An Old Fashioned Christmas

Long before Christmas lights and expensive decorations, candlelight and lamplight bathed everything in a soft, flickering warmth, creating a magical mood…especially at Christmas. These were the Christmases of my father’s childhood; a time when things were simpler and Christmas was a much more modest affair. My father’s memories of those Christmases of old portray a time when the focus was on celebrating the birth of Jesus by going to church and spending time with family.

The first signs of the approaching season were often performed by the women of the household. My grandmother would clean the house from top to bottom as if she was expecting the Holy Child himself to pay a visit. Weeks ahead of time, she would also begin her holiday baking. Labouring in the heat of the kitchen, she baked fruit cakes, cookies and plum puddings, filling the house with the rich, warm aromas of Christmas.

During my father’s childhood, decorations, which most often consisted of fresh trees and fir boughs, did not appear until the week before Christmas. The older boys would head to the woods a couple of days before Christmas to cut down a tree. My grandmother would fuss, and make them turn it this way and that, until it looked perfect in the corner of the family room. There were no lights and my grandfather did not trust candles on the tree, so the tree was adorned with only a few homemade decorations. However, to my father and his siblings that tree was as grand and as beautiful as the elaborately decorated tree in Rockefeller Center.

There wasn’t a lot of shopping for gifts. With such a large family and very little money, store-bought gifts were the stuff of childhood fantasies. For the most part, children received practical, homemade presents like hand-knit socks and mittens or the dreaded long woolen underwear. My father does remember receiving one special store-bought gift when he was a boy. It was a toy milk truck. It was painted bright blue, and it had a little crate of tiny milk bottles in the back. It was a prized possession and one of the only special toys he ever remembers owning.

Occasionally, if you were lucky, parcels would arrive from relatives in Boston with cards, gifts and treats for the whole family. Those packages held a charm and a mystique, filled with exotic treasures that came “from away.” He also remembers some of his mother’s unmarried sisters being especially good to them, giving them small gifts and treats at Christmas time.

The school Christmas concert was not only the highlight of the holiday season, but also the highlight of the school year. It was held a few days before Christmas in the old Hall, which was located approximately where the current Coop parking lot is today. The whole village would come out for the show, and the students would show up wearing their Sunday best, ready to perform. The older boys would cut down a tree and the girls would decorate the Hall. The students would practice for weeks beforehand, and performed skits, recitations and songs to the delight of the audience. Of course, the best and most memorable parts of the evening were when a child messed up his lines or forgot them altogether, much to the dismay of their frazzled teacher. The main event of the night was a visit from Santa Claus. The young and the young at heart alike did not seem to notice that Santa was wearing a borrowed coat and a black pair of rubber boots that held the distinct aroma of a barn.

On Christmas Eve, my father and his brothers and sisters would hang an assortment of old woolen stockings by the old stove, in anticipation of Santa’s arrival. All the children would rush and wrestle not to get the one with the hole in the toe. In the morning, they could expect to find apples, oranges, scribblers, pencils and barley candy in their stockings. One memorable Christmas Eve, his oldest brother, Ivan, dressed up as Santa Claus, and came knocking at the kitchen window, to the thrill and delight of his younger brothers and sisters.

On Christmas morning, my grandfather would rise early and light the stove, hoping to take the chill off the house before the others stirred. The highlight of Christmas Day was going to mass in the morning, especially for my grandfather, who took the solemnity of the holiday very seriously. After mass, there was a big Christmas dinner feast. There was no turkey in the MacDonald household on Christmas; my grandfather preferred roast beef. Every December he would purchase a large roast of beef from Kelly’s meat shop. My grandmother would prepare the roast with all the fixings….potatoes, vegetables, gravy and those long-awaited desserts and sweets. Everyone left the table with full bellies and full hearts.

With the week off from school, the rest of the holidays were spent with family or visiting relatives. The kids got to visit and play with cousins, as the adults chatted over tea and plates of Christmas sweets. There was also always time to organize a game of pick up hockey on the frozen river or start a snowball fight with the neighborhood kids.

Sometimes it seems as if today we have lost our “True North” when it comes to Christmas and it’s real meaning, and I find myself longing for a simpler time. I will never get to experience those Christmases from long ago. However, thanks to my father’s wonderful memories, I can close my eyes and be transported to a place and time where I can feel the warm glow from the pot-bellied stove and hear the ringing of sleigh bells, and experience an old fashioned Christmas of my own.