Petter Olesen Rask

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A Norwegian Christmas

Posted by khteff in Rask

This story is from pages 207-208 in Lovise: Three Years is Forever by Eva Rask Stewart, who was one of the children mentioned in the story. Her father Petter Rask was the brother and next-door neighbor of my 3rd great-grandfather Peder Rask.

It tells of the first Christmas Ove Sundt, who was Petter’s wife Lovise’s brother, spent in America, and his first experience with Santa Claus. It would have been sometime in the 1880’s, in Houston County, MN.

Ove had not seen Lovise and her family yet, so he set out for Wilmington, telling his parents he would stay with them until after the holidays. He enjoyed the company of the children and was puzzled by their anticipation of Santa Claus’ visit, Petter and Lovise had to explain it all to him as he had never heard of the man before.

“And you say he comes down the chimney?”

“He surely does.”

“But how can he? You don’t have any fireplace in here?”

“We don’t know how he does it; we are always asleep, but in the morning the stockings that the children hung up are filled with toys and stuff.”

“I don’t believe it. I’m going to sit up and see.”

“All right. Go ahead. You will find out.” Lovise and Petter laughed; they really had Ove puzzled. He couldn’t understand how such things could be in America. At nine o’clock they all went to bed, Ove vowing that he was going to stay awake and see this phenomenon.

As it happened, that day had been particularly cold and stormy. The children had to stay in the house and had played in an up-stairs store room where Petter kept his seed corn. They had brought a tin pail up with them, probably with the idea they would shell some of the corn. But most of the time they had occupied their time in building a corn tower. On the very top they placed the tin pail, partly filled with shelled corn.

About two o’clock in the morning, there was a great crash as the tower collapsed and the pail with its contents crashed to the floor, spilling the kernels all over the floor.

Ove jumped out of bed. He ran downstairs calling out “Lovise! Petter! What happened? What was that noise?”

They laughed and said “Didn’t we tell you Santa Claus was coming and you didn’t believe us? Well, what do you think now? You heard him, didn’t you?”

They didn’t tell him for a long time that Santa Claus was a mythical saint much beloved by the children. Later they told him what really happened on that eventful Christmas Eve when he had been scared out of his wits.

During the holidays, several sleigh loads of neighbors in costumes and masks invaded the house. After their identities were guessed, they unmasked and danced folk dances until Lovise had the coffee and sandwiches ready. That was something Ove had never seen done before and he declared that Christmas in America was lots more fun than it was in that part of Norway he has just left.