The Tradition
After the supper meal on Christmas Eve, the host slices an apple into pieces equal to the number of people gathered around the table. The apple is passed around, with each person taking a slice. The host shares that if anyone at the table finds themselves lost, all they need to do is stop and think of the last time they ate the slice of apple on Christmas Eve, and they will find their way home. Then, everyone gathered around the table eats their slice of apple.
Origin
This tradition originates from Bohemia-Moravia, which encompasses most of the current Czech Republic and is the homeland of the Musel family ancestors. Matej Musel (b. 1804, d. 1898) was the patriarch of the Musel family that immigrated to the United States in 1851. During family genealogy research in the late 1970s and early 1980s, David Musel (b. 1961) discovered descendants of one of Matej’s sons in northern Minnesota and communicated with them. This Musel family in northern Minnesota was not familiar with the larger Musel family in and around Chelsea, Iowa.
When asked if the northern Minnesota Musel family participated in the Christmas Eve Apple tradition, an ancestor told David that she remembered doing so as a child, but the family had not observed the tradition for some time. Later, through research with his brother Mike Musel (b. 1945, d. 2020), David learned that Matej Musel and his family first arrived in Canada, traveled west, and then moved south through Minnesota before settling in Iowa. Assuming that Matej Musel’s family participated in the Apple Tradition, there is strong evidence that Matej brought the tradition with him in 1851, as the northern Minnesota Musel family also used to observe it.
On December 24, 2020, Radio Prague International published a webpage that included the following at the end of the article:
Some of the peculiar Christmas customs remained deeply rooted well into the 20th century and are still observed by some families today:
“The head of the family would cut an apple into as many pieces as there were people around the table and handed them out to each and every one of them. They would then eat their part of the apple. They believed that if they lost their way somewhere away from home in the next year, all they needed to do was to remember all the other people who were sharing the Christmas Eve dinner with them and they would find the way home. It was also believed that this ceremony would help the family to stay together.”
It Works
When David was growing up, he remembers his grandfather Fred Musel (b. 1898, d. 1989) and later his father Bernie Musel (b. 1924, d. 2000) sharing a story. Shortly after Matej Musel’s family settled just northwest of Chelsea, Iowa, living in a sod house, one of the younger sons got lost on the prairies during winter. As panic set in, he remembered the tradition. He sat down, thought about the last time he ate the apple with his family on Christmas Eve, and was able to find his way home.
More recently, Carol (Musel) Petersen (b. 1950) and her husband Richard (b. 1949) were living in Maine in the early 1970s after getting married, where Rick was in the U.S. Navy. Rick recounts a time when he became physically lost while deer hunting in Maine. He recalls starting to worry that he wouldn’t find his way out. However, he remembered the last time he shared the apple tradition in the basement of Fred Musel’s home, where the family gathered for Christmas Eve supper. He shares that he was amazed at how his mind cleared and how he was then able to find his way out.
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