12-13-14

December 13, 2014. Such numbers in a date beg to be written about in some fashion because they will not occur again for another hundred years. And, strangely, this makes me think of my grandmother whom I’ve written of before.

Looking back at the year 1914 as inhabitants of the US, records tell us that Charlie Chaplin made his film debut, Babe Ruth debuted with the Boston Red Sox and the Panama Canal became a reality. For those living in Europe during the year 1914, it was not a good year as what became known as World War I began in August with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

However, in the USA, that probably didn’t stir much interest as the US didn’t enter the war until 1917. I’m pretty sure the farmers of northeastern MO were more interested in their corn crop yield, etc. and their young daughters were interested in how they might renovate their shirtwaist so it would appear they had a new dress for the Christmas play party at the neighbor’s house.

My grandmother turned 20 in 1914 and although I have none of her diaries, this new decade in her life may well have been quite a rite of passage. Her circuit-riding Free Methodist preacher Grandfather Reber had died in January, she turned 20 in May and it’s anyone’s guess how much trickle-down of political doings reached the attention of an attractive 20-year-old.

So I have to imagine how my Grandmother Tillie, her older sister, Anna, and her parents might have spent 12/13/14 one hundred years ago. Possibly Anna was still attending business college in a city about 30 miles away. The train ran daily between Palmyra (a town about 7 miles awayfrom the Reber farm) so transportation wasn’t too much of a problem. Grandmother may well have been teaching at a country schoolhouse although I have no way of knowing the exact years she spent teaching prior to her marriage in 1919. Her transportation would have been by horseback as both girls are pictured with their mounts in several snapshots. Given those guesses, the weekends were probably busy ones of sewing presents and baking any desserts, etc. that could be prepared ahead of time for the coming Christmas festivities with family and friends.

As I think of the likely unawareness of John and Jane Q. Public regarding what was happening across the ocean on December 14, 1914, I wonder if I am somewhat the same. Not because of the lack of media information but perhaps because the deluge of news and pictures have desensitized me. At any rate, I can’t imagine any British newspaper reporting the 1914 Christmas Truce ever reaching Marion County, Missouri.

The YouTube video of the 1914 Christmas truce between the German soldiers in the trenches and their British counterparts is such a bittersweet example of the peace and harmony the Babe in a Manger came to earth to effect. How sad that a generation of young men perished for mere political reasons. And how sad that our world has learned nothing from that loss in one hundred years.