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The
Spirit of Giving - A not so brief introduction - Mabel Schobert was
my mother's maiden name before she married my dad, Clifford Walker.
She was one of a large family with German immigrant parents who
lived in the north Minnesota woods at the turn of the twentieth
century. Early years were hard and not very prosperous. Her father
was trained as a barrel maker (a cooper) but he sought work where
he could.
In the winter of 1904, Grandpa Schobert was working at a logging camp away from the family. The oldest boys had to assume adult responsibilities for food, comfort and security at very early ages. When Grandma Schobert announced to the kids that there wasn't enough money for Christmas, the boys did what they could to rectify the situation and, as the song tells, there indeed was a Christmas that year, and one to remember. Over the years, the story was told and retold many times in the family and for others on the south Saskatchewan farm near Melaval. The nutmeg grater, "the gift from Walter to mother", was passed from my grandmother, to my mother and then to me. My earliest memories of Christmases, that even are verified by home movies and other Christmas morning photographs of that period, show the nutmeg grater hanging on the tree with smaller versions of myself and my siblings surrounded with presents and torn pieces of wrapping paper. My mother would often tell us the story of it's origin but of course we would be much older before we could appreciate what the story really meant. My Mom's last telling of this story was for one of her last Minnesota cousins the night before her stroke. I found the unfinished typewritten Christmas letter almost ready to be mailed on the kitchen table. The song came to me a short time later. Although she lived for another seven and a half years, she never spoke again. So this is part of her legacy: devoted to her family, to her faith and to the Spirit of Giving. |