Christmas came but twice a year

When I was small, Christmas came twice a year.

Until I was about eight, we lived in a big farm house in Northern Virginia with my mother’s parents, Hattie and Elmer Metzger.

Christmas revolved around both sets of grandparents.

For me, Christmas began in early November when Grandfather Metzger began cracking black walnuts for cookies and fruitcake.

We had a huge walnut tree, as big as any oak, in our yard and second smaller one planted for me on the day I was born. Each fall we gathered the nuts and threw them in the driveway to be husked by the tires of our green Chevy.

About a week before Thanksgiving, my grandfather would fire up an old potbellied stove in a workshop built off the garage. He and I would sit next to it, cracking the nutshells on an anvil with ancient flatirons. It was years later that I realized anvils and irons were not what the average family used as a nutcracker.

While we worked, my grandfather would tell me stories or school me on plant and animal lore. He was born in Pennsylvania, but given to a childless uncle in Virginia where he grew up.

On his side, the family was German farmers although he may have had some Indian blood.

My Mom’s mother was adopted by Amanda Weston, the midwife who delivered her. She grew up in the same house we lived in, part of a colonial land grant to the Weston family. My grandparents grew up on opposite sides of Occoquan Creek and became engaged on Christmas Eve, but that’s another story.

The cracked nuts were placed in an old battered washtub and in the evenings we would sit in front of the TV and pick them out.

I think I ate as many as I saved.

Later, my grandmother and mother would incorporate this seasonal treat into all manner of Christmas sweets, but the one I remember best was a chocolate cookie topped with white sugar icing and a walnut half known for some mysterious reason as “Wheels.”

From Thanksgiving to New Years was also when we consumed gallons of fresh tomato juice my mother had stored away in Mason jars all summer long.

As the days grew colder, Grandfather Metzger and I would trek through the woods looking for holly and running pine to decorate the house.

Sometimes there was snow and, if it was deep, I’d walk behind him in his footsteps.

He never minded having me along as long as I didn’t complain and I made heroic efforts to keep up.

Early in December, we’d go to the back part of the pasture to pick a perfect tree and cut it. Then we’d mount it in a coffee can of stones in the living room and adorn it with ancient ornaments remembered from every Christmas past in my short life. We draped it with real metal icicles that felt cool and slightly sticky between your fingers. Under the tree was a little village of ancient origin and a manger scene and sometimes a model railroad.

We always sang carols when we decorated the tree.

On Christmas night we read the Christmas story basking in it’s glowing colored lights.

At the Metzger house, the tree graced a corner of the living room from just after Thanksgiving until the week after Christmas.

Presents would gradually appear as the holidays progressed, In fact, I added some myself after trips to Penney’s and Sears Roebuck in Alexandria, the big city.

Of course, the really big gifts appeared magically on Christmas morning, deposited in the wee hours by the red suited gnome.

I never looked for hidden gifts as the big day approached because I was a true believer when it came to Santa Claus and with good reason. I knew him personally.

German Christmas, with Schnapps and Santa Claus

At the Swoboda house, where my father’s parents, Elizabeth and Otto, lived with my Uncle Jimmy and his family, things were a little different.

That’s why I always had two Christmases.

My grandmother, Elizabeth Titezer, was born in Minnesota but fled with her family to Texas after a poisoned well killed their livestock. My grandfather Swoboda emigrated from Germany when he was 2 years old. Six months later, his parents died in New York City, probably of the Spanish Flu. He was put on an orphan train and, very luckily, found a loving home in South Texas, together with his sister Ida and two brothers. My father spoke only German and Spanish until the first grade.

Granny and Granddaddy Swoboda celebrated German Christmas which took place on Christmas Eve.

Every year we were packed off to their house around dusk, often traveling through a veil of glittering snowflakes.

In my childhood memories, all Christmases are white.

There was always a big dinner with a turkey all the fixings including my grandmother’s homemade sauerkraut.

After dinner, the women and children adjourned to the television room while grandfather, Daddy and Uncle Jimmy disappeared on some unknown errand.

We kids were always led past the open door to my grandfather’s library where there was definitely no Christmas tree in evidence.

I think, sometimes we were changed into pajamas at this point. We’d watch Zorro or the Lone Ranger and eat cookies and ice cream until my mother or maybe Aunt Shirley would slip away and then reappear, shushing us as she led the way down the hall to the now closed library door.

She’d open the door a crack; just enough for us to see that a huge, fully lighted tree had sprouted amid the bookcases.

My father or uncle would materialize and whisper that we could come in if we were very quiet because Santa was almost ready to see us.

Awestruck, we crept in and were informed in hushed tones that Santa was upstairs drinking Schnapps with Grandfather.

As if on cue, the great man appeared. He was dressed in red velvet and ermine and smelled like a candy cane. I do remember that, like Grandfather Swoboda, our Santa was on the thin side but he was undoubtedly the real deal. Grandfather, we were told, had to stay upstairs and hold the reindeer so they wouldn’t fly away during their visit.

Not only did Santa know each of us children by name, when he took us on his lap and asked if we had been good, he was able to remind us of recent indiscretions if we failed to list them.

We knew about Schwartz Peter too, the devil to Santa’s deity, who brought switches and caol to children whose sins were too great to be forgiven.

After hearing our confession, he would present us each with a starter gift and then make his way back upstairs for one more shot of Schnapps before he leapt in his sleigh and flew off to deliver gifts to children whose grandparents were not so well connected.

We always opened gifts that night, but for me, this was just the start of the orgy of acquisition that marked the holidays of my youth.

The next morning, when we climbed out of bed at the Metzger house, there was another tree and another set of packages to tear into scattering paper and ribbon with abandon across the old oak floors.

We dined on scrambled eggs, country ham and “puffs,” a delicacy created by my grandmother and later stolen by the restaurateurs of New Orleans and marketed under the false name of beignets.

All this was washed down with oceans of tomato juice.

That afternoon there would be another turkey feast and, at the end of the day, I would fall into a tryptophan-induced coma to dream of Santa and another week without school. Then I’d start counting the days ‘till next Christmas.

Lois Swoboda is a staff writer with the Apalachicola and Carrabelle Times. To reach her, email Lswoboda@starfl.com