Today is Grandma Knez's birthday. She was born Otilie Tekla Melka in 1889 in a small town called Černice in what is now the Czech Republic. She was 4 foot 10 and very round, probably because she enjoyed her own cooking and baking -- and so did everybody else. When I think of her, I generally see her in her kitchen, a large crockery bowl on her hip, beating its contents vigorously with a wooden spoon.
It is also St. Nicholas Eve today, December 6 being the feast day of the 4th-Century Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, who is the patron saint of, among others, sailors, archers, merchants, and children, and who becomes Santa Claus in our culture. When I was young, we hung stockings on St. Nicholas Eve, a tradition my grandparents brought with them from the old country. Candy and toys were good, coal and potatoes were bad. (When coal was getting harder to come by, my mother decided a raw potato conveyed the same message.) To emphasize her belief that no child was ever completely good, there was always at least one piece of coal or one potato in our stockings along with the treats.
And as if that were not enough, it was on this date in 1933 that Prohibition was repealed. Now there's something to celebrate.
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