It’s been a while (over four months) since I’ve posted anything here. Not coincidentally, the last post was written shortly before the start of the Fall semester. But the semester is over now, grades were submitted on the morning of Christmas Eve. Nik and Maia had arrived the night before, and the rest of the week was filled with family Christmas celebrations. But now there is a a brief pause before another trip to the Dominican Republic with Calvin students, followed immediately by the start of second semester. So there is a moment of opportunity to write again.
Some of you will recall the many Christmas “letters” Penny and I sent over the years. Penny was the author of most of them, although I often served as a sort of contributing editor. This post reflects a bit on our first Christmas as a married couple, and all the Christmases since. And since I didn’t get around to writing a more traditional Christmas letter this year, this will have to do.
I recently discovered a pile of old letters Penny and I had written and that Penny’s mother had saved. Most of them were from the year we spent in Heidelberg, Germany, as Fulbright scholars. Each of these letters had a sequential number written on it in Penny’s mother’s distinctive, small, barely legible cursive handwriting. Letter number 13 was written over the 25th, 26th, and 27th of December, 1990.
In Germany, the 26th of December is known as Zweite Weihnachten (Second Christmas). It is a public holiday in Germany, just like the 25th. Many Germans celebrate with their immediate family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then with more extended family or friends on the 26th.
In 1990, we were invited to spend Second Christmas with the Walz family. The Walzes had served as our host family for our first few weeks in the country. We spent the afternoon and evening enjoying some good food, playing games, and lighting the candles on their Christmas tree. One detail I hadn’t remembered until reading our letter was that Penny had gotten a headache while were were there, and took some unfamiliar German medicine, which converted the headache into nausea before both eventually subsided.
In our 1990 Christmas letter, both of us commented on how nice it was that Advent didn’t coincide with the end of a semester. (The semester at the University of Heidelberg ran mid-October through mid-February.) Our Christmas shopping had been completed a couple weeks early, and we spent the quiet days before Christmas relaxing and making various Christmas goodies to share with the Walzes and with some friends from the recently reunified East Germany who were coming to visit for New Years.
Perhaps next year I’ll get to enjoy a more leisurely Advent again, since I’m planning to retire from Calvin University in June.
**
This year we had a different sort of second Christmas – our second without Penny.
I’m sure she would be happy to see that many of the family traditions continue. Christmas trees, gifting, food, games, and family have remained key elements of the Pruim Christmas celebrations.
For years we did our family gifting on St Nicholas Day (December 6). Our St Nicholas Day celebrations became less elaborate as the kids got older and it was no longer possible to gather on St. Nicholas Day. But even in recent years, Penny enjoyed finding small gifts (usually including chocolate and toothbrushes for everyone), and we enlisted the Amazon elves to help us deliver St. Nicholas Day surprises, even though I don’t think we ever tried to add to our delivery instructions, “Please unbox and put in the shoes left by the door.”
In 1990, I found a small, table-top artificial Christmas tree in a Heidelberg department store. We decorated the little tree with a few handmade ornaments. That tree served as our Christmas tree through the rest of graduate school. While we were living in Providence, we began our annual day-afer-Thanksgiving hunt for a live Christmas tree. That tradition continues, but we put the tree in Andrew and Hannah’s house this year. Once again a small artificial tree graced our living room this year. This year’s annual ornament gifts were repurposed jewelry that I had purchased last January while in the Dominican Republic.
Our children were never introduced to Santa as anything but a silly holiday story, and they have been active participants in gift-giving for as long as they can remember. Games and gifting had an interesting juxtaposition this year when Nik, Maia, and Jason discovered that they had given each other the same game (Slay the Spire). They celebrated by playing it until 6:30 am, honoring another Pruim family tradition: staying up late.
Most of the rest of Christmas week was an alternation between eating and playing games of various sorts.
I had again made cinnamon stars, a traditional German Christmas cookie that we made for the first time in Heidelberg, following the recipe in a book that Frau Walz had given us. Other favorites included homemade pizza, omelets, pancakes, and a ham dinner with mashed potatoes, veggies, and biscuits.
The biggest difference, of course, is that Penny is no longer here to share in these traditions, to invent new ones, or to retell stories from Christmases past.
Christmas two years ago was a delicate balancing act with Penny trying to do and enjoy as much as she could of what she was pretty sure would be her last Christmas without exhausting her limited supply of energy. On Christmas day, Penny attended church for the last time. She had the idea that we should sing a duet to open the service – probably the first time we had sung since her cancer diagnosis. Too weak to stand, she sat on a stool as we sang a version of What Child is This?/Child of the Poor.
The next couple of days were more difficult: a trip to the clinic for IV fluids and nausea meds, no food for 48 hours, and the start of radiation treatments on December 28.
Despite her health issues, Penny still managed to prepare little gifts and cards for a number of her friends with the following note attached to each one:
Hoping you can enjoy some sweet tea moments
reflecting on how very much we have to be
thankful for, including such supporting
friendships over so many years.
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New Year
PennyHoping, reflecting, thankful, friendships.
Those words seem to fit as well this year as they did then.
Wishing you all a blessed New Year in 2026.