I first heard about the Folk Meeting in Tyler, Minnesota, in August 2009. At the time, I was a fellow at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis, and, by coincidence, I met Bridget Jensen, who would later become editor of Church and Life. I was on sabbatical from my call as pastor of the Danish Lutheran Church in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I was studying at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. But I had traveled to Minneapolis because I could not miss that assembly, where they would pass a social statement recognizing same-sex partnerships as a legitimate way of life accepted by Lutheran teaching. And perhaps even more consequential, they would hopefully change the ministry policies to give candidates living in same-sex partnerships access to calls as ordained ministers.

I don't remember during which session of the assembly I started a conversation with Bridget. We were both excited about the changes taking place in the ELCA, and we soon discovered that we were both of Danish descent. That was when she told me that she was traveling back and forth to Tyler, where her mother, also named Bridget, was participating in an event called the Folk Meeting. The two Bridgets were from Houston, and Bridget (the daughter) invited me to come and visit. She promised that she would take me to Danevang, a little town in Texas founded by Danish immigrants where her father had his roots and where, as an architect, he had been instrumental in building a Danish Heritage Museum.

I was staying in the United States only until the end of the year, and I didn't think I would have an opportunity to travel to Houston before leaving. What I didn't know was that just a few months after my encounter with Bridget, the Danish Church Abroad, knowing that I was in the United States, was going to contact me and ask if I would be willing, in December of that year, to travel to Houston and lead a Christmas worship service in Danish for the Danish community there. Of course, I said yes. I met Bridget again, along with her mother, and we went to Danevang and participated in a Christmas party at the museum there. I don't remember whether we talked about Tyler. I was going back to Argentina in less than a month and had no idea that I would be coming back.

But in 2010, I was back in Minnesota for a Kierkegaard Conference at St. Olaf College in Northfield. I visited Luther Seminary in St. Paul, where an Argentinean friend was teaching, talked with the International Student Office about scholarships for international doctoral students, and decided that I would begin the application process for the doctoral program as soon as I returned to Argentina.

On August 1, 2011, I was back in Minnesota and ready to start my doctoral program. I didn't think about the Folk Meeting then, and that first month went by quickly as I studied for the entrance exams at the beginning of September. But later that fall, I did some research and found information about the Folk Meeting. I decided to send an email to Ricke Bly, introducing myself, telling her that I would like to participate the following year, and adding that I would be willing to talk about Danish immigration to Argentina.

In my memory, it seems to have taken a while for Ricke to answer. But I just checked, and it was actually on November 18 that I heard back from her. Her response included an invitation to speak as the opening presenter at the 2012 Folk Meeting. Of course, I said yes. And when, a few weeks later, I again went to Houston to lead a Christmas service in Danish and met with the two Bridgets, I could share the news that I would be in Tyler the following year. We agreed to meet there.

I remember requesting assistance with travel to Tyler in August 2012 because I didn't own a car. Ricke Bly put me in contact with Alice and Dan Mikel, who brought me back and forth to Tyler that first time and for several years afterward. Dan was then the president of the Danish Interest Conference (DIC) and, in 2017, he invited me to participate in the DIC meeting held each year during the Folk Meeting. That year, I was elected to become a member of the board.

It is difficult to know how much of my presentation people understood in Tyler in 2012, because my accent must have been much stronger then. At least they could understand the pictures I shared! Bridget Jensen introduced me before the lecture. And that first year, the pastor of the congregation, Jennifer Thul, also invited me to preach at the Sunday worship service at Danebod Lutheran Church.

But I loved the whole Folk Meeting experience, and I loved the people. For many years in Argentina, I had attended a similar gathering, which was held during the Argentinean spring at a Danish-Argentinean boarding school. It went from Wednesday at noon to Sunday evening, and the program resembled the ones at the Tyler Folk Meeting in its combination of singing, lectures, devotions, entertainment, and good food.

Although the Danish-American and Danish-Argentinean communities had grown apart — with some exceptions, of course—we shared many characteristics. (As an aside, I will say that the history of connections between Danish Americans and Danish Argentines is a research project that I hope someone will take up soon.) One thing I noticed early on is that the dry, dark, and slightly weird sense of humor, which is so characteristically Danish, delivered with a straight face could be practiced with the people in Tyler. Usually, they would understand, maybe after a few seconds, that I was not being serious.

And then there were my favorites: the songs.

I love the practice during the Folk Meeting of singing both in Danish and in English. I grew up singing many of the songs with my grandmothers, later at the Danish-Argentinean boarding school where I went to grade school for four years, and later still at the Argentinean version of the Folk Meeting at that same boarding school. At the Folk Meeting I learned new ones, too, of course. Since most of the Danes arrived in America several generations before they began arriving in Argentina in large numbers, many of the melodies were older than the ones I had learned in Argentina. But I have gotten used to them now.

I have not missed a single Folk Meeting since I started attending—not even the ones held online during the pandemic—and I plan to keep coming.

Growing up on a farm, with three older brothers in the Danish Community of Fredsville, Grundy County, Iowa was a blessing. Fredsville means “peaceful village” which it truly was. My parents, grandparents, and most of my cousins attended Fredsville Lutheran Church. Three of my four grandparents were Danish immigrants. Danish was my parents’ first language, and they learned to read and write it fluently despite having only an eighth-grade education. At Fredsville Lutheran Church, Danish traditions were always celebrated, especially at Christmas with dancing around the huge, live Christmas tree in the church auditorium on second Christmas Day. Fredsville Church continues to thrive today in the beautiful Iowa countryside.

The Danish immigrants were proud of their heritage and strived to preserve their heritage for future generations. Education was important to them, and many Grundtvigian folk schools were founded across the country in towns such as Elk Horn, Iowa; West Denmark, Wisconsin; Nysted, Nebraska; Tyler, Minnesota (home of Danebod Folk School); Kenmare, North Dakota; Solvang, California (associated with Atterdag College); and other locations. Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, was founded in 1884. Grand View College (now Grand View University), founded in 1896 is the only remaining college founded by Danish immigrants. It continues to preserve Danish heritage and traditions.

My brothers and I attended Grand View College when it was affiliated with the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. At that time, students came from Danish communities across the United States. At Grand View, we received an excellent education, shared a common heritage, and formed lifelong friendships. It was an experience that encouraged a sense of community and a sense of belonging, support and identity. Every evening, a seminary student led us in devotions, and then we would sing together from the original blue binder book The World of Song. Afterwards, we'd have coffee time in the cafeteria. We also celebrated Christmas by circling the Christmas tree while singing carols.

My mother, Gunver Johansen Bodaski, told me about AC Nielsen when I was growing up in Tyler, Minnesota. She told me he was full of fun. AC had been a staple in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, and subsequently the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, serving on church boards and at Grand View College (now University). AC taught in various places in Iowa, such as Fort Dodge. He was a strong believer in Grundtvig’s philosophy and theology.

When I was a boy, AC’s brother Chris Nielsen and his spouse (Gudrun) Guk were caretakers of the Danebod Folk School. My mother was suffering from Periarteritis (now known as Polyarteritis Nodosa) so we moved back to Tyler. To relieve the stress from my grandparents, Tante Guk and Onkel Chris brought my mother, dad, sister, and me into their home at 109 Highland Court. My sister and I were small at the time and tended to be disruptive in a dire but hopeful healing environment. Eventually, by God's grace, my mother recovered.

When AC came to visit his brother Chris in Tyler, I hadn’t yet met him. He had recently returned from France, and he was full of French stories, especially about the French can-can girls. Now AC could tell a good story. It was a fun family gathering at Onkel Chris and Tante Guk’s folk school living room. When my mother and I left, we went to my grandparents’ home, but we still enjoyed our encounters with AC. Once, my Mother disguised her voice with an accent and called Chris and Guk’s phone. When Tante Guk answered, my mother said, ”A person to person call to AC Nielsen from the little French chorus girl on the left.” When AC said, "Hello?" she hung up. In those days Tyler didn’t have dial phones. One operator, Nellie Magandy, was at the switch board. Nellie was known as great source of information as she enjoyed talking with everyone. This came in handy. For example, when people could not reach one of doctors, Nellie knew where they were. When AC called Nellie to find out who placed the person-to-person call from France, there had been no long distance calls, and she couldn’t remember who phoned the Nielsen residence. Mother got away with her joke.

One other time, Uncle Chris was farming on the flat land of central Nebraska where there is no such thing as a stone for many miles. AC found a large stone in Des Moines and took it when he went to visit his bother Chris. He put it in the middle of Onkel Chris’s field. When Chris found the stone, he was confounded. Did it fall from outer space? Did it somehow work its way up from an ancient geological phenomena? It was a good laugh for my family.

Some years later, I enrolled at what is now Grand View University. Onkel Chris and Tante Guk had retired to Des Moines to live with AC. As a Grand View student, I spent many hours with them, eating, playing cards, going to movies. Sometimes AC’s daughter Helen Jessen, her husband Marvin, and their children Carol and David would be part of our get-togethers. My second cousin Erik Hansen also enrolled in Grand View, so he, too, was often part of the get-togethers. We were a family for as long as time allowed.

After Tante Guk and Onkel Chris moved back to Tyler, I moved on to Drake University. AC and I would get together for a meal, attend the theater, or symphony concerts offered in Des Moines. When I went to seminary in Maywood and Chicago to learn from Johannes Knudsen and an outstanding faculty, I would come back to Des Moines to visit. AC had moved to a Presbyterian tower for the elderly on Ingersoll Avenue. Now it was my turn to sleep on the floor, and I gladly did to have time with AC. I saw AC for the last time when I took my fiancé, Susan, soon to be my spouse, to meet him at the dining hall at what became Luther Park as we traveled through Des Moines.

AC Nielsen was a gift to humankind, to the Lutheran Church, and Grand View University. How fortunate my family and I were to know this man! God bless his legacy, may it live on. May AC dwell among God’s saints around God’s throne of grace.

There is a riveting moment in the 1971 film The Emigrants when, after westering for mile after mile across America, the poor Swede Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow), finally plants his axe in a tree and tells his family, “Here!”

As an emigrant myself – from London to Randers, Denmark, in 1967 – I recognize this heartfelt moment when the emigrant turns immigrant once and for all. I married Hanna that year and much later, in 2013, we hosted Joy Ibsen, the former editor of Church and Life, as she toured Denmark recording interviews on Grundtvig’s influence today. We struck up such a friendship with Joy that Hanna offered to write articles for the journal with news and opinions from Denmark. For years readers enjoyed Hanna’s byline, until she died in 2021. I offered to continue the series, so for four years now I’ve been writing "Dateline Denmark." Sadly this is my last contribution, so I thought I would briefly reflect on the immigrant experience.

Let me start with Grundtvig’s son, Frederik, who married a Swede and emigrated to the United States in 1881. His mission was to preach to the Danes from his pulpit in Clinton, Iowa, as well as from local platforms about the preservation of the Danish national identity as Lutheran Christians and Danish-speakers. His initial success culminated in the founding of Dansk Folkesamfund (Danish Folk Society) in 1887 and the publication in 1889 of the popular Sangbog for det danske Folk i Amerika (Songbook for the Danish People in America). But as the Danes became increasingly Americanised, he realized that he was fighting a losing battle. He returned, disillusioned, to Denmark in 1900 and died three years later.

In my own case, Hanna was a fluent English speaker, so all life through our mutual language was English. Our two daughters are bi-lingual: Lisa emigrated to England in 1989, and Helena travelled the world before settling in Copenhagen in 2019. They treasure their Danish identity, but move around in an English-speaking world.

Most immigrants dream of a better life elsewhere. I am a first generation immigrant who moved country for two other reasons: love of a Danish woman and the chance to use my English teaching skills abroad. I have dual nationality, but my humble view is that Danes are either born in Denmark or born abroad of Danish parents. The Danes are one big clan that you can marry into but you can’t claim that you have thereby become a ‘Dane’. I find myself thinking in Danish but still dreaming in English, mostly about having to teach English to a high school class in Denmark without knowing who the students are, where the classroom is, and what I am supposed to be teaching them five minutes from NOW – then I wake up.

Last year, I met a Danish woman, Kirsten Paarup and fell in love with her. We have moved in together and speak Danish – a huge transition for me, since my brain is still hard-wired to English, however well I have managed in Danish society, learning the culture and the mentality. My last article in June on the high level of Trust in Denmark is what I would like readers to think of their old country, however many generations ago it was that their forefathers set sail for the USA.

The following story of Mads and Margrete Ibsen's immigration to the United States comes from a manuscript by Einar Petersen who married Ingeborg Ibsen, one of Mads's and Margrete's eight children. Ingeborg was brought to a dugout cave, the primitive shelter where Mads and three of his sons lived temporarily. It was located twelve miles northwest of Viborg, South Dakota. This story is from a larger manuscript translated from Danish by Johannes Knudsen and distributed to the couple's descendants in 1974.

An excerpt from an article in Vendssyssel Tidende (a Danish Newspaper), dated June 12, 1889:

The owner of the farm Rammelhoj in Hormested went to Hjoring last Saturday to try to raise money necessary for his economy. The effort failed, and the man did not come home. Only the day before yesterday, according to Frederkshavn Avis, did a letter come from Copenhagen stating that he was on the way to America. This person is commonly known as an exceptionally honest man who surely has not gone away to evade his financial obligations but rather in order to be able to meet them in due time.

-- Vilhl Carlsen (a personal friend of Mads Ibsen) 

Here is what had happened:

Bound by financial obligations, Mads Ibsen, owner of the farm Rammelhoj, had left for America without warning. A few days later, his wife and family received a letter telling them the news. The family was about to lose their farm, but Mads knew his wife and children would be okay while he was gone. He could think of no other recourse, and he had boarded a ship pledging somehow to find work, pay off his debts, and return to his wife and eight children.   

In June of 1899, Mads Ibsen arrived in Philadelphia. He was a complete stranger and did not speak English. He became hungry, and he had to pawn a watch given to him by his wife to get a few dollars for food. After a few months, he was able buy it back. He walked around looking for work and finally got a job taking care of cows on a farm near the city. He met some men from Bornholm, and they helped him learn to speak a little English. The daughter of the farm where he worked also helped him learn some English. Then Mads found out that his nephew Anders Ibsen was living in Danneville, South Dakota (now Viborg). Possibilities were better there, so Mads went to Viborg, where many Danes had settled and were doing odd jobs like cobble stoning. In March 1989, Mads' three sons, Lars, Janus, and Villads, met their father at Anders Ibsen's home. They were looking for jobs to pay for food and shelter and to pay off debts. 

Eventually, they found jobs working for the Milwaukee Railroad in Sioux Falls, which had two main railroads and new streets. The contract was for the fall and winter for $1.25 a day, and thirty days' work was required before they would be paid. But when the first month was up, the contractor was broke and couldn't pay. Thirty days of work were wasted. They could not remain at the boarding house where they were living so they rented two small rooms over a store. They slept on bundles of straw and shared a few blankets. Three of them went to work while Villads prepared their food, which consisting of porridge, eggs, bread, butter, and herring. Sleep was difficult: Bed bugs, enormous mosquitoes, and a terrible heat kept them up nights. Then, as bad luck would have it, the second pay day was like the first. Thirty more days were wasted. It was an enormous disappointment for the industrious but poverty-stricken workers. They were literally without a cent. They could not keep their rented rooms and bitter need set in.

One Sunday, they walked out of town miles across the prairie to find a place for Villads, who was only fifteen and could not stand the consuming hard labor. The trip was a failure. The next Sunday they again walked from morning until evening. They happened upon a colony of Norwegians eight miles from Sioux Falls. A friendly old Norwegian promised to take care of Villads. He could not hire him himself, but he knew of another family four miles farther north who needed help with cattle, and here Villads could earn room and board. When this was agreed, the kind Norwegian invited them for supper. He probably saw that they needed it. In the morning, they had shared one roll. In the evening they separated. Villads stayed with the Norwegian, while Janus and his father went back to the city. Lars had gotten a job in a sandpit for seventy-five cents a day plus board. A few days later, Villads began his job as a cow-herder. His boss was a middle-aged pioneer who had dug a hole in the ground for a home. 

The agreement was that Villads was to have $8.00 a month and free lodging. The family was so poor that, in the end, they could not pay, but Villads was in good hands, and the people were nice. He was given a horse and a dog, and he lived in the great outdoors on the prairie by the banks of the Sioux River. Trees and bushes grew along the banks. The river itself was a wide stream, and Villads learned to swim like a fish. Several months passed. When haying was over, Lars and Janus got jobs on farms where they earned $20 a month. During the fall and winter, they had steady work on the Milwaukee Railroad at $1.25 a day. Villads got a great satisfaction out of the fact that he, a teenager, earned as much as many adults. He also had gained the satisfaction that he was no longer a burden. Villads boss was a Dane, and he was easy on the young laborer. Mads Ibsen had a job in Sioux Falls in a hardware store, below the rooms they once had rented. He assembled and polished stoves.

Toward the end of 1890, the railroad work was over, and they went to Viborg to work in the cornfields. 

During the Winter of 1891 and '92, Mads was in the Spring Valley area. In Danneville (Viborg) there were now about fifty families. Most of them were Danes who immigrated in the late 1870s or early '80s. They came from the east in covered wagons pulled by oxen, and they settled whereever they could homestead. The settlers had only to select an unclaimed plot of ground, usually 160 acres. If the person built a log-cabin on the land, dug a well and cultivated five acres a year, he could get a deed for the farm upon the payment of $200.00. If he waited five years, he had no payment to make. 

Mads first rented a large acreage where he would pay one third of the harvest as payment, but there were problems regarding the agreement. As a result, Mads again found himself homeless. A neighboring farmer, named Hans Lojtved had a steep bank on his farm with a cave which could give shelter. One winter day, Mads arrived with a pick, shovel, and spade. Now, the land itself was to provide hope and give shelter to a man far from home, a man who could not afford to find shelter above the earth. As he worked, Mads was hearing his children's voices call to him. What was it they had sung in the assemblies in Denmark?

     The bird has a nest, the fox has a hole,

     The snail carries his house on his back.

     The wandering man has but a bag and a staff;

     He searches for bed and good luck.

The verse described the life that was his. Verses otherwise hidden away and forgotten reappear when they are needed.

Once the cave was finished, it was furnished with a bed, a table, and a bench. Mads lived there the winter 1892-93. Mads, Villads, and Fredrik Menhold, a young man from Mygdal shared the cave. It was there they celebrated Christmas. They helped each other with the cooking. They may have played cards. They sang Christmas hymns. There was song and dance. It was so festive that even a visiting nimble Methodist shoemaker once forgot himself and waltzed around on the floor of the cave with Mads. When the dance was over the shoemaker could tell by the looks of people that something unusual had taken place. Then it dawned upon him that he was a “holy” man who was not supposed to dance!  He disappeared like a whirlwind and hurried home. 

Memories find their own paths and so do the Christmas angels. Passersby must have seen the light in the cave and joined in the festivities. The four Danes probably had a better Christmas in their miserable surroundings than many Americans who eat a big meal and forget about the meaning of Christmas soon after. 

When that winter had ended, Mads Ibsen went to Spring Valley, which lies fifteen to twenty miles northwest of Viborg. A few Danish farmers from Vendsyssel lived there. They were Baptists and had differences with Mads Ibsen, but they welcomed him as a guest because he sang with them and read to them. They told him about a farm which was not in use. The owner had homesteaded but not fulfilled his obligations and had lost his rights. He would not give up the land for free; he consented to have Mads Ibsen purchase it for $500, paid in installments. Several of Mads’ children helped him make the last payments. The farm was 160 acres of unplowed prairie with a small stream on one corner. It sat on the border of Fremont to the northwest and Hurley to the northeast, each town twelve to fifteen miles away. 

Mads dug a suitable cellar in the early spring. Over this he placed a wooden eight by twelve foot shack with a slanting roof. Two beds, one large and one small, were placed there, for two of Mads' daughters, Grethe and Ingeborg who came to America in April 1893. Ingeborg, who was fourteen, moved into the cottage as housekeeper for her father. An old stove that Mads had found on the field served as a kitchen. A table and two chairs completed the furniture. The cottage was not much of a shelter in the heat of summer or the cold of winter, but humans usually prefer to live above the ground rather than in the ground, so they were satisfied enough. Mads divided time between work on his own farm and work on others. As was customary, he plowed a field and planted corn. The price of corn was so low that the farmers hauled the large golden ears together in piles on the field for storage rather than selling for. Some was used for fodder and some as fuel. Little Ingeborg thought that it was a shame to burn the bountiful ears but it just didn't pay to sell the corn. Mads once sold corn for 1/10 cent a pound. The piles of corn on the fields attracted jack rabbits who came up by the dozens for a free meal. 

Mads started out with two horses, a cow, few chickens, and a huge black dog called "Trofast," which was a great comfort to little Ingeborg. He dug a barn and a henhouse out of a hillside. Many Indians passed their way to trade; they spoke many languages, and it was not easy for a thirteen-year-old girl who had just come from Denmark to give information. Once an Indian tribe passed the farm firing arrows and guns and making a great deal of noise, but they went by without causing any harm.

When Ingeborg became lonesome, she took her songbook into God's great garden, the prairie, and sang about her longings and her good fortune. The dark shadows over her childhood home were gone. Here in the west, her good father was founding a new home, and back in the old country her mother was adding coin to coin so that she could join them soon. The lonesomeness and quiet of the prairie inspired her thoughts. Sometimes she sang a familiar song with deep sadness:

     O land, where I am born, where I belong,

     Where my roots are and where my world starts,

     Where the language in the soft voice of my other

     And reaches my heart like fine music.    H.C. Andersen. 

By this time, Mads's children also had jobs and took turns coming home to help their father on the farm. After Christmas time, 1895, Mads's longing became very strong. His wife’s mother was dead. There was no reason why Margrethe could not come to America with the youngest children, Ida and Jens. Villads quickly gave his father enough money for the ticket and to pay off the remainder of his debt in Denmark, and pleaded with him to go, and so he did.

The reunion of man and wife and the two small children still in Denmark was a profound joy. The few remaining creditors were paid off. Mads visited his beloved evergreens which he had planted himself years before, and he was pleased to see how they had grown. He gathered seeds from evergreen and beech trees in his pocket and, later, he seeded the in Spring Valley. Mads lived to see them grow. He stayed for two months, and once again he crossed the Atlantic, now with wife and two children in tow. 

After seven years of separation, the family was again united. Many things had been tested and much had been lost, but above the burdensome, sad reality of financial difficulties and hard physical labor under conditions of poverty, two stars lighted the darkness: honesty and loyalty. These heavenly stars were never, praise be to God, extinguished for the Mads Ibsen family. May they always be guiding stars for the many young people that have been added to the family.

In the spring of 1900, the farm was sold for $3,000, not counting the livestock. Mads Ibsen now had more cash than ever before. The family moved to Viborg and rented a house for a while. In the fall, they bought a small farm of twenty acres just south of Viborg. The soil was excellent, and the buildings were good; the married children were close by and the church was not far.

Mads Ibsen’s good friend, Vilhl Carlsen, the editor of Vensyssel Tidende, wrote the following on Tuesday, February 26, 1901:

Vensyssle Tidende reported some time ago that a good countryman some years ago had been forced by financial difficulties to emigrate to America. He again and again sent money to Denmark so that no one would suffer a loss through him. This industrious and conscientious man was Mads Ibsen. Spurred by a never-failing willpower, he worked faithfully until his death, and his family gained respect in their new home. At the same time, his name shall be honored at home, for the man who bore the name endured to the last to do his duty, despite sorrow, sickness, poverty, and adversity, which seemed to place greater burdens upon him, more than one man could carry. Such a life work has probably greater worth than many a momentary sensation which is praised to the skies.

Many meaningful Danish traditions were passed down to me by my beloved Bedstefar and Bedstemor, Johan and Sigrid Johansen. Perhaps the one I recall most often and with deepest warmth in my heart is the Danish Christmas Eve tradition. As a child growing up in Tyler, Minnesota, a Danish community, naturally I thought everyone celebrated Christmas in this wondrous way. As my knowledge of the world expanded, gradually I realized how unique this tradition is in America, how fortunate I am to have had this experience year after year, and how extensively many Danish traditions and values have enriched my life. May my experience, described below, awaken your own cherished memories of Christmas Eve and other loved Danish traditions.

The first event of Christmas Eve was the special five o'clock service at Danebod Lutheran Church. I was always sad that Bedstemor couldn’t come with us to church, but she steadfastly remained home to finish cooking the Christmas feast. The rest of us—Bedstefar, Mother, Dad, my brother and I—would step from the warm house into the cold, crisp, dark Minnesota winter and drive to the Danebod Lutheran Church just five minutes away, not nearly enough time for the car to heat up and provide warmth for its bundled, huddled passengers.

The steepled white church stood faintly silhouetted as we parked and then walked to its sturdy wooden doors on a narrow path shoveled through knee-deep snow. When Bedstefar pushed open the massive doors, welcoming golden light streamed out. As we parted the next set of double doors, our focus sped to each side of the altar where two towering Christmas trees magnificently gleamed, both trees lighted by hundreds of softly glowing, twinkling white lights. Every light reflected off the tall stained glass windows lining each side of the church. Soon organ music filled the entire sanctuary with the familiar, festive melodies of Danish Christmas hymns. During the service, the congregation would sing these hymns, sometimes in Danish, most often in English, but always accompanied by the sonorous organ.. As a child, I loved the music, but squirmed through the sermon, only wanting to be done with the service, done with Christmas Eve dinner, done with the mounds of dishes, so that I could finally open my presents. However, in my early teen years I began to relish sitting in the pew, absorbing another pristine, simple, beautiful Christmas, nourishing my heart and soul with precious, once-a-year-only, sights and sounds.

No matter what age I was, when we returned to Bedstemor and Bedsefar’s after church, dinner was soon served on a specially set table with an ivory open-work lace table cloth and sparkling crystal glasses, small ones for a Danish drink made from raspberry juice. This drink accompanied the first course, risengrod, a delicious rice pudding served with butter and cinnamon sugar. Bedstemor always hid an almond in that steaming bowl of pudding. We all took a big helping of the risengrod, hoping to be the lucky person to discover the almond in our serving and thus receive a special gift. For some years when my brother and I were very young, surprisingly we both found an almond in our mouth-watering mound of risengrod and thus each received a special gift. Following the rice pudding, turkey was usually served because goose, the more traditional Scandinavian main course, became increasingly hard to find. Cooked red cabbage, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and other side dishes that I don’t recall were included in this feast. My favorite Christmas dessert was kringle, a lighter-than-air, melt-in-your-mouth pastry cookie, shaped like a pretzel and purported to be very difficult to make. When the meal concluded, the dishes had to be washed before we could begin the final and most longed for Christmas Eve activity.

After what seemed to be a torturously endless wait, the dishes were done. Eagerly we descended the stairs to the basement where the Christmas tree beckoned with its delicate paper decorations, shimmering lights, and colorfully wrapped presents beneath its boughs, The overhead lights were always dimmed, creating focus on the twinkling tree. We encircled it, joined hands, felt the current of love and joy flow from each to the other, then began walking around the tree as our young and old voices rose in unison in one Christmas hymn after another after another. When seemingly all hymns had been sung, a very special song yet remained unsung, one that must be shared before anyone would even dare to consider opening a present. Slowly, softly someone would start singing “Nu ar det Jul igen” (“Christmas is here again”). As we sang the verses over and over, the volume increased, the words tumbled out faster and faster, our feet became swift, light, more joyful as we sped around the shining tree holding hands, singing, grateful for the shared tradition and for the genuine love and joy that bound us together at cherished Christmastime and throughout our lives.