Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas. That’s what people are greeting on another with. But what if you aren’t happy and there is nothing to be merry about? What then?

You see people bustling about doing all the holiday things but you feel empty inside. And lets face it, even angry although you may have a hard time admitting it to yourself. The world may be caving in on you. Why should you be happy at a time like this?

“The war had stolen everything from them, but his one thing it could not steal- Christmas.” That sentence was written about my family and me, by another author several years ago. This year my own book has been published which contains the rest of the story.

We had escaped from our family farm in Poland just prior to the Russian invasion of Poland in January of 1944. As ethnic Germans, our lives were in danger. We had lost everything! We were now living in Woerlitz, East Germany, still under Communist rule. Even though we had nothing except the clothes on our backs, in retrospect, that year I experienced one of my most memorable Christmases.

Join me in my Christmas of l945.

Chapter 16 from By Hands of Strangers, by Alice Lewis
***************************************

Chapter Sixteen
Christmas 1945

There was a slight spring to my mother’s steps this afternoon. We were walking more briskly than usual and my little legs had to run to keep up with her. She held my hand, pulling me along, and in the other hand she was carrying a small parcel. She had gotten a few things from our morning’s work of begging. We turned at the corner of our street and headed towards Woerlitzer Park. Aunt Martha and Uncle Reinhold lived on the other side of that park, some distance away.
The park had not been damaged by the war. The statues and monuments were all there, gray and black, silently speaking of ancient splendor, glistening with moisture from a recent rain. Leaves fluttered across the pathways and packed themselves on the wet grass. No one was sitting on any of the park benches or strolling along the pathways. It was too cold and wet. Squirrels were chattering and flicking their tails as they played tag up and down the tree trunks.

Mutti pulled back the wooden slide bar on the big gray and black gate in front of the house where Aunt Martha and Uncle Reinhold lived. It was sodden, swollen with moisture, and reluctant to move. When it gave way, ancient hinges groaned as though they were complaining about being asked to move. We stepped inside the cobblestone yard. The owners of the property lived in a nice, new house to the left. They seldom used this back yard gate since they used their front door which faced the street. I looked across the cobblestone surface of the yard to a carriage shed which stood directly across from this gate. It was empty. I wondered why. Directly to the right of this ancient gate was the owner’s old house, a run down shack. One room of this old house was home for Aunt Martha and Uncle Reinhold.

As Aunt Martha opened the door for us, Mutti warned me again, like she did every time we came here, “Be careful! Watch your step!”

The floor-boards had rotted away, from the door clear over to one corner of the room. Uncle Reinhold had put a board from the sill of the door, across the chasm, to solid floor further in the room. I looked down at the earth which was visible between the semi-rotten wooden beams that supported the wooden floor. Even with Mutti holding my hand, I didn’t dare look at anything else until we were clear of this obstacle.

All the living in this room took place around the little metal stove which stood in the center of the room. Nothing was against the walls. There was a metal cot with a straw mattress and Cousin Dieterich’s baby buggy, the twin’s buggy that we both had used. There was a small wooden table and two unstable wooden chairs. There were no other furnishings. Uncle Reinhold had gathered firewood from the woods near the town to heat the room and cook our meals. I felt the comforting warmth of that little stove as soon as I stepped off the board over the doorway boogey-man, who I was sure lived under the rotting floor boards at the entrance.

That’s when I first noticed the little Christmas tree standing on the table.
I gasped in delight and gave a big sigh. “Oh, Mutti look!” I said, “It’s so pretty!”

“Tonight is Heiliger Abend,” she replied. Heiliger Abend is the German word for Christmas Eve. “On this night long ago, our Savior was born. We will celebrate.”

I didn’t remember ever seeing a Christmas tree before. I walked over to it before Mutti could even take my coat off. I stood in front of that tree, eyes transfixed. Compared to what my life had been like in the preceding months, this was breathtaking!
It was just a little tree. Uncle Reinhold probably had gotten it from somewhere in the woods when he was hunting for firewood. There were wooden crossbars fixed to the bottom of the trunk, so that it could stand on the table. Aunt Martha had made the decorations. She had unraveled an old mitten and cut the wool into short strands; then she pulled each of the strands apart so thin that each one resembled a thistle weed fluff. These fluffs were dropped onto the tree. The effect was that the whole tree looked like it was covered with huge snowflakes. She had also rolled paper into cylinders to resemble candles and stuck them into the branches of the tree. Further in, closer to the trunk of the tree, she had placed photos of our whole extended family. We didn’t even know whether any of them were still alive or not.

I continued to gaze at the tree as Aunt Martha and my mother began to prepare our evening meal. “Look how happy she is,” Martha said.
“Yes, she is” Mutti answered wistfully, as she opened her little parcel. “I’m glad we could make a little Christmas joy for her.” Mutti had gotten a little sugar and enough flour on our begging trip today that tonight she would bake a little loaf of bread.

“Here, Martha,” she said, “You keep the sugar.”

“Add it to Dieterich’s flour and water formula.”

“Thank you,” Martha replied. Martha took two spoons full of flour and a little of the sugar, mixing it with enough water to fill a bottle. She boiled that for a few minutes. That was Dieterich’s supper. She sat down on the cot to feed him while Mutti worked at baking the bread.

“There is no more work in the beet fields,” Reinhold lamented as he placed his head in his hands, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. The chair wobbled underneath him. “And food ration coupons are not enough to live on!”

After we finished eating our Christmas Eve meal of bread and water, we sang the familiar Christmas carols. Mutti, Aunt Martha, and I were sitting on the cot. Uncle Reinhold was still sitting on his wobbly wooden chair. We sang, “Silent Night, Holy Night” and also “Oh, Come Little Children; Oh, Come One and All.” Uncle Reinhold read the Christmas story from the Bible. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) KJV.
God’s Son, our Savior, was born in a barn, out in the cold, because there was no room in the inn. No one took notice of Him. We at least had a stove to warm us. But He will come again. He promised, this time not as a babe in a manger, a teacher, or a rabbi, but as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the risen Messiah. That was our hope and consolation.

We also sang another song, Hier auf Erden bin ich ein Pilger (Here on Earth I am a Pilgrim). It is based on the scripture from Hebrews 11, where it speaks of Abraham as being a stranger and a pilgrim in a foreign land, looking for a heavenly city whose maker and builder is God. Therefore, God was not ashamed to be his God. We could identify with that concept. We were in a foreign land with no permanent dwelling place, wishing that we had one. (Following is my translation of that song into English.)


Here on Earth I am a Pilgrim

Here on earth, I am a pilgrim
But my pilgrimage won’t be long.
So let me move to higher heights
Where the palms of peace are ever waving.

Here on earth, I am a pilgrim
And my pilgrimage, and my pilgrimage won’t be long.

Where the sun forever shines
Oh, I’m longing, oh I’m longing to be there.
I am a wanderer in a foreign land
My heart is sad, and my spirit is bound.

Here on earth, I am a pilgrim
And my pilgrimage, and my pilgrimage won’t be long.

In the land to which I go,
My Redeemer, my redeemer is the light.
There is no sorrow and no decay.
There is no misunderstanding and no death.


Then on that holy evening we knelt down to pray right where we were; me, Mutti, and Martha by the cot and Uncle Reinhold by the chair. Each one poured out his heart to God.

“Our precious Heavenly Father, We thank you that we five have found each other.”
“Be with our missing loved ones.”
“Thank you that Jesus came.”
“Thank you for Christmas because now we have a heavenly home.”
“Yes, we would like an earthly home where we can lay our heads but we yearn for that heavenly home where the palms of peace are ever waving; where Jesus will wipe away all tears and sorrow.”
“Thank you, that you have brought us this far. Amen”
We felt a holy hush settle over us, a peace that had nothing to do with our physical circumstances.
The Spirit of God was present with us. As the adults prayed and talked, we knew that no matter what each of us had gone through, or what we might yet have to go through, we had a heavenly home waiting for us with streets of gold, no more pain, no more sorrow. Our loved ones would all be there, all the ones whose photos were between the branches of the Christmas tree. It gave me a warm and comfortable feeling. It was as if all our relatives were here with us in this shabby little room because the Spirit of Jesus was here with us.



Written by Alice Lewis http://wordsfromagarden.blogspot.com