VIENNA — Merry Christmas and welcome to the Twentieth Annual Sisters Day Christmas Party. What a wonderous blessing these days have been. Many of the names and faces have changed over the years but not the love and celebration of family.
This year we welcome Sandra White to our group. Sandra is the oldest daughter of sister Katie Risse. She is filling the slot left when our dear Katie passed. She has been with us a few months now but this is her first Christmas celebration.
Since most of us have not been to Sandra’s house before, we gathered in Vienna at Shirley Huffman’s house and caravaned from there to Dixon. Those present were Lucy Branson, Mary Jo Crider, Shirley Huffman, Linda Crider, Pam Hale, Sandra White, and Susie Kleffner. Special guest was Mellissa Johnson, Lucy’s granddaughter, and Jan Grieg, Katie’s daughter. Katie’s son, Kenny Risse, dropped by and added a special touch to our day.
Sandra’s house is so comfortable and welcoming. She even had hand rails put on the porch step so her old aunts could get inside. If you don’t have a problem with stairs, you can’t appreciate how much this meant to us. The table was set and the coffee and tea ready when we arrived. After lots of hugs and a quick tour of the house we gathered around the kitchen table. Sandra set out breakfast pizza, one sausage and one bacon, and an oatmeal cake. Yum! Yum!
If you can believe it we visited while we ate. I hope you’re not too shocked. We talked about grandkids eating cake and getting more on them than in their tummies.
We admired each other’s Chrismas shirts and all the little momentos some of us wore to remember sisters who are missing. Pam had one for her Mom Georgia, Lucy had a pin for our Mom, and I had a shirt I received from one of Betty’s daughters.
We moved to the living room and had our annual gift exchange; getting to see what each of us got and see who got your name and what they got you and seeing if the sister you drew liked what you selected for them. It is just as exciting the 20th time as it was the 1st time.
We cleaned up the mess and gathered our stash and continued to talk.
Just as we finished Kenny arrived and we spent the rest of the day remembering.
Shirley told about the time she was trying to close a drawer. It wouldn’t close all the way so she tried again a little harder. Sandra screamed and she relaized she was pinching the side of Sandra’s leg with the drawer.
Once our Aunt Mamie fell carrying a bag of garbage. Of couse, the garbage went everywhere and the kids all laughed. Not nice, but think about it…wouldn’t you laugh once you knew she wasn’t hurt, even as you helped her up and started picking up the trash?
We kids used to play in Uncle Joe’s barn just down the road from our home place on Hwy 42.
Katie, Mart and their kids came to visit. We kids, Lois and I, Kenny, Sandra, Jan and Paula, are all close to the same age and loved to play together. We looked at pictures taken when we all were little. What a shock to these old brains. It’s amazing how fast the road down memory lane can be traveled with just a little old black and white picture for the key.
We talked about killing squirrels and cleaning them. This was a tradition that is passed down through the generations. Well, the current generation didn’t seem to be very good hunters. The came home time after time with no squirrels. After a time when questioned they admitted they liked the hunting part but hated the cleaning part. We all know the cardinal rule “You kill it –You clean it.” I think that attitude depends on how bad you need to eat it.
You can’t talk about your childhood without the subject of “stuff your parents didn’t know you did.” I’ll include just on example …Bob found a crack in the front window of his camper during a trip to the river. He couldn’t figure out how it happened. He didn’t know the boys had been shooting their BB guns. It was a long time later that he found out how it happened and it was an accident.
Remember when you had to recite things in front of the class at school? You just couldn’t keep from laughing. We thought the teacher didn’t know the other kids were making faces at you. It still brings a chuckle, doesn’t it?
I remember watching our Uncle Oscar Crider wash his face outside on Grandma Crider’s porch, which faced our back door. Uncle Oscar was bald and by bald, I mean not a hair on his head. He would bend over the wash pan, scoop up water with both hands and scrub his face from his chin to his back shirt collar. Think about how funny that was to a couple of little 5-year-old girls.
Somewhere in there we stopped for lunch. In October we make our preparation for our Christmas festivities. One is to draw names for the gift exchange, the other is to decide what the luncheon main course will be which is decided by the hostess for that year. Each of the others offers to bring an appropriate side dish. As our hostess, Sandra had prepared homemade chicken and dumplings. The rest of the sisters brought sweet potatoes, coleslaw, cranberries, homemade bread and for the second year in a row I forgot to bring my dish. I made the pea salad I had promised to bring. I even remembered to bring it to the car somewhere between Westphalia and Freeburg. I assigned them all to call me next year to remind me. The lunch was great and none of us left the table hungry so all’s well that ends well again.
The stories continued to flow throughout the afternoon. We talked about trying to make Mom’s signature foods but no matter how hard we tried they never tasted as good as hers. I think the biggest problem was that Mom didn’t cook with a recipe. Most of the older girls developed into wonderful cooks in their own right. Lois and I not so much.
Some of the girls were carrying a trunk and fell and dropped it. Katie laughed until she cried. When the girls untangled themselves, they asked her if she was going to help or just stand there laughing.
I have one more Christmas story for you before I close this article.
Growing up we always had a Cedar tree for Christmas. Before my time most of the decoration were homemade. When Leo was still a boy, Mom and the girls baked sugar cutout cookies to decorate and hang on the tree.
The tree was always placed in front of the living room window. The girls decorated the tree and thought they were done. It looked good. Someone would pass by later and spot a small place with no decoration. Mom would get a few more cookies and fill in the hole, look over the rest and go on. Later another hole would appear, be filled and called good. After about the third time Mom got suspicious and staked it out. It wasn’t long until the window slid quietly up and a big hand and a little hand reached in and removed cookies from the tree. Lifting the curtain, she found Leo and our dad munching cookies.
That was the last time they tried that. The tree only had to be decorated once after that.
There is nothing more precious than the memories that make up our past. With our family the good memories are the only ones we care to remember.
There are hundreds more that come to light when one or two different people are in the group. Don’t let these emblems of your past slip away; pass them down to your kids and grandkids and listen to their stories. They will soon be part of your family’s story.
Thoughts: Christmas magic is silent. You don’t hear it – You feel it. You know it. You believe it.
Christmas Fun Fact: The historical Saint Nicholas who inspired Santa Claus, is said to be entombed in Demre, Turkey. So, while Santa’s spirit might fly around the globe, his body appears to be comfortably vacationing in the Mediterranean.
