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A German Post War Christmas - Time To Return To The Kitchen Window

   Ed Note:   The writer of this Christmas story was the Editor of the North Lake Outpost when it began in 1979, she was also our mom. She would always laugh that the Sisters at the St. Ursula Convent in Germany where she was schooled, would sure be surprised that her English was good enough to land her a job at a newspaper, much less as an editor and writer in the United States. We hope you enjoy this story originally published for Christmas Day in 1980, which retells a Christmas story from her youth in Germany.  

By Liz
    Christmas is a time for remembering, other places, other years, good and bad. Some of those memories are a mixture of good and bad and the year 1945 was one if those years for us.
    World War II had been over for a few months. Most of our menfolk were still in prison camps or walking their way through the country toward their homes. There was not transportation to bring back the survivors.
    There was little food, few jobs, no fuel to heat the homes, and certainly nothing in a store that even remotely looked like a Christmas present. Christmas spirit was practically non existent. We had been so conditioned to think of survival only that the thought of sharing and caring for others had almost become a stranger, but ... even that year, the spirit of Christmas was not to be denied.
    We were among the few lucky ones who had a job. Working for the occupation forces in West Berlin the job was hard and dirty, but the pay included a bowl of hot soup at noon and a slice of beautiful white bread, baked without sawdust.
    From a common gathering place a few miles from our home, we were transported to and from work in an army truck. Coming home from work on the 23rd of December we were the last one on the truck and prompted partly by good nature, partly by the bitter cold, and partly because it was the last work-day before Christmas, the driver offered to carry us all the way to our home.
    He was a quiet country boy from Ohio and as we chatted on the short ride he told us how much he dreaded spending the holiday away from his family, his young wife and little boy. He was really homesick.
    Up until that time we hadn’t given the holiday much thought, knowing it would be another dreary, cold day just like the others of that week. Something Christmassy began to stir though when we felt sorry for the young man, we didn’t have much but we did have a small family and on an impulse we invited him to share Christmas Eve with us, an invitation he gladly accepted. He came to the door, met the family, glanced around the cold, bare place and assured us that he would be happy to come back the next day.
    After getting over the shock of having a guest under these circumstances my sister jumped into action. Something had to be done quickly to turn this disaster into a holiday. Everybody went on a scrounging trip and we came up with some beets and potatoes, an extra loaf of bread and a few other odds and ends. We cleaned the place as well as could with cold water and my brother-in-law even dragged in a sickly little tree which he had cut only heaven knows where.
    While we decorated the tree with scraps of paper, bits of yarn and anything else bright we could find, my brother-in-law made a precarious trip into one of the neighboring bombed out buildings to gather splinters of wood to burn in order to have at least one warm room. We managed to find one half way decent table cloth and by the middle of the afternoon we were humming Christmas song and were looking forward to sharing what little we had with a guest. We had even found some gifts for each other to put under the tree, a book cover my sister had made of felt scraps for me, some vile sticky smelling shaving soap for my brother-in-law, some nicknack from a “consignment” shop (where people traded things they had for things they needed) for my sister and for our guest, we retrieved a hand gun my brother-in-law had carefully hidden from our Russian liberators in a burned out chimney.
    Our guest arrived at the appointed hour looking much more like Santa Claus than a G.I. He was dragging a laundry bag full of coal behind him, no doubt liberated from the post where he was stationed, to make sure the apartment would be warm for the holiday.
    Out of another laundry bag spilled things that we hadn’t seen in years; chocolate bars, cheese, canned milk, fresh doughnuts, apples and everything else he was able to beg, borrow and liberate from his barracks mates and friends.
    He made us feel as though our miserable beet salad was as good as pheasant under glass and he looked happy as a clam sitting under the tree holding my sister’s baby, while all of us enjoyed the feast our American Santa had provided for us.
    Someone remembered the young woman and her mother who lived in the apartment below us and decided it would be a good idea to ask them up to share all this wealth and the warm rooms.  They were most happy to accept and delighted to share the evening with happy people. They were somewhat on the sad side. The husband of the young woman was somewhere in France in a prison camp waiting to find a way home.
    Around 9 p.m. three bedraggled and tired looking young men knocked on our door asking if we knew where our young neighbor and her mother might be. One of the fellows was our neighbor’s husband and the others were fellow prison mates on the way home to their families. They had been walking for days to make it home in time for Christmas and here they were on Christmas Eve, laden with all sorts of good things to eat, which the French had given them upon their discharge from the P.O.W. camp.
    There isn’t much left to tell of that night, it had to be one of the happiest I have ever had the privilege to share. It could have been just one more dreary day in a dreary world but the little spark of Christmas spirit burst into a real bonfire that year, big enough to warm a lot of hearts.
    Hope my friends who stop to visit at the Kitchen Window enjoyed sharing that day so long ago with us today. To all them thank you for stopping, for being friends and the best Christmas wishes to you and yours.
    Liz.