Julebukking, part three Kathleen Stokker, author of “Keeping Christmas; Juletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land” discovered that Norwegian-heritage settlements in the Midwest United States had widely engaged in julebukking (pronounced “YEW-luh-booking”), also known as “Christmas Fooling.” At the time, Stokker was not aware of any julebukking in her hometown of … [Read more...]

What child doesn’t love a tube of lip balm for Christmas? That’s because no child wants to miss a single minute of school because of chapped lips. Lip balm is better than bunny slippers. I received a pair as a gift one year and learned that they’re fiercely territorial. Some kids, after weeks of dedicated research, discover that if they really want something, they should … [Read more...]

Part two of a series She was home alone that night when she heard some footsteps in the house. Her husband was away on a call as a veterinarian. No one in Spring Grove locked their doors back in the 1970s. Soon, 15 to 18 “creatures” entered the kitchen and formed a circle around her – surely alarming. No one said anything until finally, one approached and whispered that she … [Read more...]

The wind blew another partridge out of a pear tree. Winter has trouble doing the right thing. It’s not the snow that gets you when you live in a snow globe. It’s the shaking like a chilly Chihuahua that happens before the snow falls. My wife and I gathered around the light bulb for warmth and read about global warming on a night as cold as a cast iron commode with wind gusts … [Read more...]

You have enough things to worry about. You should stop worrying about achy-breaky earworms, fake funeral processions, treehouse fires and pop machine avalanches. “You never know,” my elders often said to me. Yours probably said the same thing. “It’s always something” was frequently added as a non-explanatory explanation. I’d just spent a week in an aging hotel meant … [Read more...]

Part one of a series To the uninitiated (non-Norwegians), it might sound at first like Halloween - nighttime visitors on your front porch wearing masks and all sorts of costumes. Treats were expected. But it was late December, not late October. There were no children; costumes were worn by adults, maybe some teenagers, too.  One winter night, a group of folks would arrive … [Read more...]

Part two of a two-part series “A splendid view of the rich country on both sides of the tract could be had. The train moved along rapidly and the station of Newhouse appeared in view,” wrote George Kuster, Spring Grove newspaper proprietor and editor in 1903 and 1904.  Newhouse, eight miles west and a mile south of Spring Grove, in the early 1900s, had a railroad depot, … [Read more...]