All posts by Kristin

Christmas Bookmark from Uncle Clarence

Christmas, Reeds

gammie book1_0003

My great uncle Clarence Elwood Reed was 2 years older than my Grandmother Pearl Doris Reed. While doing some scanning of old photographs and newspaper articles recently my cousin Jan came across a book mark in my grandmother’s journal. Unfortunately the only thing written in this journal was my grandmother’s name, address and the date – December 25, 1903.  Perhaps it was a Christmas present.

Clarence is something of a mystery to me. I wrote about him several years ago – Madness Monday.  I still haven’t found him in the 1920 and 1930 census but I did find him in the 1940 census with yet another name for his wife, Mamie Reed. This census entry is the most confused I’ve seen. The head of the house is listed as Clarence Reed, a female and all of the other data is really for Mamie. Mamie is listed as a male and all the data is really for Clarence. Pretty confusing. It’s just a whim that I decided to check out this Clarence Reed who was born in Tennessee instead of Kentucky.

gammie book1

gammie book1_0001

Picture 3 A photo of 4845 S. Michigan in Chicago, Illinois taken from Google maps. This was Uncle Clarence Reeds address when he sent the bookmark.

“A Christ To Carol” – Christmas Sermon 1966

Christmas, Cleages
67-12-17
Rev. A. B. Cleage Jr. Preaching and Teaching

While looking through the binder holding my father’s sermon notes I found these for Sunday, December 25, 1966.  Some were written on a small donation envelope. There is also a bulletin and two pages of sermon notes that are for the same Sunday.  Although page 2 and a possible page 4 are missing, I think that there is enough here to give the gist of the sermon.

bulletin*
sermon_notes_envelope*

A Christ To Carol
Go tell it on the Mountain Jesus Christ is Born

II. Christmas Spirituals
= Carols written by slaves
= “Good News”?=
Glory Manger
Po’ Little Jesus Boy
Jesus first came first to down trodden and oppressed.
“Tell John…”

I.  Child waiting for Christmas thinks only of Santa Claus
= Child for whom Christmas means most – not one who receives most in terms of material gifts –

III.  “Gospel” was the Good News of the possibilities in human life –
Slaves may have been closer to realizing possibilities than many of us today.

sermon_notes_envelope_verso*

We tend to judge everything today in terms of materialistic value –
EVEN CHRISTMAS – Commercialized
(How much we can give)

Sermon_notes_xmas_1966*
sermon_notes_xmas_1966_verso*

Henry Cleage – Christmas on Scotten

Christmas, Cleages

Henry Cleage Christmas
This photo was taken the same year and from the same place as my Grandfather Cleage’s photograph.

My uncle Henry. If it was during WW2 he had come in from the farm while Hugh stayed out there to take care of the chickens and cows.  They alternated holidays. One of the last stories I remember Henry telling was how he was coming back from Christmas in Detroit. There had been a heavy snow storm and the roads were un-plowed.  He was walking out to the farm when he passed a man walking into town and realized it was Hugh.

Warren’s Christmas Birthday Party, 1958

Christmas, Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday, , ,
cleage_cousins
Front row: Jan and Dale Evans  Middle: Pearl Cleage, Warren Evans, Ernest Martin  Back: Me (Kristin Cleage) If only Ernie had stepped a bit to the right you would be able to see both of our faces.  Why is Dale making that face? Must be because he’s 8.

My cousin Warren always had a party on his December 30th birthday. All of the Cleage cousins gathered at his house where his mother, my aunt Gladys, made a punch of Vernor’s ginger ale with orange sherbert floating on top. There was ice cream, chips, party favors and of course, cake. His cake, shown below, looks like a product of Detroit Awrey’s Bakery.  My cousin Jan corrected me and said it was probably a Sanders cake. Sanders also made cakes and the best chocolate miniatures ever. But I digress.

warren_party_strip

Because I count 11 candles on the cake, I’m going to say it was his 10th birthday which would make it 1958.  The 11th candle would be 1 to grow on.  There is no sign of his youngest brother who wasn’t born until July of 1959.

Unlike the Sepia Saturday prompt, there is no bus and no Santa in my photo but the people are sitting facing each other and it was taken during the 1950s.

2012.12W.07
To see more Christmas Sepia Saturday offerings, CLICK!

 

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Christmas
winter_holiday_meals
Holiday foods and homemade food gifts.

An Australian reader asked me how to make candied sweet potatoes after reading about the food we eat for Christmas.  We have candied sweet potatoes at both Thanksgiving and at Christmas. The rest of the year I just bake them and sometimes mash them.  The recipe my mother used is the same one I found in her old cookbook, although I’m sure that the one her mother made didn’t come from a cookbook but they tasted similar. Maybe Nanny’s were a bit sweeter.

The sweet potatoes are boiled and peeled. They are sliced and arranged in a baking dish with brown sugar and butter laid on top of each layer.  They are then baked at 350 to 375 for about 45 minutes or until the syrup from the brown sugar and butter is as thick as you want it.  I remember that sometimes parts of the sweet potatoes were crispy with the syrup. These days my oldest daughter, Jilo, makes the sweet potatoes for family gatherings.

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Candied sweet potato recipe from my mother’s cook book with her note on the side. “Good, but not very sweet.”
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Candied sweet potatoes made by my oldest daughter for Thanksgiving dinner,2012.

You can read about the history of the sweet potato here. I was surprised to learn that people candy sweet potatoes all over the world. I thought it was a recipe from the southern United States.

 

THE 2012 CHRISTMAS GENEAMEME

Christmas, memories

advent-candlesThis post is in response to the Deck the Halls Geneameme over at the Family History Across the Sea Blog. To participate or find links to more blogs doing the meme, click on the candles to the left.  Thanks to Pauleen for putting this together.

Christmas 2011
Christmas 2011

  1. Do you have any special Xmas traditions in your family?    In addition to having a Christmas tree we also set up a manger. When the children were home or my granddaughter is here we set it up at the beginning of Advent and move Mary and Joseph along day by to to arrive at the stable on Christmas Eve.  Jesus appears at midnight and the three wise men start their journey, arriving on Epiphany.
  2. Is church attendance an important part of your Christmas celebrations and do you go the evening before or on Xmas Day?  Some of us attend Church services and some don’t.  Those who do go to the night service on Christmas Eve.
  3. Did/do you or your children/grandchildren believe in Santa? None of us believe in Santa.
  4. Do you go carolling in your neighbourhood? There have been times when we caroled but not recently. Click on the link to read about my youngest son’s caroling experience.
  5. What’s your favourite Christmas music?  Click on the link to hear my favorite Christmas song which is Christmas in the Trenches.
  6. What’s your favourite Christmas carol? My favorite Christmas carol is We Three Kings and you can click on the link to hear it played on hang drums.
  7. Do you have a special Xmas movie/book you like to watch/read?  In the past I used to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol on television but since I no longer have a television, I listen to Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which you can hear by clicking on the link.
  8. Does your family do individual gifts, gifts for littlies only, Secret Santa (aka Kris Kringle)?  I have 5 children and 6 grandchildren who live in the same city my husband and I do, Atlanta, GA. On Christmas evening they all come over to my house.  After we eat dinner, we open all the gifts. At this time my children, grandchildren and we the parents give gifts to everyone of us. They aren’t expensive gifts but there are a lot of them. You can see some of us just before opening our gifts on Christmas day in 2011 above.
  9. Is your main Christmas meal indoors or outdoors, at home or away?  Christmas dinner is indoors at our house.
  10. What do you eat as your main course for the Christmas meal? You can read a description of our usual Christmas dinner, with a photo by clicking the link above. It is the same dinner my grandparents and my mother cooked, with a few changes – turkey with cornbread stuffing, greens, rice, green salad, rolls (my grandmother had biscuits), cranberry jelly (my grandmother’s came from a can, we make ours with fresh cranberries), candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese.  We also have brisket  and various desserts – sweet potato and mince meat pie, or cheesecake, pound cake, fruitcake.
  11. Do you have a special recipe you use for Xmas? I make my own fruitcake from a combination of various recipes and changes I make. Click on the link to see me mixing it up. I have a bowl of mixed dried fruit and I need to go on and finish the cakes! I am so late.
  12. Does Christmas pudding feature on the Xmas menu? Is it your recipe or one you inherited?  We had no Christmas pudding on the table.
  13. Do you have any other special Christmas foods? What are they? Not that I can think of.
  14. Do you give home-made food/craft for gifts at Christmas?  Sometimes I give fruitcake and sometimes various children or adults make cookies to give. Click the link to see some of the gift cookies.
  15. Do you return to your family for Xmas or vice versa?  Our family is mostly in Atlanta. One son  and granddaughter live in other cities. This will be the first Christmas she hasn’t spent with us in 5 years. He is living far away in Seattle so often doesn’t get here. Our parents are no longer living so this is “home”.
  16. Is your Christmas celebrated differently from your childhood ones? If yes, how does it differ?  When I was growing up we went to both grandparents house, my maternal grandparents in the afternoon and my paternal grandparents at night. Aunts, uncles and cousins would be there. Food and gifts were eaten and exchanged along with conversation and laughter. We were in Detroit so we usually had snow for Christmas. Here we are more likely to have rain..  We’re the grandparents now so our children and grandchildren come here. only one daughter has in-laws in the city so the others do not make visits to two houses on Christmas day.
  17. How do you celebrate Xmas with your friends? Lunch? Pre-Xmas outings? Drop-ins?  I don’t have any friends that I celebrate Christmas with. The closest would be my sister and her husband. We go by there during the holiday and they come by here on Christmas day after dinner at her daughter’s house.
  18. Do you decorate your house with lights? A little or a lot?  We never do and never have decorated with lights. Click to see a short post about lights in my Christmas.
  19. Is your neighborhood a “Xmas lights” tour venue? Our neighborhood is far from a tour venue. There are very few lights in this area.
  20. Does your family attend Carols by Candlelight singalongs/concerts? Where? There are Christmas concerts at the various schools my grandchildren attend and sometimes we attend.  This year I went to a French caroling concert at one school. If we go to a Christmas church service there will be carols to sing along with there.
  21. Have any of your Christmases been spent camping (unlikely for our northern-hemisphere friends)?  Although my youngest son and my husband received boy scout Polar Bear Badges for winter camping, none of us have done any Christmas camping.
  22. Is Christmas spent at your home, with family or at a holiday venue?  Here at home.
  23. Do you have snow for Christmas where you live? There was a snow scare one year and everybody spent the night with us but since we have left Michigan we have not had a white Christmas.  It’s raining outside right now with no predictions of snow. The temp is 55 F right now on December 16.
  24. Do you have a Christmas tree every year?  We have a living tree every year. We tend to wait until the last minute to get it and put it up a few days before Christmas. When we lived in the country my husband would cut ours or we would buy a $5 scotch pine from a roadside stand. Now that we are in the big city we buy a pine and it costs more than $5.
  25. Is your Christmas tree a live tree (potted/harvested) or an imitation?  Click to see more about the trees I have had.
  26. Do you have special Xmas tree decorations?  We save the decorations from year to year so some are from when my own children were small and some were bought and some were made by my grandchildren. I wish I had a few from my mother’s tree or her parents tree but those disappeared long ago.
  27. Which is more important to your family, Christmas or Thanksgiving?  The meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas are identical. This year we ate at one of my daughters for Thanksgiving. New Years Eve is also a family celebration with everybody who doesn’t have plans sleeping over here. The grandkids consider the New Year sleepover perhaps a higher point than Christmas. Click to read something about my Thanksgiving memories.