COLUMN: Tales from the Gravel Ridge – Memories of Christmas seasons past

In our part of the world, Christmas celebrations of one sort or another are definitely in the air. A range of gatherings, be they concerts of wonderful music, or gatherings of families and friends, or colleagues, reflect a spirit of peace and goodwill. We try to set aside our differences at least for the time being. It’s almost as if, like the shepherds of long ago, we hear something akin to the song of angels.

Many of us having grown up celebrating Christmas as commemorating the birth of Jesus, have a treasury of Christmas music and words that has never lost its essence. Memories of significant days in our lives have a wonderful capacity for nurturing us long after those specific events may have occurred.

Dim memories of Christmas in our Rosengard home glimmer in my memory bank. The context of those memories was always the story of the birth of Jesus. Our celebrations nevertheless would also include a Christmas tree, decorated with beautifully ornate, delicate baubels. How they survived as well as they did in our crowded home is probably similar to nobody getting seriously injured even though the wood-burning stove in the living and bedroom areas of our home was very hot on cold winter days. Somehow even young children paid attention to some cardinal rules.

One of my earliest concrete memories of Christmas is the concert at the Rosengard School when I was in Grade 1. Certain aspects of that concert remain fixed in my mind because I doubt that any subsequent teacher at our school incorporated certain details that Mr. Penner included in our program that year. These included the girls doing a little curtsy when they took to the stage to recite a poem. The boys, likewise had to bow. It was Mr. Penner’s last year at our school. Somehow I can’t imagine Jack Wedel, my Grade 2 teacher, a teenager, teaching on a permit from the Manitoba Department of Education, rehearsing that particular piece of decorum. I suspect as well that my Grade 1 Christmas concert included more German language Christmas recitations and music than would have been the case in later years.

My sister Anne and I most certainly are the only surviving members of our large family to vaguely remember one Christmas that fortunately for all of us, ended well. It was the second day of Christmas, 1949, when my large family, including several young married couples along with their young children were celebrating at our small Rosengard home on the gravel ridge. Snow had been accumulating on our gravel ridge roadway which became barely passable, causing family members arriving by car to park on the road a short distance from our driveway. Late that afternoon my mother took seriously ill, and it became evident that she needed to be taken to the nearest hospital in Steinbach. With a horse pulling and men pushing, it was possible to get the car of one of my brothers to higher ground, in order to get my mother to the hospital. It was only ten days later that my mother would be reunited with us, her family, in our Rosengard home. All these years later, Anne and I have only faint memories of that unnerving event.

One Christmas season that remains of great historic significance for our family, occurred when our parents and their three eldest children were enroute to Canada. According to my father’s records, our family left the Mennonite village of Schoeneberg, now Smoliane on December 13, 1928, travelling by train from Zaporizhia to Moscow. The journey was precarious in numerous ways, but eventually they arrived in Antwerp, where a stamp on their travel documents dated January 7, 1929, indicates that they have been properly disinfected, a requirement for anyone arriving from eight specifically named eastern European countries, which included Ukraine. Whether the dates on their various documents were according to the Julian or the Gregorian calendar. It cannot have been lost on my parents that it was indeed the Christmas season.

My family’s journey was far from over, but observing their three healthy children taking things in stride, must surely have given my parents a sense of hope.