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Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/912676
DECEMBER 2017 • NEBRASKAland 51 The clientele was special, however. One could almost say "select." Not exactly elite, but A-list. Because for this one day of feasting and celebrating, Dick and Beth's specific invitation was for "drunks, derelicts, and everyone nobody likes." (Dick liked to joke that I cost him stamps for three different envelopes because my name showed up in all three categories.) Oh, some of the fancier folks in the county showed up but they came with the understanding that they would be rubbing elbows, singing carols, sharing a booth, and laughing with ... well, people they might not have thought they had much in common with the rest of the year. On that day we were ALL "drunks, derelicts, and everyone nobody likes." And the food carried steaming from the kitchen was more than matched by what came through the front door of the tavern. Women brought cakes, cookies, pies, breads, canned fruits and jellies, each in keeping with their family tradition, and men brought in for bragging rights their special preparation of the autumn's hunt and harvest – smoked fish, barbecued ribs, venison and elk jerky, goose sausage, bear steaks, head cheese, turtle eggs ... Now and then someone passed around a jug of homemade chokecherry wine or – a special treat! – a jar of a forbidden fruit – moonshine! And this folklorist sat there bedazzled by what he was seeing: a celebration of individuality, but within a matrix of community celebration. And within Dick and Beth's very special idea of what Christmas should mean. It was amazing. There was no other feeling in that large room or long day other than love. On those Christmas days were we celebrating the birth of Jesus or the miraculous endurance of the lamp oil in the Temple? Or the great U-turn of the sun in the winter sky promising the return of spring? Or ... what? I came away from those celebrations with the feeling that we had just paid respects to all those ideas and events. Including "peace on earth, goodwill to men." We had in fact celebrated not just our own understanding of the season but all of them. And the true fellowship of us all, no matter what our differences otherwise. We had acknowledged the unity of our nation at Thanksgiving, but on those Christmas dinners for "drunks, derelicts, and everyone nobody likes," we recalled that even as unique individuals ... in some cases, VERY unique individuals, we're all still in this together. ■ Roger Welsch is an author, humorist, folklorist and a former essayist for CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the author of more than 40 books, including his most recent "Why I'm an Only Child and Other Slightly Naughty Plains Folktales" available from University of Nebraska Press.