The Santa Claus parade in downtown Peoria kicked off our family Christmas season. The Friday after Thanksgiving, Aunt Nita would gather the nieces and nephews and take us to one of the streets along the parade route. The parade started down by the river where a cold wind blew across the water. Clowns on stilts and bicycles, elves, marching bands, bigwigs and pretty girls in convertibles all preceded Santa so we were cold and tired before the big event. Finally Santa with his sleigh and a couple of reindeer on a flatbed truck meant we could go back to Grandma’s for hot chocolate.
A few weeks later we were enjoying a typical evening at our house; Dad smoking his pipe and reading a paperback western and Mom darning socks while listening to Fibber McGee and Molly. The radio sat on the smoking stand next to Dad, the one piece of furniture from their house that I still have.
I sat on the couch reading a comic book and my brothers played with toy soldiers on the floor. All was peaceful, then the sound of bells and a knock on the side window. My brothers and I jumped and ran to the window to see Santa waving at us.
He had the right uniform: red suit and hat with white fur trim, a beard and mustache, and pipe. When he asked what we wanted for Christmas we rattled off lists of toys that we fully expected to find under the tree. Then with an admonishment to be good he waved and trudged off to the next house. I learned later that Santa would have been either Uncle Rudy who lived up the street or our older cousin Cotton from across the street.
By far the best place to see a Christmas display was the window at the Block and Kuhl department store. Here was Santa’s workshop in downtown Peoria. Elves pounded on blocks with little hammers, trains brought in endless loads of supplies, and a mechanical Santa held his belly as he ho-ho-hoed over it all. We begged to go past the windows whenever Mom took us shopping. The downside was the speed walking pace that Mom used when she shopped and the time she spent looking through the items, mostly boring clothes, at Kreskees and Woolworths.
Each year in the middle of December, we had to clear the mound of books, papers, quilting materials, and accumulated junk off the dining room table to make room for Christmas cookies made using recipes from Dad’s German ancestors. We had anise flavored springerleys that were rolled out with a special rolling pin embossed with squares which left a pattern on the dough. My brothers and I were allowed to cut out the squares prior to baking and once in a while we could sneak a piece of the raw dough.
During the fall, Dad had taken us out to Uncle Keith’s timber to gather hazel nuts and walnuts. The job of us boys was to remove the walnut hulls with hammers and, after a drying period, we had to help Dad break the shell and pick the walnut meat out with nut picks. Boring! For several weeks I went to school with brown walnut stains on my hands. Then Mom could make nut cookies, balls of dough rolled in bits of black walnut. My favorite, so I could forgive the hours of slave labor I had put in.
Then there were liebkucken, made with ground figs and molasses, my least favorite. After the cookies were baked, they needed a period to age so they say on the table under dish towels until they could be measured on a geologist’s hardness scale. Amazingly, my Uncle Pat who is 95, still makes these cookies.
Decorating for Christmas was always fraught with interest. Aunt Katherine, who lived two doors down from us and across from Uncle Pat and Uncle Rudy, had an enclosed porch with lots of windows. Each year she let her kids and nieces and nephews use Bon Ami to create winter scenes. We made a white paste with the soap and dabbed it on the small panes making snow-covered pine trees, wreaths and snowflakes.
Who would be the first to put up the Christmas tree, Dad or Uncle Pat?
“C’mon, Dad, Uncle Pat already bought his tree.”
“Mom, tell Dad we want to be first this year.”
But no amount of begging could move Dad to put the tree up until a week before Christmas. That’s the way they did it when he was a boy. That was when they made their ornaments and used candles for lights. The tree was kept in an unheated room to keep it from drying out until Christmas Eve when they moved it to the dining room and lit the candles and that’s the only time they saw the tree in all its glory. Big deal. We wanted our money’s worth (Dad’s money actually) out of our tree.
In the evening I lay on the couch in the living room lit only by the colored lights on the Christmas tree. The voices of the rest of the family in the kitchen seemed far away. I suppose that as I focused on the tree in that dim quiet, I was experiencing my first time of contemplation, the indefinable peace of being lost in something greater than myself. In later years I would find peace in the silence of meditation but this still defines Peace on Earth at Christmas time for me.
Christmas Eve! We have hamburger gravy on toast with green beans for supper so we can get ready to go to Grandpa and Grandma Knobloch’s house. There’s nothing under our tree but we know that when we return Santa will have dropped off some surprises for us.
Dressed in warm winter coats we set off across the street and through Uncle Pat’s yard (his family will already be at the party), across the alley to Grandma’s back gate. The stars against the mysterious blackness are as thick as the snowflakes that fell all day yesterday and our breath hangs in the air. Dad suddenly remembers he forgot something and has to go back home.
We always start the evening with Christmas carols. Aunt Lucille plays the piano and everyone sings from the song booklets that were passed out. After that we play some games but I can’t concentrate; I’m waiting for the Big Event. At last someone says, Listen, and everyone stops talking. Sleigh Bells! Outside on the front porch. An uncle goes to the door and returns with Santa, live and in person.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” Santa says. “Has everyone been good this year?”
Tenuous nodding of heads.
“Let me check my book,” Santa says, as he reaches in his jacket accompanied by nervous looks around the peanut gallery.
Santa thumbs through his notebook and says, “Umm, looks like Dave and Dan shot out windows in Uncle Keith’s sheep shed.” The aunts and uncles and older cousins give loud agreement and more details to Santa’s accusation.
My brother Dave and Uncle Pat’s son Dan had a reputation for getting into trouble. I could barely remember when Uncle Keith last had sheep on his farm so the shed was unused and Dan had a new BB gun; therefore, the windows were asking to be shot out.
After getting a promise from the perps that they would be good in the coming year, Santa moves on.
“Where’s Bub and Steve,” he asks.
“Oh, oh, now what?” I wonder.
“I see you boys threw mud balls at Barb’s doll house and broke some furniture.” More yeas and shaking of fingers from the jury.
Well. Bub was Barb’s older brother and he started the action so I just offered assistance but I was convicted nevertheless.
Santa again extracts a promise of good behavior and then reaches for his sack—the big moment at last. As Santa pulls out each package he reads the name and hands it to Uncle Rudy to deliver. I know, of course, that in late summer the family drew names so we could exchange gifts but that was months ago and I didn’t connect it to the present in my hand. When all the presents have been passed out, we boys go upstairs to see what we have received and play some games.
Soon, though, came the call to go home. It had been an exciting evening but there was more to come. Sure enough, when we walked in the front door, we saw the presents Santa left us, probably after he left Grandma’s house.
I have a radio, Dave, an electric jigsaw, and Darrel, a record player with some records. We stay up for an hour or so to enjoy the present, then time for bed.
Christmas was over, the snow had turned to slush, the Christmas trees lay out by the alley waiting for the garbage man to haul them away, and we grew bored with our gifts—except for Darrel. He drove us crazy playing his records over and over. I still shudder when I hear “Big Rock Candy Mountain” or “Johhny’s So Long at the Fair.”