Tag: christmas

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A Slideshow of Christmas Memories

By Christian Begeman

The Christmas season is special to me for a lot of reasons. One reason is the memories. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that this time of year brings about a mood of deep reflection. Maybe it’s the songs, maybe it’s the snow, or maybe it is simply the reminder of another year gone that gets me strolling down memory lane.

One of my favorite activities of Christmas past was when Dad would get out the slide projector and set it up downstairs. Mom would pop the popcorn on the stove and top it with real butter (one of the benefits of running a small dairy farm). If we were really lucky, she would also make her patented chocolate malts. I’ve yet to encounter any malt at any restaurant that can top hers. With goodies in hand, we’d all gather around the wood-burning stove while Dad started showing us photos of places and times long gone.

One of the best presents from my folks was a $100-plus Bogen tripod that I received as a poor college student in the early ’90s. It was at this time that I discovered my interest in actually taking photos instead of just looking at them. The folks had helped me buy a used Minolta Maxxum film camera the year before in conjunction with my birthday. It was a pretty expensive gift and I still remember Dad looking me in the eye and saying,”You better use this now. Don’t let it be a wasted gift.” Or something along those lines. Nothing like a wise father’s words to add some motivation, right?

Back to the tripod: I had asked for this as a gift because I wanted to learn to shoot photos in low light situations without a flash. My first attempts with the new tripod were shots of our Christmas tree and decorations. It was magical to capture the scene as I saw it in real life and not blasted out by a flash. Those photos are still special to me — not just because of the gift but because it allowed me to capture the Christmas setting of my childhood home and keep it intact in a photograph for all time. Plus, I still use the tripod to this day.

This year I will see my 40th Christmas, God willing. It will be a new experience as I will be visiting my oldest brother and his family in California. We might get to go whale watching if the weather permits… which I admit, makes me about as excited as a six-year-old on Christmas Eve who knows he has the biggest present under the tree.

Over the years, I have celebrated Christmas with family and I’ve spent a Christmas or two on my own. I’ve celebrated Christmas on the other side of the equator in steamy Africa and experienced the biggest chills ever to run up my spine while singing the Hallelujah Chorus with the Concert Chorale in college. Every year seems to bring new joys just as every year a few familiar faces and loved ones no longer celebrate with us. All these blessings are simply an important reminder to live gratefully. Every good photo I happen to capture is a gift. That is why I love to share them. Every day I get out of bed is another gift. Every breath, every heartbeat… all gifts. It shouldn’t take Christmas to remind me of that, but that is often what does it.

I have heard it said that the holiday season is the season of photography. I guess I don’t totally disagree with that thought. Photos of”old times gone” and new photos of”the happy now” are and will be priceless. However, my hope is that this is truly the season of love, peace and family instead of simply photos and memories. I also hope that this year, the real reason for celebrating Christmas can be remembered. After all, on that one starry night so long ago in Bethlehem, they didn’t have cameras, but they did have the ultimate gift lying in front of them wrapped in swaddling clothes. The wonderful thing is… so do we. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.


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The Bottum Line on Wisdom

By Bernie Hunhoff
Joseph “Jody” Bottum has become the international expert on South Dakota Christmas, and that sounds like one of the best writing gigs ever.
Readers of our paper magazine will recall that we told Bottum’s story in our Nov/Dec issue. The Pierre native was making quite a name for himself on the East Coast as a prolific writer and essayist for the Atlantic, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and other top publications.
But he and his wife wanted to give geographic roots to their teenage daughter, Faith, and Jody hoped to explore new writing opportunities so they moved home to South Dakota — to a big old wood-frame house that was the childhood home to Leslie Jensen, who became governor of South Dakota in 1936.
Last year he wrote a Kindle e-book called Dakota Christmas about his remembrances of early holidays, and this year he published The Christmas Plains, also a reflection on the spirituality of the plains.
Bottum also has a new Kindle book you can buy for 99 cents titled The Wise Guy. I read it last weekend. It’s an entertaining yarn about a community of modern day outlaws and thieves who are compelled to perform 12 robberies at Christmas-time — a blend of The Sting and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Bottum says some of the characters are modeled after people he’s known in Pierre. Who, exactly, in the political town of Pierre shares traits with common criminals and thieves? He declined to answer officially. But he did acknowledge that a distinguished old lady in The Wise Guy has a bit of his grandmother. She imparts some wisdom to the thieves.
Wisdom, Bottum told me, doesn’t seem like such rare commodity in South Dakota. “When I was living on the East Coast, I knew a lot of smart people but I find that I find a lot more wise people back here on the plains.”
I thought of Bottum’s comment as I watched the youth of Yankton at a Christmas concert last night in Yankton. The beautiful boys and girls all seemed very smart, very talented. But how do we, as a community, also raise them to be wise?
If Jody Bottum knows anything — and I’m betting that some of his grandmother has rubbed off on him — then we’re on the right track. Raise them as South Dakotans — with big doses of nature, church, community and family. Let them pick pasque flowers and smell mountain pines and wander trails and canoe the Big Sioux. Show them how to catch a walleye, find a mushroom, ride a goat, or whatever else you yourself might know.
Teach them to be a real South Dakotan and a lot of the other things must just follow along as nicely as can be.
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Picture-Perfect Cookies

By Laura Andrews

Some of our most cherished holiday traditions date back to pre-Christian times. After reading in our December e-newsletter about julenek, an old Norwegian custom still practiced at Trygve Trooien’s farm near Astoria, Leah Benson of Brookings told us about her family’s favorite Christmas tradition — baking and eating springerle.

Benson has researched this ancient German Christmas cookie and teaches classes about it at medieval reenactment fairs. The origins of springerle, which means”little knight” or”jumping horse,” go back centuries to a region of Europe once known as Swabia, now part of southwestern Germany.”The legend is that back then, the peasants were so poor that they could not afford to give gifts. To celebrate the winter solstice they would carve the gift they wanted to give into a piece of dough, let it dry, and then bake it and give it to their loved one. Most of the carvings were things of nature, animals, plants, etc. because they worshipped Mother Earth at that time,” Benson said.”The dough in ancient times used hartshorn for leavening, which actually is a white powder that comes from the inside of a deer’s antler. Today of course we use baking powder.”

Benson learned about these cookies from her grandmother.”She always made these cookies with a special rolling pin that was handed down through the generations. I started collecting these rolling pins when I was forty.” Her grandmother’s recipe creates a very thick, mixer-challenging dough. Rolling the dough with a springerle rolling pin or pressing it with a carved mold creates pictures on the cookies — some more intricate than others.”Most of the modern rolling pins have basic simple nature designs, although I do have one very expensive one with the life of Christ carved into its 24 panels.”

The unbaked cookies must dry for 24 hours. This helps preserve the pictures through the baking process. The cookies bake at a low temperature for 45 minutes, resulting in a hard, pale-colored treat perfect for dunking in coffee. Many families make these at Thanksgiving and save them until Christmas. This allows the flavor to develop. Benson’s family eats them right away because they prefer a softer texture.

Springerle-Making Tips

  • Place a kitchen towel over the back of the mixer so you don’t end up with flour and powdered sugar all over the kitchen.
  • The size of the eggs will determine how much flour you need to use.
  • If you don’t have a springerle pin, roll the dough to about º thick and cut in 2″ by 1 1/2″ rectangles, then dry and bake as directed.
  • The traditional cookie is very hard — good for dunking or as teething biscuits. Rolling them thicker or baking them less will result in a softer cookie. But beware of rolling them too thick — it results in cookies that are”humped up and cracked and kind of ugly,” according to Benson.

Springerle

4 medium eggs, separated
1 lb. powdered sugar
3 cups flour with 1/4 teaspoon baking powder added
1/8 teaspoon anise oil extract, or flavoring of your choice

Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites in a large bowl until very stiff peaks form, as one would for meringue. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks about five minutes, until light and lemon colored. Add the beaten yolks to the egg whites and whip for about three minutes. Sift powdered sugar gradually into egg mixture, add anise oil, then mix flour and baking powder in slowly, until the dough is very stiff, smooth and velvety to the touch. You may need to remove the dough from the mixer and knead the last of the flour in by hand.

Divide the dough into 3 or 4 pieces. On a well-floured surface, roll each piece out about 3/8 inch thick using a regular rolling pin. Then, using a springerle pin, roll across the dough one last time to create imprints. Cut the cookies apart with a sharp knife. With a thin metal spatula, move the cookies onto ungreased cookie sheets, placing them close together but not touching. Cover cookies with a light kitchen towel. Allow them to dry for 12 hours, then flip over to let the underside dry for another 12 hours.

Flip cookies right side up and bake at 250 degrees for about 45 minutes. They may turn tan on the bottom, but should not brown. Store cookies for several weeks to bring out the anise flavor or enjoy right away.

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Hot Springs Santa

Kids in Hot Springs call Franz Brown”Santa” all year round, whether he’s dressed in red or not. His jolly smile and naturally white whiskers are distinctive in all four seasons.

Brown has modeled as Santa for Oregon artist Tom Browning for many years. They met through Brown’s work as a writer and photographer at Southwest Art magazine. His image appears on plates, shopping bags, cards, pillows, cookie tins and prints that end up around the world. Browning photographs Brown in various situations and then creates paintings from the images.

“It’s something positive,” he says.”The process is fun, it’s kind of a play thing. We have shot Santa golfing and swimming. It’s fun to see the reaction to people seeing Santa on the beach in summer.”

Brown is also an artist, and started painting seriously when he relocated to Hot Springs in 2003. He began painting Santa himself after someone asked why Browning never created a prairie Santa. Browning was more interested in East or West Coast themes, so Brown set up a camera and photographed himself to begin a series of his own paintings relating Santa to the prairie.”I think Santa has a special connection to the Lakota because generosity is a highly esteemed value of the Lakota,” Brown says.

Besides looking the part, Brown also revels in the Christmas spirit.”I’ve always enjoyed Christmas. It’s always a special time,” he says. One theme in his Santa paintings is that gift giving doesn’t have to be material.”Giving comfort, love or companionship can be gifts, too,” Brown says.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Winter Wonderland at Falls Park

The billion-year-old pink quartzite formation that creates the waterfalls of our largest city is hard to top, but see what a quarter-million holiday lights can do as accents. That’s the attraction of Winter Wonderland in Sioux Falls’ Falls Park. Photos by Nancy Tesdall. You can see more of her work at www.throughmylens-tez.blogspot.com.

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Christmas Spirit of the Hills

By Katie Hunhoff

Mike Welchynski’s Spirit of the Hills Wildlife Sanctuary celebrates the season each December by hosting a living nativity in Spearfish each evening from Dec. 18-24 in the sanctuary’s barn. Guests are welcome to mingle with the animals while enjoying creamy hot chocolate.

The sanctuary is home for a variety of species, from African lions to potbellied pigs. Around 60 animals and 20 people comprise the cast for the Christmas nativity, and several of those actors and animals appeared in the original Passion Play that helped bring Welchynski to Spearfish.

For many, a visit to the sanctuary is a holiday tradition. “People can come to know the animals by name and love them, and they were someone else’s throwaway,” Welchynski says.

The story behind the animal sanctuary is as touching as any holiday story we’ve heard. We published a feature article about the sanctuary in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of South Dakota Magazine. Paul Higbee, the author, lives in Spearfish and his wife, Janet, was a volunteer at the sanctuary. In 1998, Welchynski lived in Canada, his home country, providing care to people with disabilities and running a small animal sanctuary in Manitoba. Then he met husband and wife Johanna Meier and Guido Della Vecchia of Spearfish. They were on tour in Canada with their Black Hills Passion Play. The couple told Mike if he wanted to expand his sanctuary they would donate land in South Dakota because they admired what he was doing. The Meier family had property south of Spearfish that included pastureland, pined hills, a deep Black Hills gulch, a stream, pond and a cabin.

Welchynski agreed it was the perfect setting. “I came to Spearfish and smelled the pines, and I knew this was a place that would sustain me physically and emotionally,” he told Higbee. He moved to Spearfish in 1999 and began preparations for Spirit of the Hills. Around 300 animals live at the sanctuary, and he plans on taking care of them for the rest of his life, without pay. He uses donations to pay for food and care for the animals and is grateful for volunteers who help with manual labor.

“I want this place to be a permanent institution for those kinds of animals, and I want it to be here long after I die,” Welchynski told us. He also believes it is important to educate the thousands of kids who visit the sanctuary on field trips. He worries that more and more youth are isolating themselves from the lessons that only nature holds. Although Welchynski rarely discusses his past, he grew up in rural Manitoba in a situation where, at times, his best option “was to go to sleep with the sheep and pigs, or out in the woods for a few days.”

And today Welchynski is giving back to nature, a place he once found refuge. The hardest part of running the sanctuary is relying on the uncertainty of donations to care for the animals. If you’d like to make a donation this holiday season, or get directions to the live nativity, visit www.spiritofthehillssanctuary.org or call (877) 761-7754.

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Aberdeen’s Living Christmas Tree

Custom choral risers stacked in a Christmas tree shape were built in 1988 for Aberdeen’s first Living Christmas Tree performance. Singers have been caroling from the 20-foot structure strewn with garland and colored lights ever since. Chad Coppess took these photos at the December 1st performance. Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Have Yourself a Crafty Little Christmas

By Fran Hill

Once upon a time, I thought I liked to be crafty. I made wreathes and rag dolls and stitched ornaments, glued bits and bobbles, painted and sanded. But something was always off. Instead of handmade charm, my results always seemed that they would be more at home on the Island of Misfit Junk. I was never completely pleased with what I accomplished. So, I gave it up.

These days, I will occasionally pull out the glue gun and bring some inner vision to life. Sometimes, it works for me. Sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t get hung up on it. Mostly, I stick to simple crafts that don’t take a lot of time, money or thought. That is where these Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments come into play. With minimal ingredients, fuss and muss, I have a little handmade something that (in my opinion) actually looks better when it is a little imperfect.

The ornaments can be a fragrant addition to the Christmas tree, a seasonal air freshener in the car, or decorated with paint, glitter or markers as gift tags. I get lazy and just use one cookie cutter, but any variety of shapes would work. (Hearts make a nice Valentine’s Day surprise, too.) They are simple enough that even the little people can have a hand in the crafting. Best of all? Unlike baking and decorating cookies, there’s no holiday calories in crafting.

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

Combine equal parts ground cinnamon and applesauce together. I used my mixer, but if I would have done it by hand, I could have counted it as an upper body workout…at least for my stirring arm.

Roll the dough out to about 1/4″ thickness. You may need to dust the surface with a little additional cinnamon to keep the dough from sticking while rolling. Use the cookie cutter of your choice to cut ornaments from the dough. With a straw, cut a hole in the ornament for hanging ribbon.

Arrange ornaments on cookie sheets lined with parchment or silicone baking mats and bake at 200 degrees for 2-4 hours (time will depend on thickness of the dough). Rotate cookie sheets (turning front to back and switching racks in the oven) every hour or so. Alternatively, arrange ornaments on parchment or wax paper and allow to dry at room temperature for 2 to 3 days.

Thread lengths of ribbon (I just used curling ribbon, but silk or satin ribbon is pretty.) through the pre-cut hole and tie as hanger.

Fran Hill has been blogging about food at On My Plate since October of 2006. She, her husband and their dog, Ace, reside near Colome.


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One Contentious Cookie

By Laura Johnson Andrews

For me, the holiday season is all about baking…and eating. Christmas wouldn’t be complete without certain foods — crispy, wafer-thin sugar cookies, krumkake, rosettes, lefse, and most important of all, pebern¯dder, or peppernuts.

But which peppernuts to make? In The Great Scandinavian Baking Book, Beatrice Ojakangas describes peppernuts as”a cookie that starts arguments! Every Dane insists that the only person who really knew how to make them was Mother, Grandma or Aunt Brigitte.” I had two Danish grandmothers with wildly different peppernut styles. I always felt a little disloyal to Grandma Maridell Mark for preferring Grandma Rachel’s white pepper and ginger cookies to her molasses-based models.

After consulting six different cookbooks, I found 12 recipes for peppernuts. None of them were the same, and none of them resembled the crunchy little cookies that showed up in Grandma Johnson’s kitchen every December. There were recipes that called for pulverized filberts, anise, sorghum, lemon rind, eggs, allspice, goose fat, chopped almonds — some didn’t include pepper at all! Even within my mother’s family of Viborg Danes, there is no agreement on how peppernuts should be made. I’ve included her great-aunt Nina (pronounced nynah) Mark’s recipe below, and her Aunt Marilyn has promised to send another once she tracks it down. Grandma Maridell’s version was different yet. Please feel free to share your family’s version in the comments section.

The Germans and the Dutch also have variations on this cookie theme, pfeffernusse and pepernoten. The Danes call them pebern¯dder. Some recipes make a cookie so hard that they must be dunked in coffee to be eaten, but mine are easily chewed, even by my false-toothed father. Although the dough can be a strain on one’s mixer, forming the cookies is a snap — especially if you have small children around who can be coaxed into making snakes out of the dough, as one would with play dough.

Peppernuts

Recipe from Rachel Skoven Johnson

1 cup white syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter or other shortening
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons white pepper
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
5 cups or more of flour

Combine white syrup, sugar, butter and sour cream. Add white pepper and ginger. Stir soda into flour. Slowly mix in flour, a cup or so at a time, until the batter is quite stiff. Be prepared — your mixer may struggle making these cookies.

On a lightly flour-covered surface, take handfuls of dough and roll them into snakes about Ω inch around or so. Cut the snakes into 1/2 inch bits. Bake at 390 degrees for 6-8 minutes or until browned.

Pebern¯dder

Recipe by Nina Mark from the Viborg Centennial Cookbook

2 1/2 cups dark Karo syrup
1/2 cup molasses
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter

Heat and cool above ingredients. Add:

2 tablespoons warm milk with 1 teaspoon baking soda mixed in
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
2 eggs
10 cups flour (stir in six cups, then add the remaining flour one cup at a time, stirring thoroughly)

Roll dough into small strips. Cut strips in small pieces. Bake at 275 degrees for 45 minutes.

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Juicy Bits

By Fran Hill

Colorful, hand-addressed envelopes fill my mailbox this time of year as Christmas cards and letters sail in from friends and family across the country. Some are just the card, like a poke that says,”Hey! Even though we don’t keep in touch, just wanted to let you know we were thinking of you this holiday season.” Some have a few hastily scrawled personal lines with sincere wishes or inside jokes. There are family photos, a few vacation shots, and even the ever amusing picture of a pet in a Santa hat. However, the season just wouldn’t be complete without THE Christmas letter.

You know the one. THE Christmas letter is from the”Perfect Family.” It usually includes a photo greeting card of the entire group with glossy hair and matching sweaters. The chatty letter tells of new cars, bigger houses and elaborate vacations. Their children eat their vegetables, have never had a cavity, get straight A’s, clean their rooms, and are student of the month every month of the year. Dad just got another promotion at work while maintaining his perfect golf game. Mom has broken through the corporate glass ceiling and still bakes cookies for every PTA event and fundraiser. Goldie, the faithful Labrador retriever, has never, ever pooped on the floor.

If you are like me, you read those letters and roll your eyes. They are an excellent form of comic relief during the holiday season. Peering at the photo, you search for a sign of the true story — the juicy bits. Are they wearing turtlenecks this year to cover up the neck tattoo that Johnny got during his drunken trip to Mexico? Is Dad’s arm around Suzy not just a sign of affection, but an attempt to hold her back from the biker dude that has been rumbling into the driveway at all hours of the day and night? Mom’s credit cards are maxed out with ugly matching sweater purchases, and those cookies? Tubes of dough are her best friend.

It is natural to want to present ourselves in the best light possible. It is great to celebrate accomplishments and awards. I love hearing about the success of my friends and family. But, I know life isn’t all perfect. Some of us fall. It’s OK. It’s normal. Sometimes, there is even….gasp….scandal. Juicy bits are OK, too. That’s life. Imperfect life is the reason for the season. The birth of Christ was God’s gift to an imperfect world. Christmas really is a celebration of the juicy bits.

Green Salad with Pomegranate and Mandarin is all about the juicy bits, too. It is really a perfect winter salad with hearty iceberg lettuce, seasonal pomegranate, and succulent mandarin orange segments. A balsamic dressing is a tangy addition that brightens the sweetness of the fruits. This salad is also something to celebrate.

Green Salad with Pomegranate and Mandarin

2 cups iceberg or romaine lettuce
2 green onions, finely chopped
2 celery ribs, sliced
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
1/2 cup mandarin orange section
1/2 cup balsamic vinaigrette (see below)

Mix all greens together in a large salad bowl, adding more lettuce if need be. Add pomegranate seeds and mandarin orange pieces. Drizzle with balsamic vinaigrette to taste. Toss lightly. Serves 4.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper


Whisk all ingredients together and refrigerate until needed. Re-shake in container or stir before serving. Yields 3/4 cup dressing.

Fran Hill has been blogging about food at On My Plate since October of 2006. She, her husband and two dogs reside near Colome.