Anticipating Christmas

There was a time before door-buster sales, Black Friday, Gray Thursday, Christmas in July, 24-hour advertising, piped-in carols, gift catalogs and decorations that appear in the fall. Despite the lack of constant reminders, the days leading up to Christmas in Globeville (and in America before World War II) were filled with hope and anticipation.
For months, women would set aside a little in their food budget to afford the walnuts, honey, raisins, and poppyseed to make potica, kolache, kuchen, blini or the other ethnic treats that reminded immigrants of home. Obtaining oplatek, a wafer impressed with religious scenes and eaten before Wigilia, (the Christmas dinner) required a conversation with the pastor of St. Joseph's Polish Church or a request (well ahead of time) from a relative in Poland. Baking family favorites was a day-long event that involved helpful children and the telling of family stories in the process.
And there were choir practices, play rehearsals and special scripture readings during Advent.  Traditions from Eastern Europe, such as setting an extra table setting for an unexpected visitor or to remember someone who died, were preserved. Hymns, legends and symbols from the Old Country were maintained in church services and lodge events.
Children from large immigrant families didn't expect a lot of toys, and were likely to receive practical things like socks, sweaters, or shoes. Ed Wargin longed for a bike, but got a donkey because the animal could transport building supplies for Ed's father, and June Jackson remembers the delight of receiving the doll her older sister Helen had outgrown. Many old timers fondly recall the sack of hard candy distributed at church, probably donated by grocers Carl Gerhardt or John Yelenick. And a Christmas tree was a genuine treat, maybe purchased at Bomareto's, fresh, fragrant and decorated with strings of popcorn, lights, glass ornaments and tinsel.
Our current preparations for Christmas seem to involve the non-stop activities of shopping, wrapping, eating, attending multiple gatherings, texting and posting. Yet there are many of us who miss the richness and flavor of those earlier times.
Here's wishing you some memories of a simpler time as we await the birth of Jesus.

Potica or Povitica

Kolache

Oplatek

Blini

45th Avenue Pharmacy

This photo used with written permission from Lauren Summers, grandson of Carl Gerhardt

Ex-Lax, ice cream, fountain service, Coca Cola, 7-Up - the details in the photo of Heck’s Pharmacy on 45th and Sherman tell the story of another era in Globeville.  Unlike the quick, one-stop retail shop of today, the drugstore looks like the kind of place you might like to hang out. Lydia Gerhardt Heck remembered, "My husband worked at the drug store on the corner, and we lived next door. The depression years down in Globeville were very hard and it was nip and tuck for a few years. When liquor came back in 1932, he got an alcohol license and that helped him pay the rent and kept him going until the war. During the war, everybody went to work, made big money and spent money and then he did OK."

Bottom photo used with written permission from Lauren Summers. The man with the hat is Carl Gerhardt, Harry Heck’s father-in-law.
Top photo, the same location in 2010, Mary Lou Egan

Christmas Memories

Larry Summers is the grandson of Carl Gerhardt, proprietor of Gerhardt Mercantile, and remembers Christmas as a youngster during the Depression. “Mrs. Metzger was a Sunday School teacher who organized the children's program on Christmas Eve at St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church. Everyone had a few lines to say and some was in German. Afterward, we each got a little bag with an orange and a pyramid-looking chocolate with cream inside. I think Grandpa Gerhardt and Mr. Schaffer probably supplied most of the stuff inside the bag."

Globeville's Poles would celebrate with a special dinner on Christmas Eve known as wigilia with mushroom soup, boiled potatoes (kartofle), pickled herring (sledzie), fried fish, pierogi, beans and sauerkraut (groch i kapusta). A lighted candle in the windows symbolized the hope that the Christ child, in the form of a stranger, would come and an extra place was set at the table for the unexpected guest.

Southern Slavs enjoyed homemade wine and delicacies not eaten at other times of the year, such as smoked meats or potica (pronounced po-tee-sa), a Slovenian nut bread.

Using the old Julian calendar, Globeville's Orthodox Slavs observed Christmas on January 7th. Elaborate church services, feasting and visits with family remained the same when the switch was made to the Gregorian calendar in 1968.

Bea Trevino's Hispanic Christmas traditions are those her family observed growing up in New Mexico. "For Christmas and Easter we make meat empanadas. For New Years a lot of us make a chicken mole, or we make menudo with hominy. In New Mexico, we do hominy with ham or pork."

Commemorative Christmas plate, a gift of the Gerhardt Mercantile. Photo Larry Summers.