My goal this Christmas season is to find and focus on local traditions. I live in a mother lode of Americana on the North Dakota prairie, and I delight in witnessing locals cling to their ways. Enter into evidence Item #1: homemade kneophfla (spelling varies, pronunciation is either neffla or nip-fla, not sure which since I don’t process German words cleanly and clearly). Kneophfla is a small piece of dough that local Germans drop into boiling chicken broth soup.

The backstory is: our Youth Group is serving supper for the community Santa Day event this Friday evening. Santa arrives, of course, kids play without many limits, local vendors set up tables, and people buy the youth’s soup and sandwich combo for their supper. Optimists can also buy a raffle ticket for a high-end ice-fishing house. Santa Day is an annual tradiotion. If you were you here, you could order one of two soups: Fiesta Chicken or Kneophla. In the old days, soup makers used homemade kneophla, of course. However, many folks, like myself, cannot make kneophfla so we buy bags of frozen spaetzle at the local grocery.

Another element of the story: when our church family makes a fundraising meal (Harvest Brunch, Youth suppers, etc), members donate some of the groceries, baked goods, or cash.  Everyone receives a letter with their assignment and everyone does as instructed. I am kind of heading up this meal so I took a shortcut and put items we need on little slips of paper and asked everyone to take a slip of paper out of the bowl, then bring their grocery item to the church. It worked, I am happy to report.

So now you have the particulars. What happened is that 5 slips of paper said 1 Bag Kneophla, meaning the frozen stuff. A lovely senior lady told me after church that she would never let fake kneophla (spaetzle) touch anything we cook. Never.  She will make the real deal, and today, sure enough, I picked up a bag of homemade kneophfla from her home. The dilemma: I need 5 bags of kneophla and, since no one else took the stinking fake kneophla slips of paper, we will  buy the other 4 bags. The soup will then have 20% real kneophla and 80% spaetzle. I don’t think that most people will mind this situation or even notice. However, when our nice lady comes by, what will happen?  I will cower in shame  feeding her anything less than local tradition dictates!

What would you do? I am thinking of making a separate pot (kettle) of knoefhla soup with the real deal and making sure we fill her bowl from that pot (kettle). After, we can mix the rest of the real stuff into the big pot.

There you have it, a bit of local tradition around soup and an insider’s perspective on the toughest part of a minister’s job: balancing not just spiritual, but other, unrelated needs. Making everyone happy.

Onward towards Christmas and finding more traditions, which sometimes complicates life in unexpected ways.