Our Holiday Traditions, Vol. 4 — Snowballs, Christmas Villages, and The Sound of Music
Personal traditions can be a balm to the soul in a hectic world. Here at The Attic on Eighth, we hail from all over the globe and so we head into the holiday season with a variety of traditions influencing our content. In this series inspired by and dedicated to our founding Lifestyle Editor, Lee Clark, we hope to add to the joyous community spirit of the season and share holiday traditions that are dear to our hearts. In this new volume for 2020, Attic on Eighth contributor Sarai Seekamp shares family traditions tied to her beloved grandmother.
My Grandmother, Petra Adams (née Coers), 1977 or 1978.
This will be my twelfth Christmas season without my grandmother, and also the first year that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time talking about her.
In recent conversations with my mom and Aunt Nana, I acknowledged that Thanksgiving was never the holiday that stood out in childhood memories; it was always Christmas. It was four-hour drives from Portland, Oregon to my grandmother’s snow-covered doorstep in Walla Walla, Washington
As the years pass by, sometimes traditions fade away as the kids grow up and move away and older generations pass before they’re able to share their stories. Other traditions we maintain first out of obligation and then because those childhood moments have become gilded over time. Over the past four years, I’ve tried to recreate some of those traditions that were so important to me as a child growing up in my grandmother’s lap and beneath her ornate trees.
Mom and Nana talk about the dinners: the prime rib and ham, the green bean casserole, and the Christmas Eve nights at the Elks club drinking Shirley Temples all dressed up. So many of the memories I have of our Christmas traditions didn’t start until much later in my grandmother’s life after she had already remarried and her three daughters were grown. Nana says that no matter what, the expectation was that you were at the table for Christmas dinner. There were no excuses. The table was always set, with napkin rings, bone china, centerpieces, and place cards. And yes, I can admit that I’m perhaps just a tad upset that I never got the chance to sit at the adult table, but that’s how it goes, huh? I don’t remember the dinners themselves; I’m not sure that food was ever the exciting part of the holidays for me.
But there were the snowballs.
After dinner, out of the freezer came the pans of vanilla ice cream sculpted to look like snowballs. They’d be rolled in coconut shavings, for those of us with finer tastes, and arranged in glass bowls with a lit candle in the center. The challenge was to eat away as much of the ice-cream without letting your candle go out. In the end, whoever had the least amount of ice-cream left in the bowl AND a lit candle won. My brother would lose pretty early on and would then attempt to blow out all out candles from across the table. My younger sister was too young to care about anything aside from the ice cream. It was a silly game, and I can’t remember ever having won but of course, that didn’t matter. I’m not sure how or when this game started, but it was one we played every year, Christmas Eve, gathered around the table after dishes had been cleared attempting to eat ice-cream as slowly and carefully as possible.
Top: My mom, me, cousin completing the snowball challenge mid-2000’s // Bottom Left: adorable young me // Bottom Right: My mom and Aunt Nana as children in front of the tree 1977 or 1978
As for decorations, Nana says that there were always five themed Christmas trees set up all around the Mojonnier house and while I don’t remember any of those, on account of being less than 7 years old, I do remember the one at the Country Club road house. Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it yet, but Grandma was particular about her ornaments. And this trait runs in the family. It was all white lights and Hummel figurines perfectly displayed on a live tree over 10 feet tall. The true joy for me though was the Christmas village that was arranged on the round, glass table in the corner of the living room between the two armchairs. Books under the white felt created the illusion of a snowy hillside cradling an icerink and miniature trees. I could spend hours curled in the chair listening to my grandmother read Jan Brett’s books, staring at the fairy lights illuminating the village. After she passed away, there were years without the village and I think for a while I tried not to think about all the things I felt I had lost. However, a few years ago, mom and Nana gifted me the few pieces leftover from that village. Since then I’ve dedicated time at the beginning of every December to set it up on a glass shelf in the living room, stacking books to mimic hills, arranging the buildings around the mirror icerink and cotton fluff.
And, finally, there were the Christmas movies. When we were younger, my brother and I would sprawl out in the basement of the house on Mojonnier with our cousins, the pool table and the collection of VHS tapes, watching Home Alone and Santa Claus on repeat. Then as a family, it was always The Sound of Music. Even after Grandma and Bopa moved to the Country Club house, we’d pile into the t.v. room on the couch and air mattress to watch Julie Andrews soothe the von Trapp children with lists of her favorite things and Christopher Plummer’s “Edelweiss”, each of which had always been lullabies for us grandkids in place of the usual rock-a-bye-baby and such. Around my sophomore year of high school, I discovered Judy Garland’s Meet Me in St. Louis on AMC and fell absolutely in love. For a long time, it’s been my own individual holiday tradition and, I thought, unique to me. In a very serendipitous moment, I learned that after my grandmother’s divorce, Meet Me in St. Louis was one of the only things that Nana could use to keep my Aunt Katherine preoccupied (that and Land Before Time, of course). It’s comforting really, to think of my mom’s two younger sisters watching and adoring Judy Garland in all her grace decades before I was born or had discovered the movie of my own accord. Perhaps the things we are drawn to most, sometimes without explanation or cause, the movies and the decorations and the meals, are just the ways we maintain those connections to our families, both here and gone. And at the risk of sounding cliche, being in the middle of a global health crisis and isolated even further from family, those objects and memories are even more important to celebrate and share and remember.
Left: Aunt Katherine @ Mojonnier House around 1999 // Right: My Mom and Grandma @ Country Club Road House mid-2000’s
As a high school English teacher in Portland, Oregon, Sarai Seekamp often finds herself wearing many different hats. After graduating from the University of Portland with a B.A. in English Literature and the University of Southern California with a M.A.T. in Secondary Language Arts, she has spent the past few years writing at her website scienceofluck.com and helping her students find ways of expressing themselves both in and out of the classroom. When she isn't writing or teaching, Sarai enjoys traveling to Ireland and the UK, cuddling with her cats Osha and Sally, and working to change the ways young women experience the world of athletics through her high school's track and field program as the Head Coach. Who says you can't do it all?
Adding to the community spirit of the holidays, founding The Attic on Eighth member Amy Richardson shares a Christmas Eve tradition (and recipe) that she started with her father.