Channel People by Kathleen McAnear Smith

Christmas Market in Winchester 2019

Channel People
The cold winter of Germany meant we could blow on our hands and see a soft cloud rise. We were young, my husband and I; and it was Christmas Eve. We’d been for a long walk over frozen ground and our conversation was of trying to remember a few words in German. It would mean so much to my mother in law. It was her night, her culture and we had promised that as she lived most of the year with the English side of the family; the conversation around the table on this night would be in German.

Once inside Tante Lisel’s house, warm and glowing and full  of advocaat and lebkuchen three nationalities of our family gathered. My dad would find the British English more challenging than remembering his high school German, and he tucked in his pocket the little American-English/English-American dictionary I found for him.

It was the jokes that didn’t always translate well, but Oma Lizbet clearly insisted we light candles and sing Stille Nacht, and then sit at the table full of the beauty and bounty of old German table cloths and a steaming spread of food. It was from Tante Lisel I learned to never put more than one salt and pepper on a big table. It makes people talk to each other.

Then Uncle Wilhelm looked at Tante Lisel, with a look of having a story he was going to tell. “Nine, nine, nine!” said Lisel.

“Ya! You see,” he said to the whole family at the table, “ I broke out of prison of war camp and made it home for Christmas, all those year ago. Your prisons were rubbish!” He pointed at my English Father in law. Well, my Father in law just had to reply, “You were the ones with the rubbish prisons. Escape! I escaped twice! (Really! I had no idea he had even been in prison but I could see he was making a point.) My father, a Baptist who never ever drank looked like he could use a snaps.

Slightly nervous myself, I moved my chair back from the table only to watch this older generation suddenly laugh and then break into a roar of how superior their military was to the other and who hated Hitler the most. Then the Germans slapped their thighs, and the English threw on party hats and me, one of the Americans; I knew I would need to write about this meal if I was to ever figure out what what happening. Thinking for a moment the older folks were doing this as a show for the new generation would be slightly narcissistic. Perhaps we were just learning how to be family. How to forgive. How to be around a table at Christmas. In the years following there would be more meals like this with the same pulling of leg, brief tears for loss of a war buddy, but then talk about coming home.

As writers, I believe we need to capture these family moments however you define family, and pass them down as our legacy.

Joel 1:3 Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children....