When we were kids, Christmas was all magic. It’s cookies, lights, gifts… and the excitement about all of the above. But the older we get, that’s when the nostalgia kicks in.
If you’re ever around my family during the holidays, reminiscing might sound something like this: my mother, Doreen, about hauling the whole family down to Huntington Beach: “I remember one Christmas, we all went there to California. Ted, he’s putting lights around the Christmas tree, and one of the strands wasn’t working.”
Ted was her easily-rattled stepfather. “So your dad and him were down there, trying to figure it out. They always got a fresh tree, and Mom was trimming the extra branches around. Your dad says, ‘Jo Ann, you be careful. Don’t you clip one of those strings of lights!’ And about that time, CLIP! And all the lights went off!” I burst out laughing. “Her face was just, so surprised. Your dad starts laughing… and Ted was MAD.”
Last year, I set out to tell the origin of an old Webster family recipe. I sent the first draft to my family, and was able to fact check a few details. But then, something unexpected happened. My uncle sent a 15-minute recording of four of my great-grandparents. I hadn’t heard these voices in decades. The recording had been made in the mid-1980s, and since the story I was working on was about one of these very people… well, I could barely contain myself.
I heard my grandma, Shirley, speaking to her mother-in-law, my great-grandma Maude. She’s telling Maude to speak into the tape recorder. “Oh, you just talk into that? Is it on?”
Of course, I now had the perfect “surprise” for this piece. But I also had something else; recollections of Christmas past, told in their original voices. Voices of loved ones that only live now in our memories. And, memories. Those really have a way of becoming legend around the holidays.
I listened to my great-grandparents speak candidly about traveling several miles in a sleigh to visit a doctor in Edmore to get treatment for rickets, about Santa Claus coming in through the kitchen window, and about how hard and bitter those long North Dakota winters were. It was like stepping back in time. I could almost picture them sitting around the living room at the old farm, with that blue shag carpet under their feet.
Dusting off those old memories felt really good. But it occurred to me, it’s something a lot of us do every Christmas. We may be creating new memories, but we also play the greatest hits. And even if they’re sad or bittersweet, I can’t help but notice that when we tell these stories, we’re usually smiling as we do it.
This year, I asked the people around me to share their favorite Christmas memories. And now, I’m sharing them with you.
First up is Shannon. She was born in Winona, Minnesota, and after moving away to North Dakota when she was twelve –her dad always missed his side of the family. So that first Christmas, one of the kids stayed back with their mom and the dogs while the rest of them road-tripped. It began a yearly tradition she looks back on fondly… and even if the pictures have faded, the memories never have.
“Family was big at Christmastime. We always did something with one side of the family one day, and then the other side the next day. We didn’t really have our own individual Christmas until we moved to North Dakota.”
Her eyes start to sparkle as she speaks. “I do remember that first Christmas… I always wanted a camera. And I didn’t know it, but my dad had told my Aunt Mert. They arranged that the gift that I’d get from the family down in Winona would be one of those polaroid cameras, where you shoot, you pull out the film and put the juice on it; I spent the whole vacation taking pictures of family. It was just one of the coolest things I remember about that first Christmas apart.”
This is the stuff. “I want to hear more about this camera,” I say. “Do you remember… that’s a big trope of Christmas, like the kid on A Christmas Story who wants that Red Rider rifle, and he opens it on Christmas! And it’s like, oh my gosh! Do you remember what that was like, opening a camera on Christmas?”
“It was a jaw-dropper, actually. I never thought in a million years I’d get it. Back in the 60s, early 70s, we watched our pennies! So getting that camera, at that time, it was a lot of money! I couldn’t wait for somebody to show me how to use it, load the film and everything, and I started taking pictures like crazy. It was just so exciting to have something that I really, really wanted, because let’s be honest. Sometimes you don’t get what you want for Christmas. You get clothes!”
“Yes,” I laugh with her.
“So, having that particular gift was something really, really special to me. And I think they did that, in a way, because moving away from family was hard on us kids too. This was one way they made it a little easier.”
I asked her what she did with the pictures.
“I kept them for a long time in an album, but as you know, that film back then wasn’t very sustainable and they eventually faded even with the protection. I had to throw them away. But I still carry them in my heart, I still remember that Christmas. You know, being there around the tree Mert and Marv had put up, being there with my cousins… it was just a really cool Christmas, to be back there in Winona with everybody. We missed Mom and Sheila, but we made it work. Because we had to.”
Christine’s family recently said goodbye to a man who was committed to keeping a holiday tradition alive, no matter what. Her grandfather lived almost 98 years – and he’ll be remembered for a lot of things, perhaps especially for being unapologetically Norwegian.
“My grandpa just passed away at the end of October,” she begins. “He was almost 98, and claims that every year of his life, he has eaten lutefisk on Christmas. Every single year. And he really stuck to that! One year, we took a big family vacation for his and my grandma’s 50th wedding anniversary. We went to Florida over Christmas. And he knew, everyone knew… there’s not going to be lutefisk in Florida. So if he wanted to stick with this tradition, which we knew he would, he would have to bring his own.”
That’s where this story got interesting. “So he packed his lutefisk… he had it frozen. I have no idea how it traveled. It probably thawed out on the plane, and was disgusting. But he brought it!”
It took another turn. “It was a regular hotel room, it didn’t have a suite with a kitchen, so his way of cooking the lutefisk was submerging it in the bathroom sink under hot water.”
I think my jaw hit the floor. “NO.”
She could barely hold herself together as she continued. “We knew what it was immediately. We were like… oh no. What did he do! I’m sure the water wasn’t hot enough. I’m surprised he didn’t get sick! But he did it, and he got his lutefisk that year.”
She isn’t sure if lutefisk will make an appearance at future Christmases, but she thinks her uncle may bring some this year one last time.
I asked her to tell me about her grandpa.
“He was so awesome,” her voice is catching now. “He was my favorite person to talk to. He had a really interesting life! He had so many stories. He was a judge, and he knew everybody just from traveling around Minnesota. But he was also in the military, he was in the JAG Corps. He did a lot of traveling for that. When he was in basic training, he and his twin brother were stationed in southern California. They got to be extras in a movie, starring Doris Day! He met Shirley Temple. He was someone who no one disliked; everyone who knew him really respected him and loved talking to him. He’s going to be missed by a lot of people.”
And this is Christy, with a tale about a priceless family treasure. Her grandma June spoke for years about a little baptism spoon she loved and lost as a child – and one year, it finally came home for Christmas.
“It was her prized possession – she loved it so much. She played with it every day.”
Christy is an animated storyteller. “She was playing with her dolls one day, and she dropped it under the porch. And she did NOT want to get in trouble. So she just didn’t tell anybody about it.”
I can really relate to this. Who among us didn’t have something they played with as a kid they were not supposed to touch?
“My dad and my aunt remember her talking about it all the time, how she so missed this spoon, and how she wished she could have it back, and she was never able to find it. She never even told her parents about it.”
That story really left an impression on her dad, who one year decided he had to find this spoon. The house was scheduled to be demolished, and Christy says her parents had the day off one day, when her dad got a wild hair. They drove out to Renville, Minnesota, to her grandmother’s childhood home to try and find the spoon.
“He took up some floor boards and didn’t see anything at first, under the porch. He thought, well, maybe it went down into the basement. My mom stayed upstairs, moved the rake a little bit, and she said it just came out of nowhere. It was wanting to be found! I would have given anything to see my mom and dad’s reactions when they found this spoon! I’m sure they were out of their minds.”
They took the spoon to a local jeweler, who shined it up good as new. After 62 years, it needed a little TLC. They wrapped it up and brought it out on Christmas for June to open.
“She opened that spoon, and she just bawled. EVERYBODY was crying. It was just a happy moment, all about a spoon… but for my grandma, it’s not just a spoon, right? It’s the memories. She lived in that childhood home until she married my grandfather. We still talk about that every Christmas, it was just a heartwarming moment.”
I had to know what happened after that. “She kept it, she framed it! We put it in a shadowbox. And then when she died, my dad now has it. And my dad said, when I come home for Christmas this year, he’s going to give it to me.”
By now, we’re sitting there talking about an old spoon, and we’re both crying. “I hope… I just, you know, you have kids. You want to make those memories for people, I hope everybody has memories like that. I’m crying, but it’s happy, you know? I hope everybody has those fond memories of Christmas.” Absolutely.
I noticed while putting this piece together that each of these stories is about people who are no longer with us… at least, not physically. The way we keep our loved ones alive during the holidays might be through pictures, shiny heirlooms, or old recipes… even ones no one wants to eat anymore. And while we do carry with us those stories the longer we live, of Christmases long, long ago, we do still smile. We might not be able to help shedding a tear or two, but hopefully we realize the honor of those sentimental memories is the privilege of having made them in the first place.
So here’s to another holiday season, and more opportunities to create memories that last a lifetime – and beyond.
