Christmas Eve with our Ancestors

Christmas Eve for French-Canadians is known as the réveillon (literally, “awakening”), a feast that followed midnight mass and ushered in Christmas Day. Traditional food is the tourtiere or meat pie.




In German it is Heiliger Abend. The festival is usually celebrated in the family circle. In Germany it is common to eat potato salad with sausages or a similarly simple meal, but also more complex dishes such as goose or carp are common. A traditional Christmas Eve meal consists of carp (a type of fish), potato salad, boiled potatoes, cucumber salad and lemon slices. Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce. It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles.

In Ireland it is Oíche Nollag.  Christmas Eve is traditionally a day of fasting in Ireland followed with a small evening meal of fish and potatoes. After evening meal on Christmas eve the kitchen table was again set and on it were placed a loaf of bread filled with caraway seeds and raisins, a pitcher of milk and a large lit candle. The door to the house was left unlatched so that Mary and Joseph, or any wandering traveller, could avail of the welcome.



Recipes:

  Tourtiere:  http://www.ediblecommunities.com/southshore/winter-2011-2012/edible-celebrations-wake-up-and-party-french-canadians-on-christmas-eve.htm

  Irish Christmas Cake http://www.irelandforvisitors.com/recipes/blccake.htm

and all that food needs to be followed up with Gluehwein (you can make it with red or white wine) http://www.vistawide.com/german/christmas/gluehwein_recipe.htm

More on Internments

By the spring of 1917, so much of Canada's workforce had entered the armed forces that industry and agriculture were severely short of labour. As a result, all able-bodied internees were paroled from the internment camps to work in factories, railway camps and mines. Parole conditions included travel restrictions and required parolees to carry identity cards and report regularly to local authorities. Those assigned to railway labour in northern Ontario experienced conditions as hard as in the camps. Some 1,300 prisoners were paroled from Kapuskasing that spring. Approximately 60 men remained in camp for health or security reasons. They were soon joined by 400 prisoners of war transferred from the Fort Henry internment station. To hold these more dangerous inmates, high barbed-wire fences were erected around the camp and a stricter regime was instituted. Soon the camp's population again rose to over 1,200 prisoners. The majority now were German prisoners of war, mostly sailors and merchant seamen taken from German ships in the Caribbean.

Why was Fredrich Gerull considered "dangerous"?   Most likely he was just a merchant seaman like Grandpa who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Update:  Fredrich was most likely in the German military and was captured and interred on behalf of England in Canada.