T-Time Lyrics: The Spirit of Giving

The Spirit of Giving

Her hair was like snow on a bright winter's morning
Eight decades of life on Saskatchewan's plain
It's comin' on Christmas, the tree blinks and glistens
With one more addition to gain

She opens the door to the old kitchen cupboard
The smell of the spice seems to waft on the air
And she reaches for something to hang on the Christmas tree
But why does it need to be there?

She sits all the little ones down in a circle
With cookies and milk at the close of the day
And she tells them a story of a long ago Christmas
These words that she wanted to say...

In the winter woods of Minnesota,
Times were hard, all work and no play
Father was gone to make a dollar,
And December he must be away
Christmas soon and Mother was ready,
To tell her children dear
"There'll be no Christmas, we have no money,
We'll have to wait till next year".

There were eight of us children under eleven,
Joe was the baby, a couple months old
Five older brothers and Walter the oldest,
They couldn't believe what was told
They said to mother, "There must be a Christmas,
We're set to make it so."
So they cut a small tree and decorated
With ornaments from long long ago

The next they needed was Christmas dinner,
The boys went out with rifle and snare
They soon returned with all they needed,
For rabbits were plentiful there
But still there were no Christmas presents,
No gifts for under the tree
But Walter had a shiny quarter,
Was determined that Christmas must be.

So Walter went walking seven miles,
Found in the nearest general store
Two dolls for the girls and a gift for mother,
Then he walked back seven miles more
On Christmas day and after dinner,
When all of the chores were done
My mother read the Christmas story,
And "Silent Night" was then sung.

It's many years later the most of a century,
That Christmas of nineteen hundred and four
I still have the gift from Walter to Mother,
It now means a thousand times more
A nutmeg grater, it's old and battered,
It hangs on my Christmas tree
To remind us of the Spirit of Giving,
Reminds us what Christmas can be.

A nutmeg grater, it's old and battered,
It hangs on my Christmas tree
To remind us of the Spirit of Giving,
Reminds us what Christmas can be.

To the Shop

About the Song

A Brief Description

This is a song written from my mother's perspective. Every year in December she would take a nutmeg grater out of the kitchen cupboard and hang it on the Christmas tree and, at an appropriate time, retell its story. It's a true story of her family's Christmas of 1904 when they lived in Minnesota before immigrating to Saskatchewan in 1913. Since my mother lost her voice to a major stroke in 1991, I'm now one of the ones who tell this piece of family folklore - about the nutmeg grater "to remind us what Christmas can be".

More About the Song

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.

T-Time

The Spirit of Giving is a true family story about how the kids save Christmas.
- Back to T-Time

NORM WALKER