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 North Dakota State University -- NDSU Agriculture Communication 7
Morrill Hall, Fargo ND, 58105-5655, Tel: 701-231-7881, Fax: 701-231-7044extcomm@ndsuext.nodak.edu |
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North Dakota State University -- NDSU Agriculture Communication7
Morrill Hall, Fargo ND, 58105-5655, Tel: 701-231-7881, Fax: 701-231-7044extcomm@ndsuext.nodak.edu |
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Plains Folk: An Advent Lesson of AcceptanceTom Isern, Professor of History For Christmas reading this year, let me commend to you Chapter XI, Book I, of "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. It might be sacrilegious to put the book on "The Shimerdas" in a class with the Gospels, but I will say there is in it a lesson of Advent for us people of the plains. The boy Jim Burden was looking forward to his first Christmas on the farm of his grandparents in Nebraska. Jake the hired man was to go to Black Hawk for gifts, but on the 21st heavy snows began, and he was unable to get to town, so the family "decided to have a country Christmas." Jake takes food and homemade gifts over to the Bohemian neighbors, the Shimerdas, returning with a fresh-cut red cedar on the pommel. Decorations for the tree come unexpectedly from the bottom of the cowboy trunk of Otto, the other hand -- paper figures his mother has sent him year by year from Austria. "Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale," Cather says for Jim. "Legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge." On Christmas morning there were waffles and sausage, and Grandfather Burden’s prayer. "He gave thanks for our food and comfort," recalls the narrator, "and prayed for the poor and destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder than it was here with us." Lovers of Cather’s novels are deeply moved -- as I am -- by her female characters, not just the title character of Antonia, the Bohemian girl, but the other immigrant girls, too. On my last reading of Antonia, though, what struck me was the manly appeal of certain male figures, especially Grandfather Burden, whom readers too often dismiss as stiff and old. His Christmas prayer is a model, and his role later in the day is even more so. Old Mr. Shimerda arrives for an afternoon visit, doffing his rabbit-skin cap to seek comfort in the Burden house. The Shimerdas, recent immigrants, live in a miserable dugout. A few pages later in the book he would kill himself in the barn. This Christmas day, "He said almost nothing, and smiled rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense of his utter content." A potential crisis arises: as the candles are lit, Mr. Shimerda crosses himself, kneels before the tree as before an altar, and prays piously. Grandfather Burden, although Protestant to the bone and "rather narrow in religious matters," bows his head in respect. As Mr. Shimerda departs, the grandfather says to the household, "The prayers of all good people are good." In the settlement of these Great Plains, certain people commonly arrived first. They were the Yankees -- English-speaking Anglo-Americans or Anglo-Canadians who came with capital, established prosperous farms and ranches, and ran the businesses. Next came the European immigrants, the Norwegians and Bohemians and Germans and Ukrainians. The immigrants were viewed with distaste by most Yankees, but not by all. There were enough Grandfather Burdens around to make a peaceful transition from the day of the Yankee to the day of the immigrant. Today on the plains of North America, the children of the old immigrants -- and I am one -- are in the same position as were the Yankees of Cather’s story. We hold the country. From all directions, but especially from the south and far east, come new immigrants seeking a better life and willing, as did the Shimerdas, to suffer hardship in pursuit of it. My Christmas wish is that as I meet these people in my home country, I will always measure up to the standard of wisdom and liberality set by Grandfather Burden on that snow-bound Christmas. ### Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
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