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.