Childhood Christmas Memories are usually the most vivid and long lasting.
Well, the Wunrow’s always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. As far back as I ca
n recall, we spent the day of December 24 making final preparations so that we could get to church for the Christmas Eve service. In the Lutheran churches in those days this was a special Sunday School service with all the children sitting in chairs on the altar. We sang all the favorite Christmas carols, at least the ones about the baby Jesus, like Away in the Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, The First Noel, O Come All Ye Faithful, etc.
Usually my Mom and Dad would give us one present to open before we went to church. And that present was always something we would wear to church like shoes, a shirt, etc. The rest of the presents would be saved until we returned home from church. In my early years my family lived in Manitowoc and we would get together with Uncle Ed and Aunt Ella Ehlert (Aunt Ella was my Dad's sister) at one of our homes. Sometimes we would wait for the Winklers (another sister)from Milwaukee to come. When that was the plan we had to wait from them quite late, depending on the weather and driving conditions.
Christmas Day was spent getting ready for church again. Remember my Mother played the organ and directed the choir, so we had to be there early. And in these early years of my life in the early 1940s we also were planning and packing the car for a trip to my Mother’s family home in Iola, Wisconsin. So after church was over, we hurried home to finish packing for the Iola trip and off we went.
Now it seems many of my memories of these days come complete with cold, snowy weather and roads that weren’t very fun to travel on. And these trips to Iola often took much longer than today, as the roads went through every small town you could imagine, and at speeds that seldom exceeded forty or fifty miles per hour.
Well our reception at the Benson family in Iola was always exciting. Besides my Mom’s parents, Grandpa and Grandma Benson, there was Aunt Violet and her youngest son John Gurholt, and my Mom’s youngest sister Jeanette, who wasn’t married at that time. Their house in Iola was a big two-story house. In the winter the house was heated with wood from a kitchen stove, a big blank iron one. I can still see Grandma Benson stoking the fires in that stove early in the morning. There were holes in the ceilings of each downstairs room that were covered with iron grills that allowed the heat to reach the second floor. Can you imagine how cold the floors were early in the morning? There was a pump on a metal kitchen sink, so they had water, after a fashion. Toilets? Gosh, I don’t recall anything about that in these early years. I know they had an outhouse in the backyard. But using it? I don’t recall. Maybe I am suppressing what otherwise would be a bad memory.
And the best part of this visit was that we got more presents to open. There was always snow on the ground in the winters around Iola... always. And the snow crunched and squeaked when we walked on it, proving it was very cold, probably in the single digits or colder.
In later years, after my family moved to West Allis, near Milwaukee, we continued the
se same traditions, with the exception that we alternated Christmas Eve between the Winklers who lived on the north side of Milwaukee and our house. The Ehlerts had to drive to Milwaukee after their church service on Christmas Eve. And the opening of presents started later and later in the evening. One year someone had the bright idea to go to the eleven o’clock service at Garden Homes Lutheran (the Winklers church) and then open presents. This would give the Ehlerts plenty of time to arrive from Manitowoc, too.
My Mom, knowing things would be getting very late, had us all lay down and take a nap on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Who’s kidding who here? Anyway we didn’t start with the gift opening until after midnight. And we had a meal then as well. We didn’t get home until almost four o’clock in the morning. And my Mom had to play the organ that morning. I can still hear my Dad coming up the steps to see if we were awake to go to church. Gary and I were sharing the same bed and we were very quiet. I think Gary mumbled something and Dad quietly turned and went downstairs without us. We kids didn’t go to church that morning. I believe that was the first and only time we “skipped church”, including advent and lent services on Wednesdays. We didn’t do Christmas like that again. But it made a great story to tell my friends about the time I got to stay up until 4 AM on Christmas Eve.
My favorite memorable Christmas shopping story takes place in Manitowoc, the city of my birth and first nine years. I was about seven years old and wanted to do my own shopping with my own money. So I took the local city bus downtown to shop with about one dollar of hard earned money. I went to Kresge’s Dime Store, Stengels Hardward Store, and others looking for something for each of my brothers, my Mom and Dad, my aunts and uncles and my closest cousin, "Eddie Bob" Winkler. All these people with one or two dollars? Now that’s take lots of patience and frugality. I remember that I bought Aunt Ella, my godmother, a copper choreboy, for ten cents.
I can’t rest without telling about my most disappointing Christmas, which became a life-changing experience. I must have been about thirteen years old and living in West Allis. My Mother was usually pretty much on top of the task of getting presents and getting them wrapped ahead of time. My curiousity simply overcame me that year. I found that the presents for me were lying wrapped under my parents bed. So over time I was able to carefully open each one, see what it was, and return to it’s resting place in pristine condition. No one would ever know what I knew. Even when my brother Gary came home from the seminary in St Louis and added his gift to my “hidden” stash, I was able to open it and replace it with hours of his arrival home.
Needless to say, that Christmas Eve was a real bummer for me. The lack of surprise nearly destroyed me. It was the pits. And ever since I have made a conscious effort to avoid knowing what lies in wait under the tree bearing my name.
For kids, gifts received occupy a rather substantial portion of Christmas, perhaps more than we wish. So every year
Did you ever eat lemon bars? I did. Sometime in the late 1940’s as a fifth or sixth grader, I had another life altering event. My mother had made lemon bars for Christmas as she often did weeks before Christmas. I was off from school a few days before Christmas and my Mom was working at a gift shop downtown on Greenfield Avenue in West Allis. And I was hungry. So I found the lemon bars which I dearly loved. And proceeded to eat as many as my tummy would hold, or until I couldn’t stand the sight or thought of them ever again. And to this day I
do not eat LEMON BARS.
Every home has special ornaments to hang on the family Christmas tree. My parents tree had a red one in the shape of a teapot; a very delicate ornament. Another one that was reverred was a bell ornament. We have the teapot ornament in the curio cabinet at home. The bell I have lost track of.
Well, the Wunrow’s always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. As far back as I ca
n recall, we spent the day of December 24 making final preparations so that we could get to church for the Christmas Eve service. In the Lutheran churches in those days this was a special Sunday School service with all the children sitting in chairs on the altar. We sang all the favorite Christmas carols, at least the ones about the baby Jesus, like Away in the Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, The First Noel, O Come All Ye Faithful, etc.Usually my Mom and Dad would give us one present to open before we went to church. And that present was always something we would wear to church like shoes, a shirt, etc. The rest of the presents would be saved until we returned home from church. In my early years my family lived in Manitowoc and we would get together with Uncle Ed and Aunt Ella Ehlert (Aunt Ella was my Dad's sister) at one of our homes. Sometimes we would wait for the Winklers (another sister)from Milwaukee to come. When that was the plan we had to wait from them quite late, depending on the weather and driving conditions.
Christmas Day was spent getting ready for church again. Remember my Mother played the organ and directed the choir, so we had to be there early. And in these early years of my life in the early 1940s we also were planning and packing the car for a trip to my Mother’s family home in Iola, Wisconsin. So after church was over, we hurried home to finish packing for the Iola trip and off we went.
Now it seems many of my memories of these days come complete with cold, snowy weather and roads that weren’t very fun to travel on. And these trips to Iola often took much longer than today, as the roads went through every small town you could imagine, and at speeds that seldom exceeded forty or fifty miles per hour.
Well our reception at the Benson family in Iola was always exciting. Besides my Mom’s parents, Grandpa and Grandma Benson, there was Aunt Violet and her youngest son John Gurholt, and my Mom’s youngest sister Jeanette, who wasn’t married at that time. Their house in Iola was a big two-story house. In the winter the house was heated with wood from a kitchen stove, a big blank iron one. I can still see Grandma Benson stoking the fires in that stove early in the morning. There were holes in the ceilings of each downstairs room that were covered with iron grills that allowed the heat to reach the second floor. Can you imagine how cold the floors were early in the morning? There was a pump on a metal kitchen sink, so they had water, after a fashion. Toilets? Gosh, I don’t recall anything about that in these early years. I know they had an outhouse in the backyard. But using it? I don’t recall. Maybe I am suppressing what otherwise would be a bad memory.
And the best part of this visit was that we got more presents to open. There was always snow on the ground in the winters around Iola... always. And the snow crunched and squeaked when we walked on it, proving it was very cold, probably in the single digits or colder.
In later years, after my family moved to West Allis, near Milwaukee, we continued the
se same traditions, with the exception that we alternated Christmas Eve between the Winklers who lived on the north side of Milwaukee and our house. The Ehlerts had to drive to Milwaukee after their church service on Christmas Eve. And the opening of presents started later and later in the evening. One year someone had the bright idea to go to the eleven o’clock service at Garden Homes Lutheran (the Winklers church) and then open presents. This would give the Ehlerts plenty of time to arrive from Manitowoc, too.My Mom, knowing things would be getting very late, had us all lay down and take a nap on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Who’s kidding who here? Anyway we didn’t start with the gift opening until after midnight. And we had a meal then as well. We didn’t get home until almost four o’clock in the morning. And my Mom had to play the organ that morning. I can still hear my Dad coming up the steps to see if we were awake to go to church. Gary and I were sharing the same bed and we were very quiet. I think Gary mumbled something and Dad quietly turned and went downstairs without us. We kids didn’t go to church that morning. I believe that was the first and only time we “skipped church”, including advent and lent services on Wednesdays. We didn’t do Christmas like that again. But it made a great story to tell my friends about the time I got to stay up until 4 AM on Christmas Eve.
My favorite memorable Christmas shopping story takes place in Manitowoc, the city of my birth and first nine years. I was about seven years old and wanted to do my own shopping with my own money. So I took the local city bus downtown to shop with about one dollar of hard earned money. I went to Kresge’s Dime Store, Stengels Hardward Store, and others looking for something for each of my brothers, my Mom and Dad, my aunts and uncles and my closest cousin, "Eddie Bob" Winkler. All these people with one or two dollars? Now that’s take lots of patience and frugality. I remember that I bought Aunt Ella, my godmother, a copper choreboy, for ten cents.
I can’t rest without telling about my most disappointing Christmas, which became a life-changing experience. I must have been about thirteen years old and living in West Allis. My Mother was usually pretty much on top of the task of getting presents and getting them wrapped ahead of time. My curiousity simply overcame me that year. I found that the presents for me were lying wrapped under my parents bed. So over time I was able to carefully open each one, see what it was, and return to it’s resting place in pristine condition. No one would ever know what I knew. Even when my brother Gary came home from the seminary in St Louis and added his gift to my “hidden” stash, I was able to open it and replace it with hours of his arrival home.
Needless to say, that Christmas Eve was a real bummer for me. The lack of surprise nearly destroyed me. It was the pits. And ever since I have made a conscious effort to avoid knowing what lies in wait under the tree bearing my name.
For kids, gifts received occupy a rather substantial portion of Christmas, perhaps more than we wish. So every year
Did you ever eat lemon bars? I did. Sometime in the late 1940’s as a fifth or sixth grader, I had another life altering event. My mother had made lemon bars for Christmas as she often did weeks before Christmas. I was off from school a few days before Christmas and my Mom was working at a gift shop downtown on Greenfield Avenue in West Allis. And I was hungry. So I found the lemon bars which I dearly loved. And proceeded to eat as many as my tummy would hold, or until I couldn’t stand the sight or thought of them ever again. And to this day I
do not eat LEMON BARS.Every home has special ornaments to hang on the family Christmas tree. My parents tree had a red one in the shape of a teapot; a very delicate ornament. Another one that was reverred was a bell ornament. We have the teapot ornament in the curio cabinet at home. The bell I have lost track of.
