Memories of a Christmas Past

Christmas is supposed to be for children but during the Christmas season, we all become kids at heart. That is why the fond memories that we have of Christmas and the traditions that we carry over into our own families are rooted in our childhood and teen years.

I am born a Canadian but I was raised in a home in Edmonton where German was still spoken by my parents whenever my Grandparents were present and our family attended a German Baptist Church. 

In the church, the Christmas season began with a Christmas Concert put on by the massed German and English choirs in which it was a tradition to sing excerpts from Handel's Messiah in German as well as other Christmas music.  This was followed a week later by the annual White Christmas play presented by the young people to raise money to buy food hampers for the needy.  The Christmas Eve Service was the highlight of the festivities with the children and teens in the Sunday School taking part in a program consisting of recitations, singing, and a Christmas play put on by the teens. The evening was concluded by a soloist singing 'O Holy Night' and a brief message by the Pastor.  There was standing room only if you arrived late for any of these services.

 The church sanctuary was decorated with a huge, twenty foot Christmas tree hauled in from the farm of one of the members of the church.  The tree was set up in the orchestra pit and decorated with lights, tinsel, and glass ornaments that had been accumulated over many years.  Candy bags filled with candies, nuts in their shells, an apple and two Japanese oranges were given to the children and teens.  There was a time when even the adults received a bag until it got too expensive to maintain the tradition.

All December, my Mother kept busy baking Christmas cakes, cookies, and making the fabulous toffee that she made only at Christmas.  She would get the house ready for the holidays by sending the family to a nearby Christmas tree lot to select a tree and bring it home.  Occasionally the tree vendor had hot chocolate or hot apple cider available to ward off the cold while you were making your selection.  At home, Dad would trim the trunk of the tree and fix it in its stand before bringing it into the house.  The tree was allowed to stand for a few hours before decorating so that the branches could spread out and the tree fill the house with its fragrance.

I vaguely remember Mom using small Christmas candles to light the tree but only on Christmas Eve and later her buying strings of coloured electric lights that could be used for the whole Christmas season.  There was a hitch though; if one light burned out, the entire set went out and you would have to search one by one for the dead bulb in order to replace it and light up the tree again.  It eventually became my responsibility to put the lights on the tree but Mom still supervised the rest of the decorating.

Christmas Eve was spent making last minute preparations for the big day and by going to Church for the Christmas Eve Service.  Our family never had a car until my two older brothers were adults and had cars of their own.  There was something special about the family going to church on the bus that evening and then coming home and walking down the lane leading to our house.  The snow crunched under your boots and seemed to sparkle more in the moonlight on that night than it did on any other day during winter. 

Our family always opened our gifts on Christmas Eve.  Even now, a pastor friend of mine, who has a German background, assures me that this is the proper way of doing things.  Somehow the gifts already under the tree seemed to have multiplied while we were away.  We gathered in the living room to open the gifts and then to enjoy the goodies that Mom had ready waiting on the dining room table.  Then it was off to bed looking forward to the big Christmas dinner on Christmas Day when friends or relatives would join us.  Mother always purchased the biggest turkey she could afford, usually a twenty pounder, because she wanted left-overs.  To this day, I am fond of turkey-pot-pies!

Putting lights on the tree

The Woman Rising From a Pot of Boiling Oil

I don't consider myself to be the gullible type but as a youngster I was attracted to things that stretched my imagination.  When I saw an advertisement in The Edmonton Journal concerning a display at the annual Edmonton Exhibition that featured a real live woman rising up out of a pot of boiling oil, I was over the moon. 

"We've got to see this," I said to my brother, Harvey, as I waved the newspaper under his nose, "do you think this is for real or are they putting us on?"

"It must be a gimmick," Harvey replied, "they would never allow you to do that to a real person.  Where is this to take place?"

My eyes wandered down the newspaper page and I answered, "In the display hall underneath the Grandstand at the race track at Exhibition Park.  It will be presented on the hour until ten o'clock each evening.  The sponsor is Imperial Oil."

A few days later, we took a bus to The Edmonton Exhibition and upon arrival we headed directly to the location announced in the newspaper.  The hands of a large clock sitting on the edge of a curtained stage announced the time of the next show.  We were early but a small crowd was already standing around the stage waiting with anticipation for the event and so we joined them.  An attendant made sure that no prying hands would try to pull back a corner of the curtain for a sneak peek.

At the appointed time, the curtain parted revealing a huge transparent cauldron filled with  bubbling ESSO motor oil (at least it looked like motor oil).  The cauldron was large enough to contain a person but, much to my disappointment, it was empty.  Momentarily a figure began to emerge from the pot of bubbling oil causing a hush to fall over the crowd.  The attractive young lady, obviously chosen for her looks, did not appear harmed by passing through the oil and the white dress that she was wearing was not soiled in the least.  She stood absolutely motionless as she rose to her full height from the cauldron.

"It's just as I thought," my brother whispered, "she's not real.  I'll bet that she is a store mannequin."

"But the newspaper said a real live woman," I reminded him, "let's wait and see what happens."

At that moment the woman sprang to life.  She smiled at the audience and stepped down from the cauldron onto the stage and began to extol the merits of using Imperial Oil products.  When she was finished, she stepped back into the cauldron, assumed the mannequin-like pose and slowly sank back down into the boiling oil.

Fortunately, the curtain was not closed immediately after the performance thus giving us a chance to see how it was done.

"Look," Harvey said, "It's an elevator platform surrounded by clear plastic tubing made to look like a cauldron and filled with something that looks like oil."

"Then the only danger that woman faced was in losing her balance on the platform as it moved up and down," I rightly observed.

"She is probably a professional model and knows what she is doing," Harvey replied.

"Even so, you've got to admit that it was well done!  It looked like she was rising out of the bubbling oil."

"Grudgingly!" Harvey replied.

It was done well enough that I went back several times to see it again.

The Toboggan Run

One of my favourite places to visit as a child was my Uncle and Aunt's farm at Lamont, Alberta.  It wasn't a large farm and they did not earn their living by it but they kept a few head of cattle, some pigs, a flock of chickens, and they grew hay.  In the spring, they planted a huge vegetable garden that produced a bumper crop of vegetables especially a sweet, yellow corn of a variety no longer available and buckets of cucumbers for making dill pickles.

The farm was sadly lacking most of the amenities that modern farms now have but there was electricity and running water . . . you ran to the well to get it.  Somehow that fascinated a 'city slicker' and I liked the novelty of pumping water from the well.  Whenever my cousins came to town, the fascination was reversed and one of them, in particular, would spend the entire visit in the bathroom turning on and off the tap in order to watch the water come out.

What was especially nice about the farm was that parts of it were hilly.  That meant that in the winter, my cousins could build a toboggan run that would provide enjoyment for them through the long winter months.  They always chose the same spot high on the brow of a hill above one of the pastures that curved steeply and then more gently downward taking you into the farmyard past the barn and stopping short of a pig pen.  They firmly stamped down the snow thus forming a grooved track wide enough for a toboggan and sprinkling it with water until it turned solid and gleamed like ice.  A snow bank carefully built up along the outer edge of the run kept the toboggan on track so that there was no danger of veering off sideways and ending up in the pasture or in the trees on the other side of the run.

On one visit, three of my cousins, my twin and I were having a great time on that toboggan run.  We had a three person toboggan and a two person sled and we would take turns using them.  I preferred using the sled because you could steer it whereas with the toboggan you hung on for dear life and hoped for the best although it seemed to me that the toboggan always travelled faster than the sled.  After several runs, some of us wanted a break so I decided to take the sled for a run by myself.  Forgetting that only one person on the sled allowed it to go faster, I barrelled down that run at a break-neck speed having the time of my life.  When I got to the bottom and passed the barn, I discovered that I couldn't stop in time to avoid the pig pen and scooted under the fence and got mired in the muck.  The old sow in the pen was as surprised to see me as I was to see her and my cousins had a good laugh.

The Newspaper Route

A newspaper route was likely a boy's first taste of the working world when I was a lad.  The pay was nowhere near that of a young person just starting out part-time today at say a MacDonald's but when combined with the small allowance earned from doing chores around the house, it provided some pocket money.  I could indulge in my favourite hobby of building model air planes.

Being a newspaper carrier required two things: commitment and responsibility.  Commitment to the job was necessary to deliver the newspapers on time and in good condition especially when the weather was bad.  More than once, I had to deal with newspapers made soggy by rain or snow.  Under those conditions it was easy to keep the newspapers in your sack from getting wet but not those dropped off by truck half-way along your route.

It was the carrier's responsibility to collect money from the subscribers each week and to take it downtown Saturday morning to the newspaper's main office.  After paying your bill, the remaining balance was your pay.  You learnt quickly that monies not collected came out of your pocket and not the newspaper's as did the cost of unsold newspapers or twenty-five cent fines imposed for legitimate complaints lodged against you.

My first route was with The Star Weekly, a newspaper originating in Toronto but sold across Canada.  Recruiters came to the schools to sign up  carriers.  Each week the bundle of newspapers arrived at the house ready for delivery.  This route was spread out over several city blocks and I used my bike to pull a wagon thus making the job easier.  The Star Weekly was bulky and heavy to carry but it had the biggest and best comic section carried by any newspaper.  The heaviest edition of the Star Weekly that I remember carrying was the edition covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11 in 1953.  Extra copies were greatly in demand.

My second newspaper route was with The Edmonton Journal.  These routes were hard to come by and I took one over from a friend who was no longer interested in delivering newspapers.  Hazing of new carriers was allowed and experienced carriers routinely initiated the new ones by walloping them on their backside with a rolled up newspaper sack.  Each carrier enthusiastically administered one blow on the hapless new comer while the adult supervisor pretended to look the other way.  The time eventually came round when you were on the giving end instead of the receiving end.

I had some interesting subscribers.  One gentleman smoked a pipe.  When I delivered his newspaper, I had to place it on a table in a glass enclosed porch.  Whenever I opened the door to the porch, the pungent, sweet smell of pipe tobacco filled my nostrils.  I think that the reason I found the smell of the pipe tobacco so exhilarating was that my parents frowned on smoking.

Another subscriber was an elderly blind lady who had her grandson come and read the newspaper to her each day.  I had to roll up the newspaper and place it in a special box so that she could find it.  She always paid her subscription on time.  To pay me, she would open her bedroom window near the porch and hand me her purse so I could take out the required amount.  She trusted people and the previous carrier warned me to not take advantage of her blindness, something I would never think of doing.  She often offered a tip or a foil wrapped chocolate medallion as a treat.

The 'subscriber from hell' best describes a person known to me only by a nickname, 'Alkie'.  As the name implies, he had a problem with drink and when he was inebriated, he became mean.  His place was filthy and his favourite garment was a pair of dirty gray long-johns that he never buttoned up properly.  When he was sober, he was pleasant enough but those times were rare.  I eventually refused to deliver a newspaper to him because I could never collect the money.

I delivered The Edmonton Journal for about three years.  My family's moving to Edmonton's West End necessitated my giving up the route.  I was in grade eight and had one more year to go before entering Senior High.  Business were beginning to hire students part time and I found a job working in a dry cleaner's but that is another story.

Going Christmas Shopping

The air was nippy and there was a dusting of fresh snow on the ground as my Mother, twin brother, and I boarded a bus for downtown.  We were going Christmas shopping - Mom was doing the shopping and we were tagging along just for the fun of looking at all the Christmas displays.  We got off the bus on the corner of 101st Street and 102 Avenue just across the street from Eaton's and Woodward's, two of three of the then largest department stores in downtown Edmonton.  Eaton's was famous for its Santa Clause Parade (which we attended every year) and Woodward's for its windows filled with animated Christmas displays of nostalgic Winter scenes and the preparations going on in Santa's workshop getting him ready for his big night.

Mother looked at the clock as we entered Woodward's.  "It's just two o'clock. You meet me downstairs on the Food Floor at the Ice Cream Bar at four and we'll have a strawberry sundae before going home (Woodward's made the best soft ice cream strawberry sundaes this side of heaven).  I want to be on the bus before they get too crowded going home.  Have fun and don't get into trouble."

We were off in a flash and headed back outside to gaze at the wonderful displays in the windows.  Then we went up to Toyland on the fourth floor.  Santa had a castle there where you could visit and sit on his knee and have your picture taken.  Being twelve, we were no longer interested in sitting on Santa's knee and headed straight for the electric train display.  The trains were magnificent and expensive.  We would never think of asking for something like that but there was no reason why we shouldn't enjoy looking at them.

Eventually, we took the elevator back down to the main floor.  The camera department was right next to the elevators.  Much to our delight, there we saw our Mother standing at the counter and a salesperson showing her a portable movie screen.  We had asked for a screen to use with our View Master projector so that we could project our View Master reels so that more than one person could see them at the same time.  Money exchanged hands and Mother must have arranged to have the screen delivered to the house because she didn't have it with her when we met up later.

This chance occurrence gave us an outrageous idea!  We would follow our Mother around and see what else she was buying us for Christmas - we were not disappointed.  Mother always claimed to have eyes in the back of her head so that she could see all that was going on around her.  That was one day when those eyes failed her and it was two happy boys who met their Mother for a strawberry sundae before getting on the bus and heading home.


                                                                               

  

 My old-fashioned Christmas Tree laden with gifts