I time-travel sometimes on Christmas Eve --- to the small white Lutheran church in far north Iowa's Winnebago County where I spent happy years among congenial friends. And where we gathered as evening settled in to sing carols, ending by candlelight with "Silent Night."
The Kloppens were among the rocks upon which this congregation was built --- Jensine and Melvin, sister and brother, and Gordon and Anna Mae, husband and wife.
They lived in a grove south of town (Thompson) --- planted to provide shelter, not native to the treeless prairie where John and Sissel (Grytte) Kloppen, "Pa and Ma," had settled not too long before the turn of the 20th century after arriving from Norway.
John had disembarked in the United States as a Johnson (John’s son), but decided there were too many Johnsons in the world and so had decided to use instead the name of the farm from whence he had come in Norway --- Kloppen --- as the family name.
Ma and Pa built the big house, where Jensine and Melvin lived. Gordon and Anna Mae lived in a much smaller house to the west, built when they married.
The senior Kloppens had been instrumental in building West Prairie Lutheran Church, a breath-takingly beautiful but simple wood-frame building with soaring spire that dominated the prairie a couple of miles northeast. And to here on Christmas Eve the family had traveled for years, first by horse and wagon (or bobsled) and then by auto, to gather each Christmas Eve around the Christmas tree --- erected within the curve of the communion rail and before the soaring wedding-cake altar.
By the time I came along, West Prairie had fallen victim to declining rural population, its congregation had merged with a congregation in town to form Zion and the big church had been torn down. Only the cemetery --- where Pa and Ma had been buried during the 1930s --- remained.
This was "west" West Prairie church. "East" West Prairie, built across the prairie some years after the first when theological dispute divided the neighborhood, still stands. Services in both had been conducted in the Norwegian language well into the 20th century.
Our Christmas Eve services during the concluding years of the 20th century were happy times; the big bell, brought in from West Prairie, rang joyfully and all were welcome. And before the service closed, primarily for Jensine, we sang in English --- the Norwegian language had faded from the memories of most but not hers --- “I am so glad each Christmas Eve!” (Jeg er sa glad hver julekveld!), another tradition carried in from West Prairie. And then we went forth.
Jensine, who lived to be 98 and was the last of the family to be gathered home, passed during May of 1998. Her body had failed her, but mind and memory remained sharp --- and among the things she remembered was my promise to serve as soloist during her funeral. I no longer lived in Thompson, but returned to sit beside my friend Cyndy Johnson, the organist, in that little church and after some whispered consultation, she wove the tune of that familiar Christmas carol into the prelude to the service on that warm spring morning.
I am not an especially sentimental person, but for that and other reasons this old song --- sung here in Norwegian by the Oslo Gospel Choir and signed for the hearing impaired --- has considerable power.
The Christmas card at the top here, by the way, apparently was produced in Denmark, but it was exchanged by Norwegians in Thompson, Iowa, at the turn of the 20th century.
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