Commentary by Ward Degler
Years ago I was living in a small village in Germany at Christmas time. The local economy was still rebuilding from the war, and wreckage from the conflict still dotted the landscape.
Mostly, the residents of the town lived day-to-day on limited incomes and had little more than the essentials. But when Christmas rolled around, they pulled out all the stops. They brought in branches from fir trees and decorated the cobbled main street and all the houses along the way. They hung ribbons and wreaths on the front of the big stone Catholic church that loomed next door to the bakery and whose bells loudly tolled each quarter hour.
The green grocer arranged vegetables in his front window to spell out “Frohe Weinachten.” The meat market posted an undecorated tree inside the front door. Every customer who came into the shop was expected to bring a decoration for the tree. On Christmas Eve, the butcher added candles and lit them. He said his family had done it that way for generations.
The corner Gasthaus gave everyone who walked through the door a free swallow of egg cognac. Of course, most folks stuck around and bought several more along with a sizzling schnitzel and kartofel (cutlet and potato).
I rented a small, two-room apartment upstairs in the house owned by the local shoemaker. The shoe shop was just outside my door, and the pungent smells of leather and glue permeated the air.
As an American soldier I had access to things not available to my German hosts. Grapefruit was a special treat, and I presented Christmas citrus to everyone I knew.
Something else I had that was a rarity in the town was a record player. After a few egg cognacs at the Gasthaus, a dozen or more locals would gather on the street below my apartment and call out for “Gramafon musik.”
Most nights when I was home I would open my window, set the record player on the sill and stack my Christmas records on the spindle and hit “play.” Everybody loved it.
They also thought it was funny. That was because my record player was American-made and operated on 60 hertz electricity. The local current was 50 hertz, which made the record player run slower than normal. This turned Beverly Sills, a soprano, into a tenor, and Bing Crosby, a baritone, into a deeply resonating basso profondo. Some renditions came across as though crawling along on a dying battery.
A lot has changed over there since those post-war days, of course. But I’m pretty sure the townsfolk still decorate the streets for Weinachten. And I imagine the egg cognac is still tasty.
