View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

Traditions. It links the past with the present and projects them into the future. Few people question them, so they often pass from generation to generation. And they are present very much at this time of the year. How we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas depends on how our parents did it and also our grandparents.

Sometimes traditions have to be tweaked and compromises have to be made due to changing circumstances. I had to make quite a few changes when I moved across the Atlantic and settled on the prairie in West Central Minnesota. But sometimes, we would go home for Christmas. We would pack up the kids and all the presents and take the long trek back to Haslum, the suburb of Oslo where I grew up. There, time seemingly had stood still at Christmas and we celebrated the way it had been when my mormor, my mother’s mother had been alive.

It would always snow, because our house stood on a hill overlooking the Oslo fjord. The house would be decorated, but not overly so. The night before Christmas Eve, what we call “Lille Julaften” (little Christmas Eve) we would have decorated the tree. It always stood in the middle of the big living room. It didn’t have real candles, but the candles were made to look real, even if they were electric. The presents were always under the tree.

Darkness comes early in winter this far north. We would walk to church, since it was just about a quarter of a mile away. The graveyard that surrounds the church is a mere stone throw away, so we would walk there, on the shoveled paths. All the graves had been decorated for Christmas with wreaths and lanterns. The lanterns had all been lit and shone on the blanket of snow. Our church is 900+ years old and is built in the shape of a cross. We would often only get the seats in the back on the horizontal part of the cross, since we hadn’t made it early enough. So, we couldn’t see the pastor, but we would sing the old hymns and hear the Christmas story.

Then, we would walk home as the snow fell slowly with big flakes. My mother had put the turkey in the oven hours before and set the table with her great-grandmother’s china and silver. We would hold hands as we said our special table prayer and then we would eat. For dessert, my mother always served her rice pudding. It had an almond in it. Whoever got the almond would win a marzipan pig. Since my uncle always won, my mother soon put two almonds in the rice pudding.

After the table was cleared, we would hold hands and walk around the Christmas tree. We would sing all the Christmas carols we remembered. There always were a few silly ones with actions. We would sing those at the end and laugh and overact.

Then, we would sit around the coffee table and open gifts, one at a time. This took a while since we were so many. After the gifts had all been admired, we would drink coffee and eat the big variety of Christmas cookies my mother had spent weeks baking.  And then, there would be games. My aunt, uncle and cousins often didn’t leave until midnight.

I tried to transfer all this to our family here in Minnesota. Some of these traditions we still do, the important ones. The ones involving the celebration of the birth of Our Lord. We go to church. We sing Christmas carols at home. We also hold hands as we say the same table grace. And we try to celebrate together as a family. Even now, when our family is smaller.