RANDOM FEAST: Last Gasp

RANDOM FEAST: Last Gasp

It was a last gasp at Christmas. You know the point we all come to. Where childhood falls behind and with it, some of the magic that surrounds the holiday. Woven instead into the tapestry of memories we haul out as adults at this time of year.

That final hurrah came in the winter of 1974. I was just sixteen and still trying to sort out who I was. . . or about to become. Part of the process involved getting in touch with my family's past, our ethnic heritage; at least the Teutonic lineage.

This meant enrolling in a German class, went way beyond our teacher, Frau Trapp's entreaties: im mit sie (urging her students into the classroom) or even total immersion into the language, im Deutsch.

Come Christmas, the culture became more imminent, important than ever. It was after all, Herr Hoffman who told the tale of Clara, her uncle, Stromeyer and his gift, the Nutcracker who came to life at the stroke of midnight.

Then there were the carols, once sung in Lutheran church, now uttered in a strange, guttural tongue, sometimes the original idiom in which they were composed, Stille Nacht (Silent Night) or the Great Reformer, Martin Luther's own From Heaven Above to Earth I Come. Others familiar since youth didn't spring as easily from the lips; O Tannenbaum, O Kommen Alle Kindern but spun out in a different dialect, became new once more.

And I learned that ours, the American manner of celebrating the season wasn't the only, or always the right way. Frau Trapp let her students peek in on the European tradition of the Kristkind Markt through a slide presentation, her personal reminiscences of life as a child in Bavaria and a three dimensional hands on experience as she acquainted her pupils with a hand carved pyramid.

This of course, was a Nativity laid out on many levels. Each circle of figurines from lowly shepherds to the Holy Family ascended, ever smaller ovals up to the angels who girded the top. A ring of candles at the base provided heat that turned blades mounted above, which in turn rotated each layer in a ceaseless if simple example of clever Germanic engineering.

We have so few things of substance, so little to grasp onto in this world. Especially when we're at a crossroads, as I was then. But it was enough for a young man to add to the bright treasures of his own family's customs, carry some of the spirit of Christmas along with him into the future.



A Most Cheery Cheerio,
G.A. Scheinoha: