A Low German Mennonite Christmas in Mexico

Preparing for the Christmas holidays in the Mennonite colonies in Mexico is similar to preparing for a wedding as described in this post. Starting around mid-November, the whole yard gets wrecked, and the bottom ten inches of the trees get painted white all around the property.

At the beginning of November, children start memorizing the Christmas wensch (short poem wish) and some songs at the Mennonite school. On the last Friday before Christmas, parents go and listen to the children say their wensch and sing songs at school. On this day, the children bring the teacher a gift, wrapped in newspaper. During my Mennonite school years, the most popular items to bring a teacher were grocery items such as cornflakes, instant coffee, sugar, and soap.

 

My wensch

In early December, women would often make new curtains, always wash the walls and do a major cleaning in every room of the house with pine sol water. Some Mennonites who could afford to buy decorations would decorate their house by hanging plain Christmas ornaments and tinsel on the walls. Others put string wall to wall and hung all the Christmas cards over the string that they had received and collected over the years from family members in Canada and the United States.

We don’t put up a Christmas tree, not because we don’t believe in having a Christmas tree, but because it isn't a big deal. Most people can’t afford to buy a fake one, and to kill a living tree for that reason, has never crossed our minds. It was hard enough to keep the few trees that we had alive due to the lack of rain and shortage of water. I believe it is because of that that the Christmas tree has never had a chance to become a tradition in my lifetime. Even for us Low German Mennonites living in Canada, it's not that we are against or for putting up a Christmas tree. It just has never been a big deal to us.

The Mennonites that could afford it would often team up and go Christmas shopping in Mazatlan, Sinaloa on a tour bus. They would be gone for three days or more because it took about eight hours to drive through la sierra madre to Mazatlan. They shopped for household items and items such as tools, baby dolls, toy dishes, crayons, toy tractors, sweets, and peanuts.

Others would shop in Nuevo Ideal and in the Mennonite stores in the colonies. Most kids got to go to Nuevo Ideal on Christmas Eve with their parents after the chores were done. The children would get a bit of money to buy treats for themselves and families would eat at a taco stand or sometimes even in a restaurant.

I remember the police officers standing in the middle of the streets of Nuevo Ideal directing traffic so we didn’t get run over by a massive number of vehicles that were visiting Nuevo Ideal from the US and Canada. They were also trying to park to do their shopping.

Some of the older youth would be allowed to take a bus to Durango city for a day to do some Christmas shopping as a group without the parents. I got to do this once, and it was the most exciting thing I experienced before I came to Canada, especially the two-hour bus ride through the most beautiful mountains. I remember it like it was yesterday.  I remember the song that was playing in the background by Marco Antonio Solis and Maricela while I walked down the aisle in the Soriana looking for the perfect bottle of perfume in my price range.

Every Christmas Eve just before the children go to sleep, they will each place a washing up bowl at their respective spot at the dinner table. After the children are in bed, the parents will proceed to put unwrapped presents inside the bowls to be discovered by the children in the morning.

Christmas morning (December 25) my brother Johan and I would make a fire in the wood fireplace before the rest of the siblings got up. We waited for everyone to get up before we looked in our bowls. We would find things such as peanuts, oranges, a few candy bars, store bought cookies, socks, fabric for a dress or overalls, crayons a coloring books, and depending on the family sometimes a toy in our bowls. The older kids would get a song book or a catechism.

Christmas day a few of us would go to a morning church service to honour the birth of Christ, and then spend the day with family at our grandparents’ house. After everyone had lunch, and the dishes were done, all the school-aged children would take turns in order from youngest to oldest and say their wensch in front of the parents and grandparents. Each child received a treat bag after they finish saying their wensch.

After the children all finish saying their wensch, they go out with their treat bags to play and then the adults receive gifts such as household items, tools, fabric for overalls and dresses.

On the mid-holiday, we would do the same with the other grandparents. On the third holiday, people would often go to the mountains and have a BBQ with friends and family while the ministers had their family gatherings.

Froeliche Weihnachten 

National Geographic Living In A Perfect World

Living in a Perfect World is a 2006 feature-length documentary film by National Geographic Channel International (NGCI) about the German-speaking Mennonites between Chihuahua Desert and the Bolivian forest.

The dialogue in the documentary is in Spanish and Plautdietsch with English and other subtitles.

Living in a Perfect World was awarded as Best Documentary of the BigScreen Festival in 2007.

Nov 16, 2013 - Uploaded by Peter Berg

The documentary tells the stories of four traditional Mennonites (Aganetha, Cornelio, Pedro and Jacobo) living in two different communities. The colonies of El Sabinal and El Capulin are settled in the Mexican state of Chihuahua and look like typical communities of conservative so-called "Russian" Mennonites, who formed as an ethnic group in southern Russia, but who are of Dutch and German ancestry and language. These German-speaking Mennonites have a long history of migrations, beginning in the Netherlands, where the group originated, to the then mostly German-speaking area around Danzig (see also: Vistula delta Mennonites) and from there to Russia (see also: Chortitza Colony and Molotschna Colony, then to Canada and from there to Mexico in search of a place where they can freely practice their religion and speak Plautdietsch, an East Low German dialect of the German language. The four protagonists are longing for their perfect world in balance between tradition and modernity: The colony of El Sabinal lives in isolation and rejects any modern technology, whereas the colony of El Capulin begins to accept innovations such as electricity and cars. The more orthodox members of the community will migrate to the Bolivian rainforest.

This information came from Wikipedia

The old dispute between the two Old Colony churches Canada vs Mexico

Old Colony Mennonite Church, Peel Twp., Wellington, Ontario, Canada

Growing up in the strictly religious Old Colony Church, it was often confusing to know exactly which rules had exceptions and which ones didn’t. For example, The Mexican Old Colony church did not allow its members to drive cars. But if someone went to Canada, came back to Mexico with a van and parked it in their garage, that was allowed. As long as they left it parked until they went back to Canada.  

I remember people talking about how unfair they thought it was that sometimes change was allowed but other times it wasn’t. 

The rules about driving cars were complicated. For example, there were colonies that were too far to get to in a horse and buggy. In these cases, people would have to hire a Mexican driver to go there if they needed to. 

Driving a car as far as Canada was okay, though, because it was too far to get to in a horse and buggy. In a way, that was the same as going to a colony in Mexico that was too far to get to in a horse and buggy. But not quite. The question was, How far was far enough to be allowed to drive a car? Well, people could take a bus there, but people could also take the bus to Canada. It was a never-ending argument. 

Old Colony church, Nuevo Ideal, Durango, Mexico

Our relationship with the Old Colony Church in Canada was complicated, too. Most parents didn’t want their kids to date people who had been to Canada because chances were that they would leave the Church in Mexico and join the one in Canada. It rarely happened the other way around.

People who belonged to the church in Canada were considered not Mexican Old Colony but a Canadian Old Colony, and eventually the Canadian Old Colony members were allowed to drive cars in Mexico without getting in trouble for it because they actually belonged to a different church.

It seemed that the Mexican Old Colony resented the Canadian Old Colony for having that luxury. This was a big problem, because so many Old Colony people went back and forth to Canada and Mexico. The older I got, the more people went to Canada for the summers. Even people who were against it eventually ended up going back and forth.

During my years living in Mexico, the Old Colony church was against its members going to Canada at all. However, many people had no choice but to come to Canada because of hardship and poverty in Mexico. Eventfully it was okay to go and work in Canada for the summers as long as people maintained the way they dressed.

Even if people attended the Canadian Old Colony church, as long as they didn’t join the church in Canada they were still Mexican Old Colony. After that had become the norm, then more and more people would end up staying in Canada all year round, not attending church at all. Then they were considered the ones changing too much and living in sin.

I remember the ministers in Mexico speaking out against the fact that too many people were not attending church at all, or joining the Canadian church, and that that was a sad reality. People were encouraged to just stay in Mexico so they wouldn’t be tempted to change like the ones who decided to stay in Canada.

The Canadian Old Colony members were still allowed to attend the Mexican Old Colony church, as long as they didn’t drive their cars to church and dressed Mexican Old Colony appropriate.

It was often said that people would join the Canadian church just so they could drive cars in Mexico without getting in trouble for it. Each time someone came back from Canada they had changed a bit more. I remember the year when a few women brought back the most beautiful dresses. They had pleats all the way around the skirt, not just in the back like they were supposed to.

In the Mexican Old Colony church we had to wear a black apron over our dresses which had pleats only in the back. Every female had to have their hair in braids and wear a big black düak (shawl/kerchief) with fringe around it in church.

The first Sunday after a woman had her first baby was the only time she was allowed to bring her baby to church. That Sunday she had to start wearing the mats (described below) in church, to funerals and to weddings. Children were not allowed to attend church until about the age of ten or when they were able to sit like a robot.

The mats is a beautifully handcrafted headpiece made out of layers of lace stacked up about two inches high. Women wear this under their düak just so that the layers of folded lace peek through and show on top of their head.

This mats was made by Old Colony Women in Bolivia

By contrast, In the Canadian Old Colony church women didn’t have to wear the mats -- it was their choice if and when they started wearing one. Some of the ministers’ wives even chose not to wear a mats and just wore a small düak  in church.

Some parents in the Canadian church would allow their young girls, even already-married ones, to wear their hair pinned up in a hairnet and a little black düak. All ages of children were allowed to attend church, even wearing a ponytail or a bun with no düak, and robot behaviour was not as expected of the children in the Canadian church as it was in the Mexican church.

In Canada, some young girls would wear short-sleeve dresses that had pleats ironed into the front of the dress as well as the back and not wear a black apron with it. They would even wear white socks in the Canadian church. In the Mexican church that was not allowed. We had to wear long sleeves, pleats only in the back of the dress, with a black apron and dark brown or black nylons.  

In the Mexican church, the older a woman got, the wider the pleats had to be in her skirt. The colour of her nylons and dress had to get darker and darker as she aged. After a woman became a grandma she would wear a lint-schaldüak (waist apron) which didn’t have the top part of the apron on it, just the bottom part. In the Canadian church a women could choose whether they wanted wear a lint-schaldüak or not.

In the Mexican church, church services, wedding ceremonies and funerals were all in High German only. In the Canadian church, these were all done in a combination of both High German and Low German/Plautdietsch. Old Colony people singing.

When I attended a Canadian Old Colony church, I felt welcomed for the most part. I did get the occasional side stare by someone who knew of me and considered my lifestyle a sinful one. It brought tears to my eyes when I actually understood the sermon because it was in Plautdietsch -- that was the language I spoke and understood. I had never experienced that before.

I got the sense that the focus on the message in the Canadian Old Colony church was a bit more about how one acted than how one dressed. Dressing church-appropriate, wearing a head covering, and not showing too much skin was still promoted. It wasn’t so much about pleats, big or small düak, an apron or lint-schaldüak, and the mats.

This was not the case in the Mexican church. From the little I understood, the focus was more on dressing and not allowing change to happen. But many things were said in High German that I didn’t understand, therefore I can’t say that this is entirely true.

Now that I have read a mountain of books on the history about why my people left Canada, I am beginning to get a clearer picture of the battle between the two churches. It has always been about keeping things the way they had been. I understand the fear for when small changes were allowed, because how many small changes could happen before it become a big change?

“The main reason most of the Old Colony Mennonites left Canada, where they had settled a mere half a century earlier, might best be summed up by words of Old Colony Mennonite Bishop Isaac Dyck: ‘When the school, as the first plating place in man’s heart, was held in common with the world, then the church also couldn't remain free from it.’”1

“The Old Colony believe ‘ji meha jiliehet, ji meha fitchiehet’ (the more learned the more misguided). The Mennonites felt cheated by the government, who, in their eyes, was not keeping the promises that had been made to the Mennonites before they came to Canada.”2

Allowing children to go to a public school was a change they clearly didn’t want.

“The leaders’ plan was to move the entire church to Mexico.  But not all the Old Colony people made the move.  Some did not see the Canadian school laws as a threat.  Others were too poor to move.  Ministers returned to Canada to hold communion services until 1926.  Eventually, all the ones remaining in Canada were excommunicated.”3

One of the Old Colony ministers who was involved in the decision to move to Mexico was my great grandfather Johan P. Wall. Among the people on that train to Mexico were both my paternal grandparents, as well as my great-grandfather and grandfather -- both named Abraham Schmitt -- on my mother’s side.

While researching where I fit into the timeline, tracing my family tree back to Russia, I learned this piece about my great-grandfather. I was so disappointed, mostly in myself. The thing that saddened me the most was that he had made such a huge sacrifice to save us from being “misguided” and I didn’t even know about it. In order to avoid being “misguided,” we hadn’t learned anything about many subjects, including history . . . even the history of our own people and families.

The Old Colony people who stayed in Canada ordained new ministers and continued life in Canada as a separate church from the one that left. By law they were supposed to be sending their children to a public school until grade eight. This didn’t happen overnight as this change was not easy for some Old Colony people. Though they stayed in Canada, it didn’t necessarily mean that they agreed to send their kids to a Canadian public school.

While I was searching for information on my great-grandfather Abraham Schmitt on my mother’s side, I came across an autobiographical book entitled Brilliant Idiot by a Dr. Abraham Schmitt. From the story, I learned that during that time of great upheaval, the author’s father was about to marry a girl whose family was too poor to move to Mexico. Because of that, he was the only Schmitt out of that family to stay behind in Canada. I believe he might be my great-grandfather Abraham Schmitt’s cousin.

In this book, Abraham describes life as he grew up in Canada. It sounds about as hard as -- if not harder than -- it was for the people who went to Mexico and started a brand new colony in the Mexican desert. He talks about how families, including his, moved further into isolation so the “English people” wouldn’t get them in trouble for not sending their kids to public school.  

I’ve often wondered how different my life would have turned out if my great grandparents and grandparents had stayed in Canada. After reading Brilliant Idiot, I realized that it may have been different but not necessarily better. He was a “hard learner” just like I was. While on his quest to find his way in life, he discovered that he in fact was dyslexic and wrote a book about it.

Reading Brilliant Idiot gave me the shivers. In it, Schmitt struggles and fights and claws his way through intense obstacles and overcomes them. This book inspired me enough to start writing about my learning struggles and fitting my puzzle pieces together. I am so grateful that he left behind this information for me to learn from and gain a new perspective on what could have been.

_____________________________________________

1 Called to Mexico p.12

2 Called to Mexico p.12

3 Called to Mexico p.13

Low German Helje Doag (holy days) Religious holidays

Christmas – Wienachten December 25th, 26th, and 27th 

Epiphany – Helje Dree Kjeenijch (Day of the Three Holly Wise Men) January 6

Good Friday – Stelle Friedach (Quiet Friday)

Easter – Oostren Sunday, Monday and Tuesday

Ascension Day – Himmelfoat the 6th Thursday after Easter

Pentecost – Pinjsten the 7th Sunday after Easter and the Monday and Tuesday that follow

Old Colony Mennonite Church in Bluemenort Nuevo Ideal Durango Mexico

We call holidays Helje Doag (holy days) referring especially to those holidays with a three-day commemoration. We observe Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, in the colonies during which we do not work or do business transactions.  We also observe three days for Pentecost and three days for Christmas, in which there are church services on Sunday morning and Monday morning.

Low German families in Canada may miss school, work, and other appointments on these days.

We call the day before each of these holidays Helje Owent on these days there is no school in the colonies in Mexico. The whole family works hard to prepare for the holiday or holidays to follow.

On the third holiday the Tuesday, there are no church services so the ministers can have a free day to spend with their families.

Christmas – Wienachten is a three day holiday we call the first, second, and third day of Christmas. On Helje Owent too Wienachten (holy night) each child sat a bowl on the table by their spot where we ate. Christmas morning Santa had put gifts into the bowls such as peanuts, candy, store-bought cookies, socks, a handkerchief, material for a dress, and sometimes a toy. After church services, most people have family gatherings.

Epiphany – Helje Dree Kjeenijch (Day of the Three Holly Wise Men) we observe this one-day holiday on January 6.

Good Friday – Stelle Friedach (Quiet Friday) we observe Stelle Friedach as a one day holiday after church in the morning. Where Christ’s suffering is portrayed, we have a quiet lunch at home with our mom, dad, brothers, and sisters. There is no visiting in the afternoon, as on a regular Sunday, so there is hardly any traffic in the colonies at all it truly is a quiet Friday.

Every Stelle Friedach mom got a box full of books out for us to look at. In the box were the Bible, the Testament, the Catechism, the Fible, and some books we had no idea what they were. I remember always picking this one book and looking at the pictures because I couldn't read it.

Now that I can read I have often wondered what that book was about. While visiting my colony during the Christmas Helje Doag, I asked my mom if she still had that book and she remembered exactly which one was my favorite. It is a High German dictionary that my grandpa got from his dad that someone had given to his grandpa from Russia. I still love it as much as I did when I was living at home.

Little did I know twenty-some years later I would read books about my grandpa and his grandpa in English. And that this book I loved but couldn't read had traveled with them all along.

Easter – Oostren on Helje Owent too Oostren (the night before Easter) we made a little nest inside a bowl on the table. Easter Sunday morning there were Easter eggs and a little coke in the nest that the Oosta hos (Easter bunny) had put in for us then we would go outside yet and search for a bag of treats the Oosta hos (Easter bunny) had hidden for us.

Ascension Day – Himmelfoat is a one day holiday we observe, it is the 6th Thursday after Easter commemorating Jesus’ return to haven.

Pentecost – Pinjsten this is when the Old Colony youth are baptized, the only time of the year. Observing these three days to allow the bishops to visit all the Old Colony churches to perform the ceremony of baptism. If there are applicants still not baptized, they observe the following Sunday as well. After this, they wait until the following year for baptism.

Schowanacks-Owent

We called Halloween Schowanacks-Owent which translates to mischief/pranksters evening.

No matter how far away from mainstream society we lived or, as we called it, “the people of the world”, meaning non-Mennonites, we still knew about Halloween.  We hand carved a lot of pumpkins around this time of the year.  Most of us would have fields of them and we called them sot- kjarps, seed pumpkins.  We grew them only for the seeds and fed the rest to the pigs. 

 

Image

I came to Canada in July and, by the time October arrived, I had heard many people say that they love pumpkin pie or anything made from pumpkins to eat.  When I finally figured out that pumpkin was sot- kjarps, I thought, “Eeww, people in Canada make pie out of pig food!”

We did eat only one kind of kjarps and that was zucchini. Any other weird looking orange kjarps we did not eat.  I do not remember ever seeing squash or any other kind of kjarps in Mexico.

We had so many pumpkins that our mom didn’t mind if we made jack-o-lanterns out of them, as long as they were not scary looking.  We put candles in them at night and lit them up. I don’t know where we got those ideas but I imagine my grandparents brought ideas like these from Canada.

I remember hearing talks about Halloween being the devil’s night and we were not to participate in anything that had to do with that.  But that didn’t stop the youth from going out on Halloween night. In my colony, the youth boys would go out and light firecrackers on the streets of the colony on Halloween night. Some girls were allowed to go too, if they had brothers that would go out with them. We did not dress up in costumes since those were not allowed.

We would go door to door and say, “Do you have something for the Schowanacka (Pranksters)?” If they didn’t, they would get some kind of trick or prank later that night, in the form of some kind of damage to their property or opening the gates to let the cattle out.

Most people, even if they didn’t want to, would give something just to keep the peace.  

I remember getting a bottle of mezcal at one house and a block of Queso Mennonita Mennonite cheese at another.  Some people gave out cigarettes, bottles of coca cola, chocolate and candy. 

Sex, Lies and Rabüs

A Mumkjes  Je'schekj is what happens to women’s bodies after they get married. They get bigger because they are not girls anymore, they are women now. It was pretty clear that this was only supposed to happen to married women.  I believe we were told this so we would not question why women would all of a sudden get a big stomach.

I was curious why some girls were getting a big stomach, a Mumkjes  Je'schekj, even though they were not married. When I asked that once in front of a married lady, she had a shameful grin on her face and said, “That girl ate a Rabüs sot, a watermelon seed, and it started growing in her stomach!”

I thought, “Oh no, what is going to happen to me? I have swallowed so many watermelon seeds I can’t even count. I am going to get huge.” I had nightmares that all the Rabüs sot I had eaten were growing in my stomach, all at the same time.

I was so scared, I thought to myself, Dios mio, “If I don’t explode where would they come out and why didn’t anyone tell me before I ate them?”  There were many girls this Mumkjes  Je'schekj was happening to in all the colonies around us.

Some got married right away but this all depended on what time of the year it was and if they had started the baptismal process yet. You cannot get married until you are baptized.  In Mexico the Old Colony baptismal process starts around Easter and ends in mid-summer.

That is the only time of the year you can get baptized.  If it was too late you had to wait until the next year.  If someone swallowed a Rabüs sot in the summer, the families would try really hard to hide it. The girl would no longer join the youth on Sundays.

In a colony not too far from ours, lived a widow with a daughter who had eaten a Rabüs sot and she was getting a Mumkjes Je'schekj and the watermelon grew big in her stomach. Then they went to the town of Nuevo Ideal and the next day they come home with a baby girl. 

We were told that the widow had bought a baby. Then, a couple of months after that, the daughter was married and we got to go to that wedding.  The daughter was wearing a duak, a head covering, and she did not look happy at all.  This was common. I often wondered if people got married just because they had eaten Rabüs sot.  It got really mixed up in my wandering mind.

At the wedding we were told that the newly married couple would take the baby home to raise as their own because the bride’s mom was too old to raise the baby.  I was so confused as I tried to make sense of it all.

The girls that were getting a Mumkjes  Je'schekj  wore a duak in church while they were getting baptized because they ate Rabüs sot?  I was thinking, “Watermelons are causing all this? Who knows what other Mumkje s Je'schekj-causing fruit I should stay away from?” This caused me so many sleepless nights!

When we were old enough to do the dishes and clear tables at weddings, we would overhear the married women talking about how shameful it must be for the parents of a daughter that got married with a duak.  I was thinking, “Oba Dios mio. How big is this Rabüs problem and why isn’t someone telling women not to eat this bad fruit anymore?”

As far as I was concerned, it was very simple: Stay as far away from watermelons as you can or, to be sure, just don’t eat anything with seeds in it. And what about all the sunflower seeds people were eating?

Again, like so many other times, I wanted to know how and why things were happening.  Everyone else just carried on and never asked any questions.  But I couldn’t do it. The mystery haunted me. I had eaten watermelon seeds a long time before and nothing had happened to me.  My body was shaped like a ruler. How does this happen?  

I figured we were part of this and, sooner or later, we would be affected by it and I needed to figure it out. Something told me there was more to it.  So, I worked up the courage to ask my friends what they thought of the watermelon problems women were having and, one more thing, why this wasn’t affecting the men at all.

At first they were shocked that I would even ask about it. They were told not to talk about it but they were curious too.  We talked about it in secret and figured out that all the women this had happened to were over sixteen years old and, since we were all under sixteen, that must be why the watermelon seeds were not affecting us the same way as them.  

I thought, “Even if this is true, I still don’t trust this belly busting fruit. I’m sticking with beans and tortillas. As far as I know they are safe. At least beans are really small so if they do start growing I should be okay!”

One of the girls in our group had a theory that made a lot of sense. She said, “Let’s think of all the girls this has happened to.” They all had a boyfriend and she had seen some of them schmunje . We use this term to describe “making out” but it actually means “heavy petting”. She thought that schmunje was the cause of these big bellies because this happened to her sister.

She saw her sister schmunje and months later she got a Mumkjes Je'schekj  and then her parents had a baby. Then, when her sister got married, she took this baby with her, but just that last baby that was born before her wedding. All her other brothers and sisters stayed home with her parents.   

This is how we learned about most things.  I later on learned this was the way we were kept from knowing exactly what sex was and how women got pregnant, so that we wouldn’t be tempted to try anything.  But I think not knowing the truth is what got so many girls pregnant before they got married.   

If I would have just asked my mom, she would have had a much better explanation for it but, because it was so shameful, I was afraid to ask her. My mom usually had a good way to explain situations without telling me exactly how it was.  She thought I was like most of the other girls who just accepted everything and didn’t care for learning about the stuff that was happening in the colonies around us.  

Blushing Menno Bride

Most Old Colony people get baptized just before they get married.  After they are baptized they have a wedding at the bride’s house.  It is the bride’s parents’ responsibility to pay for and prepare the food.  

The people that could afford it would invite the whole Colony and all the siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  The guests would start arriving around ten a.m. and lunch would be at noon.  

The bride and groom would sit in the Brütlied Schtow, a room designated for visiting and sometimes drinking and smoking with the youth of other villages within the colony. The bride and groom wouldn’t drink because, being newly baptized, they were expected not to sin anymore.

Instead of having dessert after lunch, at around three o’clock, they would serve faspa. They would serve tweeback buns, kringelkes twisted buns, jam, sugar cubes, Schmaunt Küaken cookies, and instant coffee. In our village friends of the bride would bake a cake for the Brütlied, bride, and groom which would be served to them during faspa.  

This was not done in all colonies. It was up to the individual colony women to decide or, perhaps, if the bride asked for one. But, some people from other colonies didn’t like this because it was too worldly to have a pretty cake.  We were told to tone down “the bling”, which were the marshmallows we cut into floral shapes!

Young couple after their marriage.

This photo was taken by Mexican photographer Eunice Adorno

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/01/24/the-flower-girls-mennonites-in-mexico/#18

The oldest girls of the Colony who were not married would be setting the tables and serving the food.  They would always serve Komstborscht, cabbage soup, head cheese, tweeback, and ketchup.  The bride’s family would bake all the buns. 

Sometimes the girls of the colony would be asked to help bake and chop all the cabbage and make the head cheese the Friday before the wedding.  The wedding is always on Saturday.  Shortly after faspa people would go home and then around seven the youth would come back and have Komstborscht for dinner with the Brütlied.

The bride’s family would start preparing months ahead. They would rake the whole property, paint the house on the inside and out.  They also painted the bottom ten inches of the trees white around the front of the property.  

People would say those rich people would use this wedding day to really show off all they had.  The poor people would hold this event at the school of the colony and not have any food.  

The bride and groom would sit at the front of the school and all the immediate family would sit just like at church and sing. Then they would have faspa at the bride’s house with the immediate family members only.

This photo is from http://www.whileoutriding.com/

After the wedding day, the bride and groom are not officially married yet. The bride would still sleep at her parents’ house for the week until the Sunday after the wedding. 

During this week, the bride and groom go to visit each other’s family, including aunts, uncles, and cousins, during the day.  This week is the time for them to decide if they really want to be with each other.   

In my lifetime, this has happened once where the groom decided he didn’t want this and left the bride. She was devastated and was known as the “bride” for the rest of her life.

Some women live in fear during this week. If their groom decides not to go through with it, the bride’s chances of marrying are slim to none.  

During this week the couple has to go to the justice of the peace with two witnesses each to get a marriage certificate to make it legal.  During this time the bride would get a gift from her groom. Most of the time it was a necessity for their homes like a table and chairs or a gas stove.   

On the Sunday a week after the wedding, the couple goes to church.  After the church service, the couple gets top getruet, officially married, and then the couple goes to the bride’s house for lunch and faspa.  

The newly married couple does not go on a honeymoon. Most newly married people do not have a house yet so they live at the groom’s family’s property until they have their own.

The woman starts to wear a black kerchief after the wedding day at the church unless she has had sex before that. If they have had sex before they get baptized, they have to confess to the preachers and promise not to do it again until they are officially married. 

In that situation, the woman has to wear the kerchief all during the baptism and the wedding. This is so shameful for her family because everyone knows what she did. 

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

As soon as we turned fifteen, we started talking about getting married.  My friends were so worried they might not meet someone because our colony was far from the rest of the colonies. We were the only colony on the other side of the main highway; most of the other colonies were side by side.  

There was no church in our colony and no preachers lived near us either. We were considered schtolt because we were not watched closely so we could get away with changing our dresses and sock colours more than the rest of the colonies.  I guess you can say that I am from the wrong side of the colonies.  Maybe that is where my misguided thinking started!

The only way the guys from other colonies could visit us was by horse and buggy and it would take a long time to get there.  Once in a while, there would be some that hired a Mexican to drive them but, even then, if they decided to date us they would have to do this every time they wanted to visit. It would be time consuming and expensive.  

A lot of people just married someone from their own colony.  Even then, however, we didn’t have a lot of options because most of us were cousins.

When a guy was interested, he would just sit beside us with his arms around us so we couldn’t move.  It was so annoying that they had no courting skills whatsoever.  

They came at us like a bunch of animals. Most of them only had the nerve to do that if they were drunk and, most of the time, that was the case.  

They were drunk and acted really obnoxious.  Even if someone would look past all that and agree that they could visit again, they would only see each other twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday nights, and occasionally on Sunday afternoon.  

We really never got to know the person that way.  It was okay with me if we didn’t get visitors too often from other colonies.  

Once in a while I got to stay at my grandma’s in a colony far from ours.  My favorite cousin, Susie, lived in the same colony.  One weekday afternoon, Grandma told Susie and me to go to the kisaree, the Cheese factory, to buy some cheese with her horse and buggy.  

So, we were riding along in the colony and noticed a few guys sitting on the side of the road. We thought that it was our chance to really impress these guys by riding past them with Grandma’s best horse and looking all cool but, of course, this didn’t happen. The horse decided to go right up to the guys and take a big dump right there in front of them. We shamed ourselves half to death! 

        

There were rumours going around other colonies that guys were afraid to come to our colony because of our neighbours.  They were so different. They moved there because they got kicked out of a colony in Chihuahua were they lived before.  

They bought the first piece of land that was not part of the colony so they could build a house there, even if the colony didn’t want them there because the land was sold to them by the Mexicans.  The reason the colony was not happy with them living so close was because they were not Old Colony.

They dressed like worldly people, they cut their hair and they didn’t belong to any church. The people of the colony were afraid that these outsiders would influence and misguide them.  They tried to get them to move but it didn’t work. 

They stayed. These are the neighbours who inspired me to learn Spanish.  Their kids spoke Spanish fluently and most of them married Mexicans and stayed living on that property.  They had six girls and six boys. 

The boys would beat up guys that visited our colony just to mess with the elders in order to get back at them for trying to force them to leave. Eventually, the guys of this family left the colony.  

       

The reputation stuck for a while but it wore off and we had visitors again once in a while. The guys of our colony at least had a choice.  They could take the bus to town and catch a ride to other colonies but the girls were stuck sitting around waiting for others to visit.  

The girls would settle for the first boy that asked because they were so worried that it would be the only chance they would have to meet someone. Parents would encourage the girls to get baptized and get married between ages sixteen and nineteen.

I think parents were worried that, the longer their daughters stayed single, they might get ideas and change their minds about wanting this life. They might be misguided by people that came from Canada because the girls in Canada would wait longer to get married.  But it’s not like there was much of a choice. 

If you didn’t get married, your life would be horrible because you wouldn’t fit into any of the groups.  You couldn’t visit with the married people because they might talk about sex and, since you were unmarried, you couldn’t be part of that conversation yet.

If you were twenty you were too old to be with the youth because you might already know too much about sex and having babies and you might tell the young people who were not to know about this until marriage. This happened to some girls. 

They would stay home and help their parents on the farm and that was their life. This never happened to the men. They could stay single as long as they wanted and, as soon as they decided to date someone, there were tons of girls ready. Since it was a man’s job to find a girl, he could take as much time as needed. 

  

The only chance the old women had to marry was when someone’s wife died and, even then, sometimes the widower would marry a younger girl.  It seemed like there were way more women than men. 

They had all the options so we had to pray that someone would choose us.  It happened in our colony that there was a couple that only had one daughter. This was odd since most people had about twelve.  

So, they adopted a boy and a girl from a family in Zacatecas where the wife had passed away and left a bunch of kids behind.  We all loved him and, as he got older, he looked and acted so different from the guys in our colony. We all were ready to marry him at the drop of a hat!

But some “shenanigans” happened which we do not speak of. The only daughter got pregnant by her step-brother and so, of course, he had to marry her. There went our dream man marrying his step-sister! At first we were told the parents finally had another baby but, when the daughter and step-brother married, they took care of the baby because the parents were too old to raise him. 

We heard more stories like these than we could count.  The newly married couple never had any more children and about seven years into the marriage she had a heart attack and passed away. She was only in her early thirties.  

There was only one girl left from my youth group never chosen for marriage. Back then we used different words to describe her but she was short and chubby and had a unique personality. 

She ended up marrying the widower, the man of all our dreams! The girl we thought would be alone and miserable for the rest of her life wasn’t worried about it. She was as happy as she could be, like her pockets were full of candy, when she ended up marrying the guy we all wanted!

Why are most Low German people illiterate?

The Old Colony believe “ji meha jiliehet, ji meha fitchiehet” (the more learned the more misguided).

“Why waste all that time going to school?” “You don’t need to go to school to learn how to be a good hard worker, a house wife or a mother.”  I went to an Old Colony Mennonite school in Mexico.   At this school we learned how to do basic math and how to copy verses from the Bible.  We learned only from the Bible.

We did not need to learn how to write our name, or read anything else.  We were even told not to read the Bible too much because we were not supposed to know too much about the Bible either.

There are four levels we learned.  The High German Bible, the Old and New Testament, the Catechism and the Fible.  We would sing from the hymnbook in High German as well.

The photo to your right is from the Fible that is the first book we learned from when we stared school. we would learn how to copy the ABC'S you see in the photo.

When I read the Bible I only understood a few words I was reading because at home we spoke Low German and at school we read and spoke High German.  We were never introduced to High German before we started school.

I didn't like school at all.  It was not a fun environment.  There would be one teacher per school for all the kids in the village ages 6 to 13, about 75 to 85 kids in total.  The boys sat on the right side of the school and the girls sat on the left side.  

If you were caught looking out the window you had to sit in the window if you were late, you had to stand in the door for 10 minutes.  I often sat there and pretended to read, but I would fantasize about being a Mexican school girl. Whenever we drove past a Mexican school, those kids looked so happy.  They would play basketball and skip and laugh. 

I would be having pleasant time thinking about this and then the teacher would throw the belt at me.  Whenever this happened you had to bring the belt up to the front, so everyone could see who was slacking.  I barely got to the third level by the end of my last school year.

Most kids went to school until they were 12 or 13 years old. I went only from the age of 7 until I was 10 years old.  I got to stay home and learn how to cook, bake, sew, clean and do the laundry because I was labelled a “hard learner.”

“Anna is a hard learner.”  “That was a never ending story,” That is why she is not at school,” my mom would explain to everyone she met.  It was embarrassing and I felt like a failure.  

Being a “HARD LEARNER” I spent a lot of time alone, in hiding reading Spanish books that Mexicans would sometimes drop off while driving through our village, old books their kids would no longer need.  

I heard some kids singing the alphabet in Spanish.  It was so interesting to me that I memorized it not even knowing that it would help me to read Spanish.  My mom didn't care as long as I was done doing my chores. 

I could read all I wanted i even understood some words I was reading. That was foreign to me.  I remember the feeling of being lit up from the inside out, which was the first time I felt a tingling sensation in my stomach that was not from being scared.

Words of Old Colony Mennonite Bishop Isaac Dyck: “When the school, as the first plating place in man’s hart, was held in common with the world, then the church also couldn't remain free from it.”