it went on for years. he wanted a picture of santa (oh thats how he got it. it was his deal) when santa was leaving the bootie so we strung an intricate booby trap that would certainly snap a picture of santa and we could catch the surprised look on his face as we captured his image to prove his appearance was a fact. the string tied to the camera would be weighted so when he picked up the milk glass the weight would drop and the falsh would go off before santa wouyld be able to move out of the way. but lo and behold every year santa would twist so you would only get a view of the back of his red suit in the picture ofr one year we gout his hand with the cookie and the white fur trim on the sleeve of his red jacket. when spencer came down in the morning he cared about his presents but the biggest curiosity was always the capture of santa on the camera. the two girls that followed cared but nothing like he did. it was fun getting input from the kids as to how we should run the strings and weight the rube goldberg contraptions we would assemble. still makes me smile. i will have to pass that tradition when the grandkids show up. or maybe they can do it on me in a couple of years.
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like
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What fun!
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Wish I had thought of that. I almost saw Santa’s sleigh several times when I was a kid, just a fraction of a second after it disappeared over the rooftop. To this day, there’s this little glimmer of regret that I missed it. Things you want to believe in die hard.
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Sweet 🙂
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If you read Clyde’s own blog entry today (The View from Birchwood Hill) he captures that winter barn scene. Well done Clyde. Well done.
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