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Archiver > BANAT > 1999-12 > 0944062693


From: June Meyer <>
Subject: Re: [BANAT-L] Christmas memories
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 09:38:13 -0600 (CST)


A rememberance by June Meyer, I hope you enjoy it. My mother was from
Batchka, my father from Banat.

Christmas Eve, Chicago 1939

"I was just a little girl perhaps five years old as I sat upon the sofa in
the front room, next to the fragrant pine christmas tree. It's lights were
shining bright and colorful. The silver tinsel shimmered in the heat of the
tree lights. Strange ornaments, heads of angels, hot air balloons with
scratchy wire decorations. Funny looking Santas, bunches of fruit, all made
in Germany out of the most fragile painted glass. These ornaments were very
old, brought to America from Hungary, by my Grandmother in 1910. When I
looked at my reflection in the round ornaments my nose became swollen and
large, my tiny eyes squinting. As I held one in my hands I heard muffled
sounds through the wall of someone moving on the stairway, startled, I let
it fall with a tiny tinkle on the floor, shattering into many shards.

My mother was in the kitchen preparing special food for the evening meal.
The fresh Hungarian sausage my mother and father had made and stuffed was
going to be the meal for Christmas Eve as it was last year and would be
this year as well. It was our tradition.

First we would go to the evening service at St. James, our Luthern church.
It was always a special service with the Christmas Tree glowing in the
darkened sanctuary. This was a childrens service. After we sang all the old
Christmas carols in German and English, the children were called to the
alter to receive a gift from the Pastor. It was always candy. We used to
receive a wonderful box of chocolate, but in later years it became a bag of
hard candy, all stuck together that no one wanted. It looked pretty but
tasted awful. After church we would walk many blocks to our home through
the cold dark that chilled my bones. I can still remember the pain of
shivering. The cold always seemed to snake down around my neck inside of my
coat and stop there.

As we approached our house we could see the Christmas tree lights
flickering through the frosted glass of the lace curtained window. The
lights wore tiny halos of colored light. My father often worked a holiday
shift as a streetcar motorman for the extra pay. He would be home by the
time we came back from church, and the house would be warm after he stoked
the stove in the kitchen and dining room. Our house was old, built just
after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.There were still old gas jets jutting
out from the walls.

When we opened the door we could smell the Hungarian sausage cooking. This
was the only sausage we made. It was full of garlic and paprika and
allspice. When it was cooked it became the rich brown color of mahogany.
The sour cream and horseradish sauce served over it was as white and heavy
as snow. When you ate the sausage your eyes and nose watered from the
sharpness of the sauce.

Sausage for Christmas Eve dinner was always traditional in our family. For
Christmas day dinner it would always be roast chicken with our family
special parsley dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, creamed peas and carrots,
dilled squash that we canned ourselves, and wonderful homemade Hungarian
desserts. My mother made Apple Strudels with tissue thin dough. Poppy Seed
Strudel, Walnut Strudel and Raisin Strudel rolled up and baked. Many
varities of Christmas cookies, some recipes hundreds of years old, were
arranged on a beautiful platter that was brought to America wrapped in a
homemade goose down comforter.

A month and a half before Christmas my Mother would start baking many
cookies to see us thru the Holiday Season. Hungarian cookies are made from
butter or lard, dried fruits, nuts of all kinds, sour cream, cream cheese,
spices and lemon zest.

As a child, I remember the whole family sitting around the kitchen table,
picking the nut meats out of the walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, and almonds.
We would pound the nuts open with a hammer and use the nut picks to pick
out the meat. One for the bowl, one for the mouth. My Mother would yell at
us to not eat so many, she needed them for the cookies. My Grandmother sat
at the table with the nut mill she brought from Hungary and milled the nuts
for the cookies and strudels. Other nuts were chopped for sprinkling on top
of cookies.
Some cookies were rolled out and cut with the old cookies cutters from
Hungary, some were pressed into an ancient copper cookie mold in the shape
of a bundle of wheat and gently knocked out. Other cookies were rolled in
the hand and baked and then rolled in powdered sugar or sugar and milled
nuts.

Pounds of dried Apricots and dried Prunes were cooked on the stove with
water and sugar to make the Lekvar for Kipfils and cookies.

The cookie most beloved and treasured was the Linzerteig (dough from Linz,
Austria). It meant that we children would be helping to cut the cookies out
and decorating them.

The old cookie cutters were large and small. Hand made and soldered more
than 150 years ago, the cutters were black with many years of use, and
stamped "Saxony".

Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clubs, Crescent Moons, Stars, Suns. No Frosty the
Snowman, or Rudolph, no Christmas trees, no Angels. Just the celestial
bodies and the suits of cards.

After the cookies were cut from the dough, we would coat the top of the raw
cookie with some egg white that was beaten with a few drops of water, and
then sprinkle some decorations on it. Colored sugars, mixtures of chopped
nuts and sugar, half of a candied cherry or a dab of Lekvar.

Baking would go on for weeks. The washing of the Cookie pans were my job.
It was a never ending job. The wet dish towels hung over the oven to dry.
Pans going into the oven and pans coming out of the oven. Cookies burn very
quickly if they are not watched. You can alway tell by smell when the
cookies are done.

At least 20 different cookies and three kinds of Strudels, Walnut, Poppy
Seed and Raisin would be made. Trays of Kipfels with assorted fillings,
Prune, Apricot, nut, and cheese would be made before the baking was finally
done. All of the family cooking pots, roasters, and cookie tins were filled
with cookies. We had a stairway leading up to an unheated attic. Every step
held two pots, or roasters. The cookies would keep fresh till they were
made into gift platters for our neighbors, and friends.

Grandma Sehne, Tante Betty and cousin Bill, Great Tante Miller, and my
family always spent Christmas Eve together. As a child I could never quite
figure out why Santa would first bring presents for me to Tante Betty, and
then come to my house and leave presents for my cousin Bill. And he had not
left any gifts for me yet!

While we were eating, Santa came and left quietly. His gifts would just
appear. They were just there! How exciting and filled with promise those
brightly wrapped gifts were. A little childs ironing board and iron. When
the iron was plugged in it gave off a strange smell I was never comfortable
with as I washed and ironed my dolls clothers. The best gift I ever
remember receiving was that Christmas. A heavy long box, many hands helping
me to tear off the wrapping and open the box.

There before me was the most beautiful doll. Nothing like this doll had
ever been seen or touched before. The body and arms and legs of the doll
were made of life-like soft padded latex rubber. The whole doll felt like
a real baby. It was the latest in doll manufacturing. Not the usual doll of
paper mache and plaster that melted in the rain. This doll could be washed,
she could cry and her real eyelashed eyes opened and closed. She had
beautiful curly hair like I knew I would never have even after an hour of
sitting under a heavy contraption with long snake like electric cords
attatched to my hair. Here was a doll to hold and love, to feel softly
nesteled in my arms. After Christmas Day the precious doll was put back in
her box and stored on top of my parents closet shelf, to save it for a time
when I was a little older and would take care of it better. I cried, but
like most children I soon forgot about the doll. Out of sight, out of mind.
For a while.

One day, many months after that strange Christmas day, a box was discovered
on the top shelf of my parents closet. That dark closet, where the sun
never shines, but the heat is stifling, finally yielded its treasure. The
forgotten box was brought down and opened. We recoiled in horror with cries
of disbelief. There in the box what had once been beautiful was now corrupt
and decayed. The lifelike flesh had rotted in the heat of the closet, the
latex was in a state of enthropy. What was soft was now gummy and split
with the cotton padding oozing out. The little fingers were cracking and
falling off. Her head was incorruptable. It was made of mache and glue. No
harm. Her violet eyes still opened and closed. She still emitted her
plantive cry. Her hair still curley.
We all bore the scars of that unfortunate occurance. What was found was
lost again in anguish.

The doll was sent off to a doll hospital. When she finally was released to
my care, she was a different person. Gone was the real skin softness, and
in it place was a body of grey cloth stuffed with cotton, her new arms and
legs and head attached to stumps of grey body with twists of wire. She
stilled cried that plaintiff cry and it mingled with my cry as I saw what
they did to her. I held her close to me. We were a sober pair. I treated
her with love and care.

My doll still survives today sixty years later. Like me she is old, without
much hair, one eye is permanently crossed, her fingers and toes are broken
and chipped, she does not cry anymore. But she is a survivor and I love
her. We are a pair. "









Regards, June Meyer


http://homepage.interaccess.com/~june4/
See my homepage and Hungarian heirloom recipes!

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