Family Christmas

I can't believe it's been almost exactly a year since I last posted to this blog. It's interesting how I have less time to write now that I'm retired. I have gotten involved in several volunteer organizations and find myself getting ready to become President of one of them in May. My only grandchild was born in October of 2021 and lives close by, so he has become the most looked-forward-to part of every week. I joined a DNA study for my Wheat family side that has involved learning how to use WikiTree and keeping up with matches. It has also led to a new friendship with one of my distant Wheat cousins who lives in Kentucky; we communicate by email or text every few days and talk on the phone often. It seems I have something to do almost every day, and I have found I have less ability to multi-task the older I get.

I have to say that I haven't had any genealogical breakthroughs lately either, although I hope to write about one at the conclusion of the Wheat family study. So far, that looks unlikely, although we think we have decided who our common Wheat ancestors are not. What I want to write about today is the other side of my family, the Castle/Smith side. They always predominated at the holidays, because my dad's twin brother, Mack, and almost all my paternal grandmother's siblings lived close by when I was growing up and were always a part of our celebrations. This year was no exception, although so many who were an important part of past Christmases are now gone.

As my son and my brother's daughter have gotten older and started their own families, it has become harder and harder to schedule a time when we can all get together to celebrate birthdays or holidays. This year we finally decided to postpone our Christmas celebration until the afternoon of New Year's Eve. We would all meet at my house for lunch-y snacks, Dirty Santa for the adults, and presents to unwrap for the little ones--my grandson and my brother's granddaughter and grandson. In making our plans for the day, my brother Tim asked if there was anything special we did during our childhood Christmas celebrations. I think he was mainly asking about food, but I reminded him that our Christmas Eve get-togethers with our Uncle Mack's family in the 1950's and 60's usually involved a "program" of readings, songs, and poems, along with food and enthusiastic unwrapping of presents.

We're not talking anything classical here--somebody picked out "Jingle Bells" on the piano, somebody read the Christmas story, but my grandmother always recited a poem that she had learned for a Christmas program at school when she was in 3rd or 4th grade. We marveled that she could recite it word-for-word after 60 years; in fact, she knew 2 or 3 narrative poems by heart that she recited until she was 90, 80 years after she learned them in elementary school. We begged her to recite all of them whenever we got together for any kind of celebration, but I especially loved the one she recited at Christmas about Santa Claus on an immigrant train. Back to that later--

Since Tim was in a nostalgic frame of mind, I decided to create a slide show of photographs from family Christmases--from my 2nd Christmas in 1954 to his daughter's first Christmases in the 1990's. It was when I was looking for these photographs that I found one that was a lot older and would become a great addition to a get-together with our Castle cousins on Christmas Day. It was a professional photograph of the whole Castle family on Christmas Day 1942. That's the other part of this story.

Last year I got together with my cousin Ann's family at a restaurant dinner and then at her house for their family Christmas. Tim wasn't able to come last year, so this year he contacted our cousin Jayne, Ann's daughter, and asked if we could see them Christmas evening. We had both had Christmas with our respective nuclear families earlier in the day, which is why we couldn't do our joint Christmas celebration on Christmas Day, but we could both make it to Ann's for their family get-together that evening. I took the Castle photograph I had found. I don't know if you have done the math, but that photograph had been taken exactly 80 years ago to the day. Only two people in the photograph are still living, and one of them is my cousin Ann, seen at the far right on the front row.

Castle Family, Christmas Day 1942

Ann, Tim, and I were the only ones who could identify the people in the photograph, and none of us were sure about all the little boys. Using information from my family tree on Ancestry, I think I have been able to identify all the children of the 8 Castle siblings that were born by Christmas Day 1942.

So that was Christmas Day. Fast forward a week and my brother and his family were at my house for our Christmas celebration on New Year's Eve. We ate and visited and opened presents, then it was time for the program. It was pretty relaxed, but those that wanted to took turns with their parts of the program. My grandson Jack managed a few toots on a plastic flute; the little ones jingled bells while we all sang "Jingle Bells"; Tim's granddaughter sang her favorite Christmas song, "Last Christmas"; her father, who is from Liverpool, told us about English Christmas traditions; and I read the poem my grandmother used to recite, "Santa Claus on the Train." 

I can't believe I found it! I have looked for it for decades and had just about given up. This time I googled from my phone which gave different results than googling from my laptop. It took me to the blog of a woman whose mother had recited that same poem in a Christmas program when she was in school. The blog included a photograph of a faded and torn copy of the poem. It must have been a Christmas miracle, because I can't find it now using the same search I used a month ago. So--here it is--the poem my grandmother recited from memory 80 years after she learned it and I read to my family on New Year's Eve 2022.

Santa Claus on the Train

On a Christmas Eve an emigrant train

Sped on through the blackness of night

And cleft the pitchy dark in twain

With the gleam of its fierce headlight.

 

In a crowded car, a noisome place,

Sat a mother and her child;

The woman’s face bore want’s wan trace,

But the little one only smiled.

 

And tugged and pulled at her mother’s dress,

And her voice had a merry ring,

As she lisped, “Now, mamma, come and guess

What Santa Claus’ll bring.”

 

But sadly her mother shook her head,

As she thought of a happier past;

“He never can catch us here,” she said,

“The train is going too fast.”

 

“O, mamma, yes, he’ll come, I say,

So swift are his little deer,

They run all over the world today;

I’ll hang my stocking up here.”

 

She pinned her stocking to the seat,

And closed her tired eyes;

And soon she saw each longed-for sweet

In dreamland’s paradise.

 

On a seat behind the little maid

A rough man sat apart,

But a soft light o’er his features played,

And stole into his heart.

 

As the cars drew up at a busy town

The rough man left the train,

But scarce had from the steps jumped down

Ere he was back again.

And a great big bundle of Christmas joys

Bulged out from his pocket wide;

He filled the stocking with sweets and toys

He laid by the dreamer’s side.

 

At dawn the little one woke with a shout,

‘Twas sweet to hear her glee;

“I knowed that Santa Claus would find me out;

He caught the train you see.”

 

Though some from smiling may scarce refrain,

The child was surely right,

The good St. Nicholas caught the train,

And came aboard that night.

 

For the saint is fond of masquerade

And may fool the old and wise,

And so he came to a little maid

In an emigrant’s disguise.

Christmas Baskets

As usual, the holidays have put me in a nostalgic frame of mind. Pulling out the tree ornaments and decorations, some of which are a half-century old, (see my post "Ghosts of Christmas Past") and remembering past Christmases with family members who are no longer here always makes me sentimental at this time of year. After having a conversation with my sister-in-law about practical presents, I decided to make food baskets for my family, based on gift items my grandmother used to make and recipes I remember making with her. I called them Grandma Fannie's Christmas Baskets.

Ham Salad

I remember when my grandmother started making food baskets for her sisters for Christmas. I remember her saying that she couldn't think of anything they needed or wanted, but everybody could always use food. Now that I'm older, I know exactly what she meant. The conversation with my sister-in-law about practical presents put me in mind of this observation of my grandmother's.

She always started her sisters' baskets off with a ham. She would pick a fairly small one--they didn't need a lot--but fancy it up with cloves and a glaze. I decided to go the ham salad route with my family baskets. I hadn't made or had ham salad in a long time, but it was something my grandmother made a lot. I checked out a lot of recipes and finally came up with my own. It used to drive me crazy when I would ask my grandmother for a recipe, and she would say "a pinch of this" or "a dab of that," but that's exactly how this ham salad was made. She used to grind the ham in her meat grinder, but I used the food processor, then added finely chopped red onion and celery, mayonnaise, a little Dijon mustard, and a "dab" of dill pickle relish. It was a big hit.

Bread and Butter Pickles

My grandmother canned her pickles, but I made the easy refrigerator kind. Bread and butter pickles are sweet and sour. Honestly, I can't stand sweet pickles, so I had to ask my relatives if these turned out well, because I didn't even try them. The ones who like sweet pickles said they were good!

I have wondered for a long time about the name of these pickles. Google mentions several variations on the theme of the Depression--taking cucumber sandwiches for lunch, etc.--but the name actually became trademarked in 1923 by a couple of cucumber farmers from Illinois as "Fanning's Bread and Butter Pickles." Omar and Cora Fanning said they called them bread and butter pickles because before they were famous, they used to use them to barter with their neighbors for bread and butter.

Cinnamon Apples

I remember watching my grandmother make cinnamon applesauce. It was one of the items that almost always went in her baskets. I had a recipe from an old cookbook that my grandmother used, but I had recently watched the Pioneer Woman make cinnamon apple slices on TV, so I used her recipe. They were delicious! The hardest part of this recipe was finding the Red Hots. I thought maybe it was because they are old-school, but my friend reminded me that a lot of people use them for gingerbread houses. In any case, they weren't available at our local grocery stores, but I finally found them at Dollar General.

Cloverleaf Rolls

I am a good cook, and sometimes a good baker, but I cannot make bread. I was going to use my grandmother's roll recipe from her old cookbook (copyright 1953), but I decided maybe I needed a more modern version. It didn't matter. They still didn't rise. Don't tell my family, but I ended up making them out of Rhodes frozen bread dough. The whole point is that they are cloverleaf rolls, which is what my grandmother always made. 

Late in life--she was in her 70's or 80's--my grandmother decided to start baking bread from scratch. Now I imagine she had made bread before, but she decided she needed to perfect the process of making cloverleaf rolls. Now that I am retired myself, I think I know what she was trying to do. She wanted to stay busy and keep her mind and hands active, and that was what she did. She used a recipe from my mother's cookbook, which is the only one I ever saw her use. The only reason I know it was my mother's is because my grandmother wrote on the flyleaf, "Ida Belle's cookbook." It was called The Modern Family Cookbook by Meta Given, and you can see that my mother and grandmother made good use of it.

Hermit Cookies

My recipe for hermits also came from The Modern Family Cookbook. I remember making hermit cookies with my grandmother and by myself, when I was a teenager. Compared to the cookie varieties we have now, they weren't very special, made with ingredients that most cooks would have in their pantries. I guess the best way to describe them would be as spice cookies--they have both cinnamon and nutmeg in them--with raisins and nuts. I laughed out loud when I saw the directions--the cook was supposed to sift the flour five times--once for the flour itself and once each after the addition of salt, soda, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg. Can you imagine any busy woman now sifting the flour for cookies five times?

My grandmother had no problem with modern conveniences. By the time she started raising my brother and me at the age of 60, she had been cooking for a long time, and she didn't mind at all using store-bought foods or being taken out to eat. And my dad, after a long day at work, didn't mind at all taking us out to eat. I was luckier than most kids in that respect, I guess, and those dinners out at our favorite places are some of my best memories. To be honest, there were some things that my grandmother could cook really well--her roast and potatoes in the pressure cooker were something I have never been able to reproduce--but she was a better baker than a cook. She made cakes a lot, but I don't remember her ever using a recipe. Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines cake mixes with homemade frosting--buttercream or marshmallow--were often requested and enjoyed.

By the way, many have wondered how "hermit" cookies got their name, and there is no definite answer. One website suggested that the Moravians, sometimes called by the Dutch name "hernhutters," also baked a kind of spice cookie, and their name might have sounded like "hermits" to an English speaker. Hermit cookies have been known by that name in the U.S. since the 1870's. Apparently, they last forever (maybe hermits could keep them a long time in their caves) and were a popular choice for mothers sending packages to their sons overseas during WWII.

Divinity

I have no recollection of my grandmother making divinity, but I'm sure she did. Her sister Georgia was the divinity queen in our family. This was one of those "keeping your mind and hands active" things for me. I just wanted to see if I could do it. If I have ever made divinity before, it was so long ago that I have forgotten. Unlike the rolls, the divinity turned out wonderful! The first ones wanted to spread a little, so I googled that and found a suggestion to add a couple of tablespoons of powdered sugar. That did the trick. Scrumptious, if I do say so myself.

On a note in each family's basket, I wrote:

Grandma Fannie's Christmas Basket
Ham Salad
Bread and Butter Pickles
Cinnamon Apples
Cloverleaf Rolls
Hermit Cookies
Divinity

And on the other side:
Making food for us was how she showed her love
Making her food for you is how I show you mine

Grandma Fannie's Christmas Baskets