Claude Williams: Christmas was a time of bounty

By Cara L. Dempski

GLENWOOD CITY — Celebrations have one thing in common all over the world: food.

Special occasions are marked by special dishes to eat, or magnificent meals. Holidays usually mean cooks and bakers make items that are not eaten at other times during the year.

Treats like cookies, pies, and cakes are greeted with delight. Meals involving crown roasts, prime rib, duck, turkey and goose make holiday celebrants’ mouths water, as do side dishes like jellied cranberries, sweet potatoes, and dressing.

Claude Williams, age 95 of Glenwood City, said he enjoyed the gifts he received as a child. He admitted there was not always a great deal of money,  but there were always plenty of packages to open come Christmas morning.

Those packages could include anything from toys and sleds, to clothes, to even guns one year.

He also loved the food on the table when it came time to eat Christmas dinner with his family. He laughed when he recalled no one ever left the table hungry.

Williams grew up in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, but moved to the Glenwood City area as an adult with a young family. He said he has fond memories of the holiday season in both locations, and the gifts he both gave and received, but will always remember the food of his childhood.

The food

Williams said the weeks leading up to Christmas were busy ones in the kitchen of his childhood home. His mother would start baking cookies, bread and pies almost as soon as the Thanksgiving feast was cleared from the table. There were plenty of treats to snack on throughout the season leading up to Christmas day.

Between the main dish of “some sort of fowl,” side dishes of potatoes, gravy, vegetables, and dressing, and dessert of pies, cookies, and cake, the family table fairly groaned under the weight of the family feast.

“Looking back on it now, (Christmas now) is not as exciting as it was then,” he said. “My one aunt and uncle, and cousins, were always at our place on Christmas. We would go there for the new year. We had a big table, and we needed it.”

Williams laughed and said by the time his mother was done with all of her cooking and baking, there usually was not any counter space left for anything else that might come along. He said the kitchen was looked as if it was completely made of food.

Even with the whole family – and a large one, at that – in attendance, no one suffered for lack of good food on such an occasion.

“We never went away from the table hungry,” Williams said. “There was no limit to eating what you wanted, so everyone just dug in. Mom was also a great baker, so everything we had was scrumptious.”

The Glenwood man said his favorite dishes on the table were always the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy.

The gifts

While Williams said there was not always a great deal of money to spend on gifts, there were always plenty of parcels under the tree for everyone come Christmas morning.

“There wasn’t so much of any one thing there, but we always had lots of packages to open for Christmas,” he explained. “Whatever they were, clothes or other things we might need.”

He remembers there being lights around the house to decorate for the season, and the gifts were always nestled under a nice tree the whole family worked to decorate in the weeks leading to the holiday.

Sometimes he and his brothers would get skis – cross country, not downhill – which were useful for winter travel and sometimes just to have fun. He always remembers getting a sled on one occasion. It was an item the whole family could use, whether for winter fun or to haul things from one place to another.

Williams’ father enjoyed ice skating, and taught his children how to skate. He insisted Williams and his brothers be skaters as well, something the young Claude seemed to be less fond of than other activities, and provided the children with hockey skates one year for the holiday.

Another year, the Glenwood man’s father took up hunting, something Williams and his brothers envied, so much so that they asked for guns that year for Christmas.

Santa Claus did not disappoint, bringing both boys guns, that while not large, achieved their objective. They showed up under the family tree inside gun cases Christmas morning.

“They weren’t big guns,” Williams explained, “but they did the job for us. We were very happy when we went to hunt pheasants to have our own guns.”

The whole family enjoyed the gift Williams’ younger brother received one year: a bicycle. He said he got a chuckle out of the brother needing to learn how to ride the bike at the age of 14 or 15, but was glad to have the bicycle around the house.

“It was something we could all ride, and it was nice to have it around,” he said.

Overall, Williams has some nice memories of the holidays both as a child, and as an adult, and said he is once again looking forward to Christmas this year.