Christmas memories

A Roman soldier arrives by chariot at Peace Lutheran Church's living nativity.

Candy Crosby/Courtesy photo

Our calendar has been full this Christmas season but one of the highlights was McCook’s Peace Lutheran Church’s presentation of a Living Nativity, Bethlehem, AD 2022. Held in the huge Alice area building at our Fair Grounds it was inside and comfortable no matter the weather outside. Each visitor was greeted with a candy cane, a cookie to munch on and a beautifully illustrated flyer. As the Christmas story was related a band of actors in well-done period clothing illustrated the well-known story. Background music, lighting and a choir gave a nice touch. Living animals, camels, alpacas, shaggy sheep, a goat, cows in the manger, a donkey for Mary and even a Roman Centurion in his chariot pulled by a white steed. There may have been more. Period-appearing buildings formed the background. Someone, or a group of someones, put in a lot of effort to bring all the effects together in a most meaningful way. At the finale, all were invited forward to touch the animals and interact with the actors, our friends and neighbors. Well done and I’m looking forward to a repeat next year.

When I started to grade school WWII was still going on. For Christmas, after the school program, our country school’s Santa handed a small paper sack of goodies to each of us children. A treat from Santa Claus himself. Inside we found a nice large red delicious apple, an orange, unshelled roasted peanuts and hard candies which included a woven hard taffy piece of striped colors. The orange was especially a treat because as I remember it was the very first orange I ever tasted. It was wartime and our country sent about all such products to our soldiers in uniform.

My memory was again tweaked some twenty-five years later when we in a helicopter had taken Santa to hand our presents and goodies to native Indian children in the little village of Ruby along the Yukon River in western Alaska. I’ve written about that experience in past columns. It was only about fifteen degrees below zero that Christmas morning and after Santa’s backpack ran empty our whole crew was invited up to the trading post there to enjoy a cup of coffee. Coffee hot chocolate and cookies, the homemade kind versus store boughten. The family operating the post also offered some beautiful large oranges that obviously had been imported from Japan. We recognized that special fruit was rare for those people as it had to have been imported through their local economy while back at our Air Force Base fresh fruit was common via the military supply system. We G.I.s had fresh fruit aplenty including more common-grade oranges. To a man we politely refused those gorgeous proffered fruits knowing what a sacrifice it was for that family to give up their special Christmas treat.

Ah, Galena, Alaska the nearby base that we had flown from that morning, We were exposed to an entirely different culture from this farm kid from Southwest Nebraska’s roots. My friend Bill had asked me on Christmas Eve “You have to see this”. We drove down to the little town of Galena and walked into the town bar. In WWII Galena was next to the USAAF flying field with that same name. It was where the Army ferried American-built P-39 fighters and other military aircraft under the lend-lease program to deliver to the Russian Air Force to join in our fight against the Nazis. At Galena, the Russian pilots would take possession and ferry them to wherever needed and the Americans would catch a ride back home to do it again.

The building that housed the bar that evening was of rapid WWII construction. Instead of lath and plaster, the wall covering was of unpainted plywood sheets. Someone had hand-lettered an epic poem, in the tradition of The Legend of Sam Magee about three-quarters of the way all around. The bar dimly lighted and smokey, was quiet until a crowd of young high schoolers came in to play pool and drink. Those native kids had been at a boarding school and were home for the holidays. One young girl with Slavic features they called “Rooskie” and probably her father had been one of the Russian pilots, on a one-night stand, picking up a lend-lease aircraft. Their language was more than a bit raucous using words that even I don’t use in polite company. For me it was a sad sight and illustrated what we have done to native Americans destroying their way of life by giving them only enough handouts to keep them in a life of poverty. No wonder so many become alcoholics and have a skyrocketing suicide rate among the young. No future. So sad.

I hope that you are prepared for the cold weather predicted for this area the next several days. Wind chill of fifty below zero, high winds, blowing snow, icy roads, and temperatures twenty some below zero is the forecast. Bless those who have to work in such weather, the first responders for fire, traffic and personal emergencies. Time to shop early so we can stay home and enjoy family. Think on the meaning of Christmas and the many blessings that we truly enjoy as a Christian nation.

That is the way that I saw it.

Dick Trail