by Johanna Wasylik
The Christmases of my childhood in New York City are never far from my mind and my heart, even after celebrating 33 Christmases on the farm in Alberta.
Those childhood Christmases had a very Central European flavour. My mother came from Yugoslavia as a refugee after World War II, followed by her Viennese mother, whom we all called Omi (I couldn’t manage Oma), shortly after I was born. Omi came to visit and ended up staying, living with my parents until her death in 1994, just a week after I moved to Alberta.
As a child, I thought the most exciting part of Christmas was getting the tree. According to my mother and Omi, the tree had to be set up and decorated just before Christmas Eve, and it had to come down on January 6 (Epiphany). City sidewalks turned into forests when the tree lot vendors from Vermont and Canada popped up immediately after Thanksgiving. No one we knew had an artificial tree, mainly because no one we knew had room to store it for the rest of the year. Getting the tree was a family expedition; my sister and I begged for the tallest tree, my mother said it would never fit (despite the high ceilings of our prewar apartment), and my father would mutter about the cost. Sometimes we’d go get the tree after dark, and you could pick out the tree lots by the string lights sparkling along Broadway, and often it would be snowing, too. Once I was in university, when the job of getting the Christmas tree fell to my mother and sister, we made a deal—we’d get the tallest, fullest tree and always shave $20-$30 off the price when my father asked about it.
Another one of my mother’s and grandmother’s traditions was edible decorations for the tree, which required another family expedition. We’d take the crosstown bus to Yorkville, known as Germantown, which was a neighbourhood on the Upper East Side where many immigrants from Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria had settled in the late 19th century. Long after most had moved to other parts of the city and the suburbs, many German shops, restaurants and cafés remained. We’d go to Glaser’s bakery for white swirly meringue wreaths sprinkled with nonpareils, then on to Elk Candy Company for a white paper bag of coffee-flavoured Dutch Hopjes (hard candies) and then their glorious white boxes with what our family called kringele—one filled with handmade milk chocolate kränze (little wreaths) decorated with more nonpareils, another filled with dark chocolate kränze (my favourite), the chocolate-covered marzipan kränze (my father’s favourite), and pastel-coloured fondant and chocolate stars and rings, which always looked better than they tasted. Omi would take out a spool of dark green thread and cut hundreds of pieces, which my mother, sister and I would tie onto each candy for hanging. We would turn the Hopjes into spiders, wrapped in several layers of white tissue paper with fringes cut at each end. In order to keep the spider decorations on the tree but still enjoy the candies, we learned to carefully remove the candies from the middle.
As hard as it was to replicate this kind of Christmas in Alberta, it would be nearly impossible now in New York as well. I kept the family traditions I could and added new ones. But the biggest difference is that here on the farm, whether it’s Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, the animals always come first—making sure they’re well-fed and watered, warm and dry.
My first Alberta Christmas hit a snag when I realized that there weren’t too many live Christmas trees for sale in town. So Rick suggested we could cut down our own tree, and we did that for many years. We’d head north toward Bonnyville or Cold Lake on the Sunday before Christmas, often trudging through snow, with the sun setting quickly and the temperature dropping, looking for the perfect tree—this one wasn’t full, that one wasn’t tall enough. It was a tradition our family enjoyed until the kids were older and suddenly December was filled with Christmas parties, recitals and other holiday gatherings.
One December, while taking our turkeys to be butchered in St. Paul, with hours to wait until they were ready, my daughter Charlotte and I decided to go grocery shopping and discovered Christmas trees in the parking lot. We brought one home and marvelled at how much easier (and warmer!) the process was. For the past 10 years or so, we’ve been buying our trees from Lloydminster’s Kinsmen Club at their annual community fundraiser. We’ve also started keeping the Christmas tree up until the end of January to add some extra light and sparkle in what is, always, a very long winter on the farm.
Growing up, we celebrated on Christmas Eve, with our holiday meal—usually roast beef which my father much preferred to turkey or goose—and opening the presents. I was delighted to find out that Rick’s family celebrated on Christmas Eve too. Our usual Christmas dinner is roast beef, though with our farm shop and farm sales, there’s not always one available, so we might have ham or lamb instead. My mother-in-law’s Christmases used to feature a lot of Ukrainian side dishes—cabbage rolls, nalysnyky and nachynka. In recent years I’ve learned to make nachynka as well as perishke, the small buns filled with cottage cheese and baked in cream.
I start provisioning in earnest in late November, and Edmonton shops are an important part of that, with stops at K&K Foodliner for smoked salmon, imported German chocolates and candies (including commercial versions of the chocolate kränze); Bonjour Bakery across the street from K&K for bread (which freezes beautifully) and cheeses; the Italian Centre for chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, oranges, pears and more cheese. On our last Calgary delivery of the year, I like to stop at Arrae Patisserie in Red Deer for some of Jenna’s frozen all-butter Danishes and croissants, which are a delicious addition to Boxing Day breakfasts.
The one tradition I’ve continued through the last 33 years are my Omi’s vanillekipferl. She made these almond crescent cookies every Christmas.
The process would start with a trip to either Paprikás Weiss (full of spices you could smell long before you walked through the door) or the little nut and dried fruit store several blocks away on Broadway, owned by an older Austrian émigré couple, for fresh almonds from a wooden barrel.
Omi would steep the almonds in boiling water for a minute, and then I would help, by squeezing the almonds out of their slippery skins, and there were often escapees shooting around the kitchen. Then she would spread them out on a cookie sheet to dry, very briefly in a very low oven, before grinding them in small nut grinder that clamped onto our kitchen table.
Omi was famous for her baking throughout the year; at Christmas she baked only three things—kipferl and yeast strudel; mohnstrudel with a ground poppyseed filling and nussstrudel with a ground walnut, chocolate and raisin filling. But for me, and now for my family as well, it’s the kipferl that’s the taste of Christmas.
I know some carefully guard family recipes. I love sharing Omi’s recipes, to keep her food and recipes and her memory alive.
Omi’s Vanillekipferl
Supposedly kipferl, in the shape of the Turkish crescent moon, were created after the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to mark the Austro-Hungarian victory over the Ottoman Turks.
| 200 g | unsalted butter, softened |
| 100 g | sugar |
| 2 | egg yolks |
| 1 t | vanilla extract |
| 300 g | all-purpose flour |
| 100 g | almonds, blanched and ground (you can also use commercial prepared blanched almond flour) |
| (I add a pinch of salt even though Omi’s recipe did not include it) | |
| icing sugar (flavoured with a vanilla bean if you have one) |
In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until well blended. Add egg yolks and vanilla and mix well. Add flour and ground almonds and mix well until it forms a smooth dough.
Place the dough in a plastic bag. Do NOT put the bag in the refrigerator, because this will dry out the dough and make it harder to shape.
Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Working with a small amount of dough at a time (leave the rest in the plastic bag), roll the dough out into small log and slice off 14 g pieces of dough. Roll each piece out until it’s about 3-3.5 inches long and form into a kipferl (crescent/horseshoe) shape, with the ends slightly thinner than the middle; the ends should not be too thin or they will brown or burn.
Kipferl don’t spread very much, they just puff up a bit, so you can set them fairly closely together on a sheet. Bake for about 20-25 minutes. They should be very light and NOT golden. Cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a rack, handling very carefully since they’re very delicate and breakable.
While still warm, dust with icing sugar. Kipferl keep well in an airtight container, but you can also freeze them. Sprinkle with more confectioner’s sugar before serving.
Makes approximately 50 cookies.
