First Christmas without War

In December 1946, I lived with my sick grandfather, mother and three sisters in a room on the fourth floor of a bomb-damaged apartment house in Berlin, Germany.
The prominent feature of the living quarters was a cast-iron wood-burning cannon stove in the center of the room.
My father, age 38, was a P.O.W. in a Russian labor camp in Siberia. My brother, age 16, had been taken prisoner by the U.S. Army in Southern Germany. My mother had walked with us children more than 240 miles, by foot, from the eastern part of Germany to the perceived safety of Berlin. 
With me being sick most of the time, we had arrived too late to submit a timely application for food stamps. We had to scrounge and beg every day for food just to survive.
On Christmas Eve, we were languishing around the freezing room, when my grandfather stood up. He had collected and hidden some scrap wood over a period of weeks and proceeded to make a fire in the stove. 
He had also somehow procured a large rye bread and a container of lard.  There were even a few bits of bacon entrained in the fat. While we sat around the stove and watched him wide-eyed, he very deliberately cut a slice from the bread, coated both sides with lard, and proceeded to toast them on top of the stove. 
He handed the first slice to me while my sisters waited with anticipation for their turn to receive the next one.
Eventually, everyone had gotten two slices. I asked for a third one and was accommodated. My mother and three sisters declined to ask for more because that would mean to be hungry for the next several days. 
Then we decided to sing Christmas carols. 
My oldest sister chose the first song, and everyone joined singing the lyrics from memory.  If there were six verses, then we sang all six. My next oldest sister chose the following carol, and so it went on and on.  Eventually, many songs were repeated.
My favorite Christmas carol was “Oh, Christmas Tree” (“Oh, Tannenbaum”).
I knew all the lyrics by heart. And every time it was my turn to choose again, it was “Oh Tannenbaum.” After a while, everyone looked at me strangely, but nobody complained and joined singing the same verses once more.
We sang for approximately two hours until the embers in the stove started to die. The singing ceased, and everybody selected a place close to the stove to keep warm, curled up and fell asleep. 
I could not sleep for a long time and laid with my eyes wide open.  For the first Christmas in my life, there were no sounds of war, no fear from falling bombs. I was warm and not hungry. I felt loved, safe and at peace.