Schroeder Weihnachtspyramide 2021

This is a Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramid) built by Albert Thomas ca. 1890. Albert and his wife, Wilhelmine, were German immigrants who arrived in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1888. The pyramide was already about twenty years old when their youngest daughter, Edna, was about five, in 1910, per our family's earliest photo of it. Edna married Walter Schroeder in 1930, and the couple lived in the same house as Albert and Wilhelmine Thomas and continued to display it each year after the Thomases passed away in the 1940s.

With few exceptions, this Weihnachtspyramide has no doubt been used as a Christmas decoration every year since it was built around 1890. That's about 130 years!

Albert Thomas constructed the Weihnachtspyramide from a variety of materials. The paddles at the top were made from scrap wood from fruit crates. The central axle is a broomstick; on it rests the three circular platforms (made of cardboard). One of the hooplike, horizontal supports around the outer structure is from a discarded band saw. In its earliest form, when rising candle heat made the angled top paddles spin, friction was minimized at the pivot point at the bottom of the rotating broomstick by having a downward-pointing nail attached at the base of the broomstick, and the nail tip rested on a piece of glass. It had to be adjusted to balance perfectly in order for it to spin properly.

The family refers to this as a Christmas "tree," but it is more closely related to the wooden pyramiden that are hand-carved in the Erzgebirge region of Germany. Those often have little candles at the four bottom corners to provide the heat necessary to turn the platforms into little processionals at the center. Our family's pyramide has been altered so much over the years it's truly unique; a form of living folk art that changes slightly every year.

We have several photos of the "tree" taken over the decades. Many of the ornaments and figurines go back to the early 1900s and are visible in the old photos. The Thomases used to attach sprigs of real cedar or other greenery to the frame, in addition to the ornaments.

An early change was when the original candles were replaced with small coal-oil (kerosene) lanterns (three of these are still used as ornaments). Then, in the 1940s, those were replaced with strands of multicolored electric lights. A small electric fan, mounted on a nearby window frame, was directed on the paddles, turning the central platforms. (We even still have the fan, though it doesn't work, and the holes in the window frame are still there!)

In the 1950s, Edna's son Walter ("Buddy") procured a music box designed for rotating a small Christmas tree, and the tree was transformed again. This allowed Edna to greatly increase the amount of ornaments, greenery, and other decorations on the frame, the inner platforms, and even hanging from the paddles. Today, in the interest of being kind to the now-antique music box, we have opted to reduce the amount of objects hanging from the paddles.

Edna (my grandma) passed away in 2000, and we purchased her house in 2001. The Weihnachtspyramide (with its special attic closet) came with the house. I'm doing my best to care for it. We've made some changes--for example, replacing some ca. 1950s light strings that no longer worked and whose plastic sockets were literally crumbling away--but that's what Grandma would have done. She kept it "young." So it's my job to fiddle with it, too.

Apologies for the defects of my video. I'll keep working on my skills with the camera. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into our family's unusual "tree," and I hope you have a merry, and a blessed Christmas.

For more information about our Weihnachtspyramide, see my blog posts about it. Here's a good place to start.

And if you're wondering how this comes apart for storage, here's where you look.

Aunt Margaret's Aluminum Christmas Tree

Greetings, and merry Christmas! I’ve already received one of my wishes: We put up Sue’s great aunt Margaret’s aluminum Christmas tree!



It hadn’t seen the light of day for several years—I can’t remember the last time we put it up. I bet it’s been fifteen years (I know we put it up one year soon after buying my grandma’s house). Like all old Christmas trees, it’s fragile.

And because the Weihnachtspyramide is such a big deal with my family (who live around here), and it “goes with” this house, it always gets priority. After all the cooking and baking, there’s never time left to put up the aluminum tree. And usually, we’re out of town at Christmas. . . . But we’re here this year, and I’ve put cookies on the back burner. (So to speak.)

(By the way, in this post I'm including pictures of the aluminum Christmas tree, its boxes, and its shiny ornaments, many of which are "new" but which we haven't seen since we last put it up, since they're in a box of "our" ornaments as opposed to my Grandma's boxes of ornaments.)

(See? MODERN! I'd totally forgotten about my purple fishie!)



But I’ve really missed Aunt Margaret’s tree!

Of course, there’s a story. And you want to hear it, right?

Aunt Margaret—Margaret Armina Ferber Nottke—was Sue’s great aunt, her dad’s father’s youngest sister. She was born September 23, 1903. She and her husband, William Hartman (“Stub”) Nottke, lived at 13 Mechanic Street in Berlin Heights, Ohio (where Sue’s sister, Lynn, and her family live today)—it’s just around the corner from Sue’s parents’ home.

To Sue and her siblings, “Aunt Margaret” was pretty much like a grandma, since she and “Uncle Stub” had been the primary guardians and parent-figures to Nelson Ferber, Sue’s dad. (More on that situation in my next post, if you’re interested.)

Because Margaret and Stub lived so close nearby, they could be close in many other ways, too. Here she is on the Ferber's side steps with Prince and Cinders.



So, back to the Christmas tree: Apparently, Sue’s mom and dad bought it in about 1964, when Sue was 7, Lynn 5, and Mark 2. I asked Sue where they got it, and she had to think. “I’m not sure! Maybe at the Giant Tiger? Or maybe at an appliance store. Or they could’ve bought it at a grocery store—grocery stores used to sell Christmas decorations like that. But probably they got it at a discount store . . . or Penney’s or Sears.”



And they got a super-duper box of shiny, lightweight ornaments at the same time—perfect for the tree. We still have that entire thing. I think only two ornaments are missing.





The ornaments have an unusual hook system.



And you can see why we really don't like to even touch these ornaments; they're so fragile.



So, we use mostly "modern" ornaments now:



Anyway, with such a delicate, fragile tree, one that can only hold lightweight, shiny, breakable ornaments, and whose branches can fall out if you merely brush against them . . . and with a mechanical spotlight spinner that went with it, and its fragile colored gels—this Christmas tree really wasn’t a good fit for a house with three young kids.



Can you imagine Sue’s mom trying to take care of three kids, make dinner, bake Christmas cookies, clean, AND tell the kids over and over not to touch the tree—?



At that point, Margaret and Stub weren’t putting up a Christmas tree (that Sue can remember, anyway), so Sue’s parents gave the tree to them. And that’s how it became “Aunt Margaret’s Christmas Tree.”

Sue says she always had it on her sunporch (which is now brother-in-law Gene’s TV room/library), just off of the living room. There was good morning light in there, with all the windows.

So if your de facto grandparents lived around the corner from you, you’d have some really sweet memories of their Christmas tree! And that’s how Sue and her brother and sister think of this tree: Aunt Margaret’s Christmas tree!

Their great uncle Stub died in early 1970s, but Margaret put the tree up every year until she went into a nursing home in the early 1980s. After Margaret’s death, Sue’s sister and brother-in-law bought Stub and Margaret’s home, which has put them in arm’s reach of Sue’s parents all these years. Their lucky daughter, Kaitlyn, got to grow up on the same block as her maternal grandparents!

Margaret had kept her Christmas tree and its ornaments in her attic. After she passed away, there was the inevitable process of “who wants what?” Apparently Lynn and Gene were wanting to clear out the attic. Sue wanted the tree, and I guess no one else expressed an interest, so it became hers.



Sue was living in St. Louis at the time. At this point, she can’t remember if her parents brought it to her on one of their visits, or if Sue herself drove it back after a visit to Ohio.

It’s a well-traveled tree! Sue remembers that once, in late 1980s, when she was working at Maritz in Fenton, the tree decorated the hallway of the South-Central Performance Improvement creative department. And she also displayed it in her house on 7542 Warner Avenue in Richmond Heights. I remember when she showed me a photo of it, soon after we met. Even in black and white, it looked spectacular.

So, when Sue joined me in Montana, the tree moved with her. Then, when we moved back to Missouri, the tree moved back with us. I know we set it up one of the years we lived in Columbia. (We were alternating: one year with a real tree, the next with the aluminum one.) Next, it made the trek from Como to Jeff City, where we put it up one of the first years we lived here, but then we either lacked the energy to put it up, or else we weren’t going to be here over Christmas, so why bother putting up TWO trees?



And between “squirrelly Early” (Earl was our hyper Russian blue) and Genji (then a rambunctious young puss-puss), it was just like the scenario at the Ferber household in the early sixties: we didn’t want to be constantly yelling at cats.

So, I got one of my Christmas wishes this year: We put up Aunt Margaret’s Christmas tree!

So far this year, to supplement the original spotlight spinner, we picked up one of those “shimmering effect” LED motion projectors, which people often use outdoors to beam groovy colors onto their homes. The original spotlight spinner is another nifty artifact from another time.



We’re being nice to the old spotlight by mostly using the new one on the tree, and it looks pretty nifty! We can “choose from 6 color options”! Red, red and green, blue, blue and red (which just looks pinkish to me), green, and green and blue (which makes me think of an aquarium). The gizmo even comes with a remote control, so I can sit in my chair and make it change colors.





Would Aunt Margaret’s like the new color projector? Who knows. . . . but I'd like to think she'd love it!

First Snowfall of the Winter

It’s suddenly seeming very Christmassy here in Central Missouri, hallelujah! Naturally, I can be happy about it, since I don’t have to drive anywhere today—but I think a lot of us have felt creeped-out by the lack of snow both this year (we usually get our first dustings of snow around mid-November) and, well, all of last winter. (Climate change, you all—deeply disturbing.)

Anyway, this one or two inches we’re getting today helps give us the feeling that things are set to rights. At least today, when I look out our windows, anyway. (By the way, for similar views during a bigger snowfall, click here.)

It’s remarkably windy today, with 45 mph gusts, which make the snow blow almost horizontally, and stick it to the screens of our storm windows.

The wind and the snow sticking on the windows makes it seem incredibly cold “out there.” But having the Christmas tree up and glowing helps our drafty ol’ house seem a lot warmer. Yeah, the windows are rattling.

I’ve never lived in a house with a fireplace, and for me, the Christmas tree supplies that kind of visual-psychological warmth. (If you don’t know about my family’s Christmas tree/Weihnachtspyramide, click here for the back story.)

This year, especially, the familiarity of that dear ol’ thing is especially welcome, “grounding” me in my place in time, giving me a sense that I somehow can comprehend history and immortality, or eternity. And it feels like a comfort, and it’s especially welcome on a cold day like this, at the end of this solar year, and upon this first blast of snow.

Taking Down Der Tree

Actually, because it goes in a closet upstairs, we technically take it “up.” Yeah, I know we’re all kinda sick of anything that looks like Christmas, but I’ve finally got all these pictures selected and ready for you. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like when we take this thing apart. (A lot of people ask us about this subject, so I figured you might like to see this.) If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then click here for my other posts about our family’s Weihnachtspyramide (“Christmas pyramid”). This decorated object, which functions like a Christmas tree for my family, has been in our family since the 1880s. Since this post is mostly pictures, I’ll just put ’em in order and comment on them like a slideshow. 1. Here’s the Santa Claus that goes at the very top. He’s surrounded by a bunch of old glass ornaments and stands on a stiff round piece of cardboard. I have no idea how he is attached to it. (I’m guessing he’s held on with toothpicks and posy clay.) 2. A view of the base of the Santa Claus, so you can see the round piece of cardboard. That hole in the middle is what attaches to the top of the “tree.” Note the cotton wadded up in there: I have no idea what that’s for. Maybe to keep Santa from being too loose and flopping around up there. 3. So Santa Claus gets taken off and put in a box, like the majority of other ornaments. Here, however, is the place where he stands. The little nubbin at the top of the silver-garlanded pole fits into that little hole in his base. (By the way: To my Schroeder clan readers, take note of the two rounded clusters of crystals—one at the lower edge of the picture, and one with light shining through it on the right: Those are a pair of Great Aunt Minnie’s earrings! Yes! I have no idea how they got associated with the tree, but there you go.) (Memories!) 4. I know that when the “tree” is all decorated and lit up, it’s hard to really “see” the basic structure of the thing. Here it is, though, with all the ornaments (that we take off) removed, and with light shining through. There are four uprights (one in each corner of the square base), and five horizontal “circles.” At the center of the platform is the music box that spins the center pole (literally a broomstick). There are two circular platforms on the central pole. The top one is heaped with shiny glass ornaments, and below, it holds numerous other ornaments from threads, particularly ancient glass birds. The lower platform (these days) is where we put our flock of old sheep (with real wool)—Grandma had taken to heaping ornaments there, too, but we noticed in old pictures of the tree that the sheep were originally here. We reinstated the sheep because (1) we have so many of them, and (2) they are much lighter than the ornaments. “Lighter” is easier on the old music box and overall rickety structure. 5. Here’s a view of the base. This area is called “the garden.” Great-grandpa Thomas, who made the tree, carved the little wooden fence. The Nativity scene goes front and center, just inside the gateway. The bell ornaments above are suspended by the lower platform. The wires you see along the fence are for lighting up the little cardboard houses that go along the sides and back; the mess of wires at the back right is where all of the light strands connect together. The music box was made by the Lador Company in Switzerland, and it chimes “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.” My dad bought it for the tree in the 1950s; before that, the paddles had been turned by a small fan mounted on a nearby window frame. 6. When we cleaned and repaired the tree some years ago, I was amazed to discover details I had never seen before. Here is a view of the underside of the lower platform, which spins like the sky above the Nativity scene. Someone (Grandma?) pasted gold stars on it. 7. Here’s another thing I’d never noticed until about a decade ago—this pretty decoration is wallpapered to the underside of the very top piece. The illustrations are very delicate—holly, pinecones, and (it looks like) birdhouses. No one ever sees this—but here it is. 8. This view of the same thing shows part of the broomstick as it goes through the top wooden piece. 9. Here’s a look at the paddle assembly. Notice that Santa’s been taken off the tippy top. The paddles, I understand, were made from wood salvaged from orange crates. That “very top piece” I showed you in the previous pictures is the wooden board above the fruits and just beneath the circle the paddles are attached to. 10. So okay: Then you stand on a chair (well, at least, I do!) and carefully lift the entire paddle assembly off the top. It’s very lightweight, which is a good thing, because you can’t hold it by the paddles—you can only hold it by the center, with your arm extended parallel to the floor. (I think the paddles are held on with Elmer’s and matchsticks.) 11. Another view of the paddle assembly. Getting this thing through doorways and up the stairway to the third floor is scary, since it has to go sideways yet has all this fragile stuff hanging off of it. And you can’t bang it on anything. 12. I held it up so Sue could take this picture of the attachment area. There are three blunt nails poking out of the bottom. No, they don’t form a perfect triangle, so when you’re putting the paddle assembly onto the tree, you have to get each nail into its own correct hole. (This can get a little frustrating sometimes, because you can’t see, but people in the past have put pencil marks on the outside so you can line the nails up easier.) 13. Here’s an aerial view of the top, minus the paddles. See the three holes the nails go into? At some point, someone inked orange around them the holes. That circle you see is attached to the axle/broomstick, and it spins with the paddle assembly. Those four—um—tabs?—that seem to come out of the circle actually belong to the top of the tree instead (see 7 and 8 above, which show the underside of this piece). In the center of each “tab” you can see the top of the four upright posts. 14. We’re in the home stretch, now: Once the top is safely upstairs, it’s time to gently pack tissue paper inside the tree, to help protect the elderly bells and so on that dangle in there. However, the tree still tinkles daintily as we carry it upstairs. By the way, you can see the pattern of beaded garlands pretty easily in this picture. We removed, cleaned, and reattached these when we renovated the tree (and we replaced some strands that had become sadly unpretty). Grandma’s beaded garlands were much more numerous. 15. And then everything goes up in the closet. You know, even the boxes we use for the ornaments are interesting. One is a metal breadbox with a hinged lid. Another is an old box for Hoover vacuum cleaner attachments. And one is a nifty old box for Meister Brau beer from Chicago—probably worth about twenty-five bucks on eBay, don’t you think? (I wonder if that came from Grandma’s brother, Uncle Doodle? He lived in Chicago . . . Or maybe Dad picked it up in grad school.) And here’s another box of interest. No, I don’t know how this was acquired, and I’m not sure I want to ask! 16. Here’s the paddle assembly, sitting on a platform on a card table at one end of the Christmas Tree Closet, and draped carefully in old bedsheets. 17. And at the other end of the closet is the tree. We swaddle it in a number of old linens: Some old bedsheets that have been mended (yeah, people used to patch bedsheets!), part of an old parachute (I think), and (my favorite) an old smock that my Grandpa used to use for his customers at his barbershop. When we worked on the tree a decade ago, my mom made a cool little square skateboard that the tree can sit on. With wheels, it moves much, much more easily in and out of the closet. My mom’s got an excellent analytical brain for figuring out better ways to do things. She could have been an engineer. So . . . that’s the end of the slideshow. I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at our weird Christmas tree. It’s not every day that you get to see it go topless!

Moving Right Along

It’s 2011 now, and I’ve gotten behind in telling you about stuff. Here’s an update.

First, happy new year! As I told you last year at this time, New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. It is both fun and psychologically substantial. I love how crossing over that randomly determined Gregorian boundary forces me to consider myself truly in the moment, standing in neither past nor future.

We host an annual party, in the tradition of my Grandma S. Although most years, it’s a “family and friends” party, this year it was only family, a smaller group than usual, and a bit more laid back than it’s been in some previous years. Fortunately, my cousin and his wife brought their two young grandkids, and their liveliness prevented us all from sitting around like a bunch of mummies.




Well, it wasn’t that bad, but I was a little let down at the attendance. It worries me a bit about my social currency. I’m starting my third year of working at home, and I have very little social life. It makes me wonder if I’ve losing any social aptitude I might have acquired in the past. But I tell myself it’s just that some years The Party is going to be less of a “deal.” And there were few out-of-state family in Missouri for the holidays, anyway, and that didn’t help the attendance. Oh, well.

We did have a great party, and the mutzens were wonderful (in my humble opinion). We had lots of leftovers, so we have been eating them for breakfast. I’ll be glad to get back onto the oat bran muffins.

We have lots of other leftovers from the party, and it’s been just hell eating all those delicious tidbits. New Year’s Eve is when I buy the really good cheeses and cut up lots and lots of veggies. Oh, the agony of “having” to eat that delicious eleven-year-aged white cheddar from Cheese Haven. We had some tonight with our supper. Ooh-la-la.

This year we did something we’ve never done before: We collected all our party dishes and glassware and washed them at 2 a.m. January 1. Yes! Thus we woke up to a not-completely-bombed-out house. We did have powdered sugar everyplace, but that’s part of the fun.

Each January 1, Sue and I try to go on some kind of outing. This year, we drove to Spring Creek Gap Conservation Area (down by Rolla) and did a brief hike. It was very fun, and it was great to be out in the sunshine of a new year.

On our way there, we stopped at the Fire Tower near Freeburg (not the one that’s right at the Spring Creek Gap parking area—that’s the Vichy Fire Tower—this one is different).




Gotta climb those things when you can, y’know? Even when it’s cold. This fire tower appeared to be situated near some kind of dog kennel. Maybe a dog-breeding operation? Lots of barking down below.

Here’s a picture of the creek bed at Spring Creek Gap. We messed around at the creek for a while, poking at pretty rocks. The Ozarks have some gorgeous rocks!




The MDC’s been thinning out the forest in places. Here’s a view from one of the gladey areas they are apparently trying to promote.

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Okay, and then there’s the end of Christmas. You know how I like to keep the decorations up through Epiphany (January 6); therefore, this was the weekend we took it all down.

Actually, in the case of the Weihnachtspyramide, it’s technically “taking it up,” since we store it in a special closet upstairs.

I’ve talked a lot about the traditions of setting up the tree—how we sing “O Tannenbaum” as we carry it down the steps to the living room, etc.—but I haven’t said much about putting it away.

It’s a little less nostalgic. We pull the ornaments off and each year try to figure out some sort of “system” for storing them in their boxes so we can find them more easily next year. Meanwhile, we have to keep an eye on Earl (the cat), who is endlessly curious about the boxes and the paper.

Sue and I have been threatening to teach ourselves how to sing “O Tannenbaum” backwards, so we can reverse ourselves as we carry the tree upstairs.

We took some pictures as the tree was in states of disassembly. Maybe you’ll find them interesting. (Next post. Stay tuned.)




And then, naturally, once all of “Christmas” is packed up and tucked away in the closet, the living room looks big enough to do a square dance in. Does that happen to you? It makes me kinda happy I have some of that sharp cheddar left over to help fill the absence. Because it’s not the crowdedness I miss—it’s the specialness.

Yeah, we’re officially into the winter doldrums. I suppose the busy-ness of Christmas preparations helps us overcome the psychological effects of shortening days, and I’m glad for that—but even though the days are getting longer, this is the coldest time of year, and it can be the snowiest. Cooped up in the house. This is the time of year I’m most apt to ask myself why I ever moved away from the Southwest.

So today I’ve been working on freelance (please don’t ask for details), and when I’m through posting this, I’ll work on a different freelance project. Writing this is my reward for plugging away all afternoon on a weekend on an index.

The weather forecast says that, now that it’s bitter cold out there, tomorrow and the next day we’re supposed to get snow. I’ve got my boxes of tea lined up and ready, and the kitties are here to show me how to keep warm.




And that’s pretty much how we are tonight.

Grandma’s Dolls

I don’t know about you, but we’re still doin’ Christmas around here. We put up the decorations about mid-December and will leave them up through Epiphany. Of our old holiday decorations that had been Grandma’s, last year I told you about the Knecht Ruprecht, the Weihnachtspyramide, and the preponderance of fruit and fruit baskets on her “Christmas tree.” This year I’d like to feature Grandma’s dolls. As long as I can remember, they’ve been associated with the tree (the “tree” is actually a Weihnachtspyramide, a “Christmas pyramid,” but we call it a “tree” for convenience). When I was little, Grandma always hooked the dolls to the front corners of the tree. And she continued to display them this way to the end of her years. Here’s a picture of Grandma and the Weihnachtspyramide taken around 1969. You can see the dolls at the two sides at the base. Since we’ve become caretakers of the tree, we’ve moved the dolls to a different position of honor: They stand together under a glass dome on the small table that was used as an altar when this building was a church. (Did I tell you our house used to be a church? . . . But that’s another story.) Positioned where they are now, the dolls are the first thing you see as you come up the steps to the second floor. As Grandma did, we put them out every Christmas. They are very fragile. I try to handle them as little as possible. I honestly don’t know what’s holding them together! . . . Love, I guess. One of the reasons we still have the dolls is that when Grandma was little, she wasn’t allowed to play with them. They were too “nice.” She had another doll to play with. In this picture, taken about 1910, when my grandma was about five, she’s holding the doll she was allowed to play with, and you can see one of the two dolls I’m telling you about attached (as I’ve mentioned) to a front corner of the Weihnachtspyramide. By the way, my dad says we still have the doll she played with, too. He and mom have it at their house. Here’s a detail of a picture taken around 1915, where the two dolls were standing on a platform beneath the table holding the Weihnachtspyramide. At the right is the dolly she played with. Grandma would have been about ten when this picture was taken. We have other old pictures of the Weihnachtspyramide, and in some of them the dolls don’t appear. Each year, the tree is different. Maybe when her boys were young, Grandma kept the dolls safe in a box. Boys can be kind of rowdy, of course. Well, there’s not much more to say, except that I know very little about dolls. I wasn’t interested in them when I was little, and I don’t know much about the collecting scene, except that it exists, and that there are about a million dolls for collectors to collect. If you’re reading this and know something about these types of dolls, I’d love you to contact me. Are they German antique dolls? I’d like to learn more about them. Yes, I imagine these fragile dolls are probably “worth” a zillion dollars to collectors, but of course we’re not interested in selling them. They belong to the family. They go with the tree.

Silent Night

Good evening! And Merry Christmas. I was wanting to tell you something really profound this evening, about time and wintertime, hope and peace and love, but after an evening of chopping veggies and preparing for tomorrow's feast--and after enjoying some eggnog and stollen . . . the spell has come over me.

We woke up to snow this morning! We are having a white Christmas. Fortunately, the roads aren't bad, either!




This is how I like Christmas trees the best: at night, when they enrapture me with their radiant, warm light. As I write this, the Weihnachtspyramide glows, just like it always has, and a part of me glows along with it.

I would tell you more, but it's time for us all to get to sleep: "You know, Santa won't come if you're still awake!"

So I leave you with this scene. A quiet room, the glowing tree, the cats curled up.

All is calm, all is bright.





* * * * Merry Christmas, everyone. * * * *

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(Psst: If you're unfamiliar with our "weird" Christmas tree, see this post from last year.)