Retrospective for Perspective

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

Are your holidays meaningful and enjoyable or are they hectic and stressful? If your answer is the latter, you might want to attend Cecile Andrews' "Simplify the Holidays and Everyday" workshop. For the rest of you, it may be time for a little preventative maintenance check-up to ensure you stay on the happy and healthy end of the spectrum.

WAC member, creative specialist and professional writer Dick Paetzke lets us travel with him back to that place in his heart where memories of the things that made the holidays meaningful and important are stored. (And for all you overachievers out there, guess what? It was really simple things that made the biggest and strongest impressions.)

It may be that while reading his article you begin to get a warm feeling as fond scenes, smells and sounds of what was really important to you about the holidays flood in. Take note! Take inventory! Are you still doing the simple things? Are you still creating those moments? This retrospective may improve your perspective and time management for maximum enjoyment this season. Enjoy.

The Advent

By Dick Paetzke, Writer

"Christmas is coming." It rang like a golden Pavlov's bell in the heart of every kid. It happened without reminders from television; that hadn't been invented yet. Nor were we tipped off by Christmas tree lights appearing in September on drugstore shelves; those still carried mostly fearful stuff like cod liver oil and rubber hot water bottles with strange attachments.

But somehow, a bit before Halloween, we knew with an instinct as sure as geese mysteriously compelled to fly south. It was coming soon and our lives would take on a different flavor. The egg salad sandwich existence of grade school would be transformed. At least for a little while, wild hopes stood a chance of being fulfilled.

Maybe it was the unexplained stuff showing up in the kitchen—I still don't have any idea what citron is or where it comes from. But suddenly the kitchen smelled a little bit like fruitcake, and I heard the first faint tinkle of the bell.

The ladies all baked in those pre-WWII days. And those who turned to cake mixes would have been ousted from the Haller Lake Grade School PTA had they been found out. "Have you heard about Mrs. Larsen? Her poor children ... ."

Increased baking activity, along with shopping bags that got hustled into the bedroom behind a door that was otherwise never locked, announced the Christmas season. Not the holiday season mind you, because Thanksgiving was mostly about eating and drawing pictures of Pilgrims and trying to get out of being one in the school pageant. Christmas was about magic.

And a part of Seattle that isn't there anymore was about to be transformed. We were about to be touched by the phenomenon that made every kid rich, magnified by the fact that virtually none of us were.

My parents were immigrants from the far eastern German province of Pomerania. Many of our neighbors, most of whom were so scattered that we could not see their houses, were immigrants from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Italy. And if they were born here, their parents' language was sometimes still spoken at the table—and used to discuss Christmas shopping in front of kids who hadn't learned it.

The road in front of our house, just two miles north of Northgate Mall, was dirt. And Northgate wasn't there anyway. It was being farmed by industrious Japanese families.

In that time, people "dropped in." They came with tiny wild blackberries they'd picked. Or peaches they'd canned. Or giant dahlias they'd raised. Or some miniature chicken eggs from their "bantie" hens. And they'd stay for dinner. But at Christmas time the complexion of these friendly trade goods changed. Ordinary groceries became extraordinary goodies. Mrs. Sloan née Scavatto turned out a fantastic Italian confection as light as air itself and biscotti. Mrs. Nielsen manufactured stollen. My mother spent late nights making endless pfeffernüsse, a cookie that looked like a musket ball. They were baked weeks ahead of time and put away for later. Almost tooth-breaking hard, they were a favorite of coffee lovers and dunkers all over Haller Lake. During these marathon baking sessions the air would become powdered-sugar sweet—to me, the first scent of Christmas. In fact, if I were going to write the recipe for the smells of Christmas back then, the ingredients would be something like ...
   powdered sugar
   vanilla
   Douglas Fir
   cinnamon
   library paste and construction paper
   the starch in my sister's pinafore
   shoe polish
   foggy mornings
   brilliantine and Mr. Evan's barbershop
   a soft, sputtering candle flame
   ... and the toy department in the Bon Marché, right next to where the only real
   Santa Claus reigned, despite what the Frederick & Nelson advocates said.

Of course He—and I capitalize He because of His all-seeing nature—brought out a whole season of soul-searching for each of us. We began to seriously re-examine the whole notion of "being good" and wondered if we had accumulated enough points. It was perhaps even harder then than now because we had to reckon on obsolete factors like "obedience," now politically incorrect and no longer uttered, and "duty" which meant that feeding Mooly our cow and chopping kindling for ancient Mrs. Nelson every Thursday took precedence over personal agendas no matter how much you didn't like it.

These ponderings were reinforced by stories many mothers read to potentially delinquent youths. Quite different than children's books now, they often dealt with rude, ill-mannered and unthinking boys who met a bad end. I took them very seriously. I was also certain that Santa Claus did.

I also worried that we didn't have a proper chimney. Ours ended in a pot-bellied wood heater in our living room. Too warm a welcome for the jolly old elf. But we had a back-up tradition because in Germany nobody came down the chimney except chimney sweeps.

Our Christmas was really Christmas Eve, or "Holy Evening" in German. After church we'd come home to cookies, rich homemade eggnog and our tree trimmed with fragile ornaments from the old country: paper angels from Sunday School, tons of tinsel and garlands my sister had made in the 3rd grade. On top of it all, a pointed "topper" as magnificent to me as the tower of any famous cathedral I've since seen anywhere. In a tattered box somewhere I still have one or two clip-on holders left from my earliest childhood when our tree was trimmed with real candles. You couldn't leave the room when they were lit, and you would never have had Smokey Bear as a guest, but their gleam still dances around in my memory.

And then we'd sing. My mother would begin in her tentative, wavering singing voice, with carols from her childhood. We chimed in with our own favorites from "Away in a Manger" to "O Come All Ye Faithful," and "O Tannenbaum" in German, although I didn't know what all the words meant. Then my father would finally begin, "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht ..." in his measured baritone. Silent Night. Holy Night. Christmas was here.

Then we'd be shooed into the kitchen to wait. Endlessly. We could hear murmuring. We could hear paper rattling. We could hear giggling. And then we'd hear the sound of a bell. Pavlov's bell. Then it was just like Christmas is for every kid today. Once again, Santa escaped without us seeing him.

But we were left with much more than the gifts under the tree. I hope you are, too. It's wonderful time of the year. Put some of it away in your heart for later.