Minnesota Christmas Tree My father told us many stories of his early life in Minnesota. One story that I particularly loved was the story of the Minnesota Christmas tree. This story embodies the spirit of a Finnish immigrant family and the hardships they endured on the Minnesota (pronounced MEEN- a-SOOO-ta) prairie. To begin at the beginning, my grandparents, August and Kaisa, emigrated from the forests of Karelia to the small frontier town of Plummer, located in the Red River Valley in northwestern Minnesota. Why did they leave their forest homeland to come to the American prairie? Apparently August’s family was quite wealthy, so it could not have been to escape from poverty. The best explanation we heard was that August was about to be conscripted into the Russian Czar’s army. He decided to leave Finland to avoid being drafted. He wanted to take our grandmother with him, and she agreed to go, on one condition – he had to pay passage for her four sisters as well. The bargain struck, Kaisa and August boarded a ship in Helsinki and headed to Ellis Island. Lured by the promise of rich farm land, they then made their way by train to Minnesota. Would our grandparents from the coniferous forests of Karelia have felt at home on the Minnesota prairie? The flat, endless sea of grasses must have seemed very strange and very far away from their homeland. They tried to make the best of it -- what else could they do? They bought a piece of land, put up a small dwelling, and tried to grow crops. They were not very successful, however, because they could never drain the land properly. My father told us their land became a sea of mud in the spring, making it difficult, if not impossible, to prepare the soil and plant their crops. A unique relationship between climate and geography makes the area where they settled particularly susceptible to flooding. The Red River flows slowly northward within a broad, gently sloping flood plain. The spring thaw progresses from south to north. The snow and river ice melts in the south in spring while the downstream river channel to the north remains frozen. These conditions favor massive spring flooding of the Red River. The continental climate in Minnesota can be harsh. A continental climate means it is blasted hot in summer and bone-chilling cold in winter. The wind is a constant presence on the level, empty prairie. Temperatures as low as -30 degrees F to -40 degrees F are common. I remember my father telling stories about how he slid on the ice in his bare feet, and how he could throw a glass of water into the air and watch it instantly freeze in the air on the way to the ground. Plummer was still a frontier town in the early 1900s. My father said there were still Native Americans, the Ojibwa, who lived in the area. They often came to their house to sell them fresh fish. They were the last of the tribes who had once made their living on the prairies, hunting buffalo and other animals for food and clothing. Despite their harsh subsistence life in a strange land, August and Kaisa had five children. But one tragedy after another struck the family. The youngest son died after a hernia operation. My father also developed a hernia, but luckily he healed without having an operation. August, perhaps partly because of the hardships they had to endure, became an alcoholic. Kaisa, weakened by the hard life on the prairie, contracted tuberculosis and died. The four children were shipped to the Keckman farm in Erin, New York. August left the prairie too, and soon remarried. His children then joined him and their stepmother in Baltimore, Maryland, where they set up a bootlegging business, but that’s a whole other story! Although my father and his siblings never went back to Plummer, Minnesota, the memories of their formative years stayed with them. They told us stories of how they celebrated Christmas on the prairie. Despite their meager living conditions, they always found a way to celebrate the holidays. Every year they put up a "Minnesota Christmas Tree" -- twigs in a vase decorated with sugar cookies. My Aunt Helen (my father’s older sister) explained to us that there were no conifer trees on the prairie in Minnesota. The bare branches substituted for an evergreen tree. They had no money for "store-bought" decorations, so they decorated their "Christmas tree" with sugar cookies, which were also their Christmas treats! When we were children growing up in Mecklenburg, New York, we used to go to my Aunt Helen’s house to celebrate Finnish Christmas. She always had a Minnesota Christmas tree adorning her kitchen table. This year my father, age 95, passed away on Thanksgiving Day. I decided it was my turn to carry on the tradition of the Minnesota Christmas tree. I picked some maple twigs and stuck them in a green jug. I cut out sugar cookies in the shape of wise men, angels, stars, reindeer, Christmas trees, and hearts. I sprinkled them with red and green sprinkles and tied them to the maple branches with brightly-colored ribbon. The Minnesota Christmas tree was my humble tribute to my father at our gathering of family and friends to celebrate his life. |