Colorado Explorer: My Colorado

Grandma's Christmas

By Bill Rutherford

Each Christmas season brings back memories of Christmas in Georgetown in the early 1930s. This was in the midst of the Great Depression, and money was scarce and hard to come by. It took scrimping and saving to have any kind of Christmas celebration at all. My Swedish grandmother insisted upon having a traditional Swedish Christmas, complete with all the goodies associated with such an occasion.

A Swedish delicatessen on West Colfax Avenue was the source of everything Grandma required. My uncle would put a dollar's worth of gasoline—five gallons—in his Model A Ford, which was enough to make the round trip from Georgetown, and head for Denver.

The road had not yet been designated as U.S. 6 or U.S. 40, and my recollection is that Floyd Hill and Mount Vernon Canyon were unpaved gravel. Upon reaching his destination, my uncle would pick up lingon berries, ingredients for sylta (head cheese), rye flour for limpa (sweet rye bread), and most important of all, lutefisk.

Then Grandma would set about preparing everything for the repast. The lutefisk had to be soaked for several days, with daily changes of water to get rid of the lye. (Question: Why do Swedes eat lutefisk? Answer: Because Norwegians eat it, and a Swede can do anything a Norwegian can do.) Then came all the cooking and baking, and finally the finished products to be enjoyed by all.

Christmas back then was a truly memorable time. I wonder how many Americans today have such rich traditions still a part of their lives. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the hard economic times we had in the 1930s, but I'd love to ride along in the Model A Ford and bring back the supplies for Grandma's Swedish Christmas once again.