Memories and Traditions

I want to share about some traditions/memories from our family. I grew up in a German family where we had certain traditions that were distinctly German. In keeping with German traditions and their growing faith in Jesus, much of our celebrating had a simplicity that focused more on celebrating the birth of Jesus than on acquisition of material possessions. This had to do in part also with my parents growing up during war times. I have enclosed a letter from my father (Opa) to his grandkids about what Christmas was like for him when he was in 4th grade.

My husband and I have struggled over the years at how to celebrate Christmas in a way that brings glory and joy to Christ and not to ourselves. It sure is difficult to figure out! I have had the kids put a letter in their stockings in the past in which they write to Jesus what gifts they would like to give Him in the coming year ("Happy Birthday, Jesus. I would like to love my sister better for you, Lord") and this year I am going to surprise them with a little carton of yummy baby food fruit in their stocking to remind them of how little Jesus was, and what an amazing thing that God would make himself a human baby. Maybe that's the start of a new tradition. A tradition we've done every Christmas Eve is to have the children (including neighbor children) reenact the Christmas story as my husband reads it from the Bible. Friends that don't have family or a place to go join us as well. The children really enjoy taking on the parts of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and angels. Such fun!

I hope that you all have a really enjoyable and memorable Christmas celebration this year!
Because of Jesus,

K

My dad and I

Opa with 4 of his 14 grandchildren

Dear Grandchildren,

When Opa was 7 years old, that was in 1943, we had been sent to East Germany to escape the bombardment in my hometown Bochum in the West. As 1944 went by, the eastern front of the German army against Russia had collapsed and the war zone came closer and closer to where we lived. I do not remember anything about Christmas that year, 1944, because we lived in steady fear.

On January 27, 1945 the authorities allowed us finally to flee Neustettin on a train. We sat on flat bed cars, no walls, which had loaded railcar axles. In winter weather with a temperature of -17degrees Fahrenheit, we rolled west. It was so bitter cold that many people froze to death. After 5 days we arrived in Berlin. During that year we hopped around like rabbits chased by dogs, fighter planes and bombs. We literally jumped into ditches next to the road when fighter planes appeared in the sky shooting with machine guns at us.

In the fall of 1945 we finally arrived back in Bochum. In the meantime we had been overtaken by the British army. Bochum was totally flattened, there were no buildings standing. Everything was devastated and burned out, nothing but Trümmerhaufen, mountain of burnt out building material. We stayed with friends somewhere in the suburbs and I went out all day long picking up branches and pieces of wood so that we could cook some greens which we found in the woods and on the graveyard which nobody ate normally.

Before Christmas in 1946, we finally found an apartment under a roof with tilted walls. The walls had been newly plastered and because of the cold and the damp, there was a ½ inch layer of ice on the inside of the walls mixed with mildew. We had no furniture and we slept on bunk beds out of steel which we got from somewhere. We had a cast iron oven, but nothing to burn. We literally sat on the floor in front of the cold oven, held hands and shivered. It was the coldest winter I can remember.

After quite some time without school, school had just opened again. We were shivering in class with coats, caps and gloves on, because there was no heat and nothing to heat with. I came home and complained to my mother and she said: “But the other children are cold too.” When I told her that the other children possibly came to school warm, while I came already cold, she started to cry. When I came to America one of the first things I did is buy warm Eddie Bauer goose down sleeping bags that all of my children would be warm at least when they slept.

I do not think there was anything around us which reminded us of Christmas, except scenes of cold, hunger and scarcity of every thing. We were waiting in long queues in front of bakeries in the morning to get a loaf of bread until the bakery ran out. If you did not get bread, the family went hungry. My sister went by train to the farm country and begged for potatoes and bread with cigarettes and nylons from America.

The only surprise was when grandma sent a package from America. Besides other good things inside, there were cigarettes which were like money. With cigarettes you could buy something you could not get otherwise. We had no fat, no butter or margarine. Grandma went from house to house in Washington DC and collected bacon fat which she put in Maxwell coffee cans and sent them over to us for cocking. She also sent peanut butter which I did not like. Since there was no jelly, the bread with the peanut butter would get stuck in my throat and I had great difficulty to get it back up or down. Even cold water did not help. We had no coffee or tea.

This was when I was in fourth grade, there was nothing Christmassy about Christmas. It was very similar to Joseph and Mary when they came to Bethlehem and had to stay in a stable without bed and heat. We did not even have an ox, donkey of sheep to keep warm with. There were also no shepherds and if there were angels, I did not see them. But God let us persevere.

In love, Opa