Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town: Stitches That Bind
Recently, I pulled my book, Czech Reflections, off the shelf and flipped through it. As always, it stirred a flood of memories, especially the passages about family Christmas traditions. Some of those memories are stitched together so tightly that I can’t think of Christmas without thinking of quilts.
On my mother’s side of the family—Nors side—Christmas preparation includes making a quilt to be raffled off at the annual family Christmas party. The Nors clan is large: eleven children, plus spouses and offspring, filling rooms with noise and laughter. Everyone brings gifts for the raffle, but the quilt is the prize everyone hopes to win. It is the big-ticket item, the one that carries not just value, but meaning.
I wasn’t around often enough to watch my mother and her sisters work on those quilts, but I can imagine them sitting around the quilting frame, hands busy, voices rising and falling as they talked. Stories were shared, jokes repeated, grievances aired, and softened. I regret now that I never joined them, never pulled up a chair to learn what those hours held beyond the stitching.
That tradition lives on. One of my sisters and several cousins still make the Christmas quilt, passing along a practice that binds generations together with thread and time.
There’s another quilt story in my family, this one from my father’s side. I inherited an unfinished quilt from my Aunt Christine—my dad’s oldest sibling and the only girl in a family of eight. She never had children; her husband died shortly after they married. I didn’t see her often, but when she visited, she brought joy with her like a gift she’d unwrapped just for us.
Why Aunt Christine never finished the quilt, I don’t know. By my estimation, it’s nearly sixty-five years old. What makes it extraordinary is its design: each square features a hand-stitched diagram of a state bird—back when there were only forty-eight states. The bird, its name, and its state are all carefully sewn, each square a small act of devotion. Being a birder, this quilt means a lot to me.
My goal for 2026 is to find someone who can finish that quilt. Not to perfect it, but to honor it. Because some things are never truly unfinished—they’re simply waiting for the next set of hands, the next chapter, the next Christmas.
Here are some Christmas proverbs I found in Czech Reflections:
A snowy Christmas brings a healthy crop of hops. (Czechs love their beer.)
A dark, gloomy Christmas Eve brings a good milk cow.
A light, bright Christmas means good laying hens.
A green Christmas means a white Easter.
High winds on the Feast of St. Stephen (December 26) lead to a small grape harvest.
Sun and wind on the Feast of St. Sylvester (December 31) signal a good grape harvest.