As children numbering four hundred or more, we were antsier than chickens in a coop. Most parents in the room sat alongside us or stood toward the rear. Other men like my father had slipped away to the café downstairs, converted from a saloon thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment, and were still known there to sneak nips from their flasks and gripe over their employer.

For miners in the “Copper Country,” up in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, there was no shortage of grievances when it came to C&H, or Calumet & Hecla. Slashes to wages, benefits, and safety had pushed the men to strike. Back during the Great War, higher demand for copper drew thousands of workers to the area, until the market’s eventual decline sent many off to auto factories in big cities like Detroit. My father was among those who stayed and held out for what was fair.

If a house want electricity, it is needing copper, Papa would say, insisting that lower demand was still demand. Then he’d mutter in Dutch about the higher-ups living fancifully in their mansions while seeking shortcuts to bolster their stocks.

My mother, whose fine nose and cheekbones I’d apparently inherited, passed away from scarlet fever in my toddler years, leaving me virtually no memories of her. No photograph even. Nonetheless, I presume she’d have been the one to gently warn me against expecting gifts during these trying times. As it was, I didn’t have to be told. Funds were scarce enough prior to the walkout. After four subsequent months, most of our meals were possible only with union support.

Hence a Christmas Eve party for the union members’ children, hosted by the Women’s Auxiliary, seemed a miraculous thrill—minus the infinite string of carols. Several were sung in Finnish, unsurprisingly; the Finns formed a hefty sum of the guests. Reflective of Eden Springs, there were also Croatians and Germans, Italians and Irish; Swedes, Hungarians, and Cornish. The majority of the rest, including us Dutch, were like salt in the dough, according to Papa: though amounting to a pinch, we were essential to the whole.

In truth, despite many of us kids being born in the States, “essential” never described my place with the other girls, certainly including at social to-dos. But on this particular afternoon, it was the least of my concerns.

When the ninth song ended—indeed, I was counting—“Big Vera” stepped in front of the tree to speak. President of the Women’s Auxiliary, she was a woman of Slavic descent whose six-foot-some height presumably aided her collection of eighty whole dollars from businesses to buy presents for the affair. Who with any scruples would refuse her?

“Boys and girls,” she projected in a booming voice, “now that we’ve concluded the singing portion of our program…”