Tuesday 21 December 2021

Days of Yore

 I was feeling rather sentimental about Christmas. As you can probably guess, my great big gathering of my siblings and their "children" (although none are children anymore) has been put off (for another year). Provincial limits on indoor gatherings, rising numbers, along with an immune compromised condition of one person, an upcoming surgery of another person, and other very valid reasons led to this decision. I am, of course, having our own gathering of our daughter, her boyfriend, our son, and my mother-in-law, and that will be lovely, just not as big. 

When I was little, we always celebrated Christmas at home, but sometimes we would also go to an aunt and uncle's house, who were the sister and brother-in-law of my father. I thought it was a  great long trip, but really, it was probably only an hour or less. I remember the awe of being driven around the park, at night, in that 'far away' town, seeing the display of coloured lights. It was a simpler time. The coloured lights seemed magical. I'd like to say I think the giant inflatable characters on people's lawns at this time of magical, but instead I think they are garish. I imagine children love them, though, and for that reason at Christmas, that's good.

At our own home, we always had a real tree. Often that tree was purchased at a gas station / store about halfway between our own home in the country and the closest town, called "Kitching's Marketeria". This was the place where gas was purchased, cold pop in bottles came out of a big red cooler, the floors were plywood and had a distinct aroma of  "old store with damp plywood floors", and the two huge black Newfoundland dogs were just maneuvered around as they lay sprawled in the parking area. Kitchings would get a big shipment of Christmas trees and I recall standing out in the cold while one of my parents would prop up a tree by the trunk, away from the others, while the other parents would voice why it wasn't a good enough tree. The trunk's not straight, it has a bald spot on one side, it's not tall enough... 

My father, who was compelled to re-engineer everything, would sometimes cut some of the lower boughs, drill holes in the main trunk, and with the help of some wood glue, insert the cut boughs into the holes to make for a fuller, more evenly dispersed tree. 

Our trees went through many phases of decoration. Of course, we had the old traditional glass balls which were so beautifully coloured and formed. When I was very little, we still had the string of lights with the thick, fabric-like cord, and big coloured bulbs. Those were the days of figuring out which bulb needed to be replaced so the whole string would light up. Those were also the days of long strands of icicle tinsel, which of course was removed at the end of the Christmas season and repackaged as best you could in the original box to be re-used the next year. People were frugal then. My parents had to be. 


source                     This is not a picture from my youth, obviously, but just some tinsel so you know what kind I am referring to. 

We later got strings of newer kinds of bulbs, sometimes using multi-coloured, sometimes just clear lights. My mother "let" me do much of the decorating. Looking back on it now, she was probably relieved to have someone else do most of the work. I was the youngest of four of us and the last one still living at home. She was game for a couple of years when I thought a blue and silver colour scheme would be nice. Mostly, the tree remained quite traditional. 

Then came the apples. I have no idea where the small red apple ornaments came from. Likely a local department store. But once my mother discovered them, there was no turning back. She loved those shiny red apples on, I want to say, gold strings, if memory holds correct. They weren't glass ornaments. I'm not even sure what they were, some kind of covered plastic perhaps. I hated those apples. How do red apples even equate with Christmas? It's a coniferous tree - not even an apple tree. But she had tons of them. 

I don't have much recollection of Christmases when I was very young, but as I grew up a little, Christmas was exciting because my brothers would come home, and then my sister. We are all spread out in age, so my oldest brother would have moved out of the house by the time I was about five or six years old. My next oldest brother would have been gone when I was about nine. Of course, Christmas can be a time of angst and strife in families and my own had its share of these times as well. I recall my mother's anxiety and resentment about feeling constrained when spending money to buy gifts. Later, when I was probably around twelve years old and wanting to pick out my own gifts while shopping with my mother, it became routine for me to do the gift wrapping, including wrapping my own presents. I thought it was fun and offered to do it, but again, I imagine it was a relief that my mother didn't have to do it herself. My mother at this stage would have been in her early fifties and she wasn't one of those vibrant, active individuals at that age. She already seemed too tired, too old, and hosting a variety of ailments and issues to gleefully engage in such things.

Down the road and around the corner from our house, possibly all of two minutes driving time away, was the farm where my mother was raised. Still living at the farm was her own mother (her father having died some time before that), and her bachelor brother. There was also a "hired man" who worked on the farm. Every year, we would gather up presents and get into cars and drive over to the farm to get together in the evening, after chores were done, with my grandmother and my uncle, and the hired man if he wasn't at his own family gathering. There would be candies and other treats, but a tree was no longer bothered with. We all sat together in the big living room and watched them open their presents from us. We would also open our presents from my grandmother and uncle, which of course my mother would have gone out and selected for them. My grandmother no longer left her home to go anywhere and she never learned to drive. She had her own issues as well. 

For whatever reason, my grandmother would ask someone (almost always me) to open her presents for her. I have no clue why she wouldn't open them herself, but that's just how it went. Within seconds of revealing the contents (usually footwear or maybe a cardigan) my mother would announce that if she didn't like it, or it didn't fit, she did have the receipt and could return or exchange it. This happened every single year. 

Later when I became a snarky, opinionated teenager, I resented that we all had to haul over to the farm. Why couldn't the two people who lived there come over to our house, two minutes away, instead of all of us having to go over there? I resented having to open my grandmother's  presents for her  (which I probably wrapped as well), and it bothered me that they didn't have a tree. When I went away to university, I actually bought a pattern for a stuffed Christmas tree and I bought the festive fabric and sewed on the trim and created the tree for them, so they'd have something to put in the living room. The one decoration they did have, which I used to put up for them, was an old cardboard nativity scene. 


source             This is not the actual one from my grandmother's home, but similar. It was getting a bit raggedy by the time I was removing it from it's storage box and assembling it on top of the big old tv console. 

In retrospect, I realize there were traditions, and issues, and things people just did because it was easier to just do it. Family dynamics. 

I looked through some old photos that I've inherited and found a couple that were taken when my brothers were young. I was not born yet, nor even my sister, likely. These were taken "over at the farm", sometimes referred to as "over home" because it was my mother's childhood home. 


In this photo are my mother and father, and my two brothers. It is odd to see my mother with long hair, worn down. They are sitting in the living room of the farm and obviously at that time, my grandmother did still have a Christmas tree. My grandfather would still have been alive then, too. I'm guessing that tree was cut on the property. It is also only now, looking at this photo in detail, that I notice the striped jacket my father is wearing. This picture would have been taken in my 1958 or 1959 (?)


In this photo, my brothers are a little older in their matching striped shirts, and thrilled with their big bubblegum filled candy canes. Santa is my father. I wonder if they ever questioned the validity of that Santa. This is also at the farm. I'll bet some of you had similar couches when you were young, either burgundy or green with the carved wooden feet and arm details. I have memories of tracing over those carved details with my finger while sitting on the floor. 

After I became old enough to not believe in Santa Claus, my family started to adopt the tradition of opening presents on Christmas Eve night. It was actually quite lovely because the lights of the Christmas tree were so pretty in the evening, and it just felt cozy. Stockings were never part of our tradition, but were very much a part of my husband's childhood, so we have always had Christmas stockings with our own children and it continues now, even when they are in their early twenties.

So there are some of my Christmas childhood memories. I hope we have created warm memories for our own children and perhaps they will continue some of our traditions with their own families some day. 



36 comments:

  1. I enjoyed reading your Christmas memories, Jenn! And there's nothing like those old Christmas photos from the 50s and 60s, is there? I have quite a few myself. I had a good laugh about the little red apples. It reminded me of an auntie of mine who was one of the very first to have a silver aluminum tree with blue satin balls -- oooooo! So radical in those days! And as she put it, "Very chick."

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    1. Very chick indeed! Your mention of an aluminum tree reminds me of A Charlie Brown Christmas, where he is sent to pick out an aluminum tree.

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  2. A lovely remembrance of your childhood Christmases. This time of year probably brings back more memories than at any other time of the year. Many warm, fuzzy memories, some not so much. Our daughter keeps asking me to write down happenings in my childhood so she has a record of them to keep. You've given your kids just such a keepsake by this post. Happy Holidays to you and yours!

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    1. There's something to be said about that, making a record for your child(ren). Unfortunately, my mother-in-law has no real accurate memories anymore, and my mother was the same. (NOT putting you in the same category!) Happy holidays to you as well!

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  3. I also enjoyed reading about your childhood Christmases. My memories before 9 are vague... but I do remember the 'bubble lights' that we had on our tree back then. Do you remember those? They were long tubes that had a liquid in them and bubbled when plugged in. I was the youngest of 3... and remember learning about Santa Claus when I was about 7 or 8 and found my "Ricky" doll in the hall closet. Never told anyone that I found it, but then I knew...

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    1. I know what you are speaking about, but we did not have bubble lights. That's a sweet memory about finding your doll!

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  4. Those are great pictures of your mother, father and brothers with Santa and the tree. It's fascinating what you notice in indoor photographs. The incidental detail can be just as or even more interesting than the main subject. I started writing a blog post on this but didn't finish. Must go back to it and finish and post it.

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    1. I do tend to look at the backgrounds of old photos, sometimes more than the subjects of the photos. You should finish the post!

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  5. We used to have (my mother still has them) little oranges, I think, that went right on the end of the branches. They were little balls covered in silk orange thread. I also thought they were the strangest things to go on the tree. It’s funny how our perception of things changes as we age.

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    1. Little oranges! I don't think I ever saw those, but I do remember ornaments covered with silk thread.

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  6. What lovely memories and pictures.

    God bless.

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  7. It is such a shame that your extended family is unable to get together this Christmas. Here in Saskatchewan, there are no such restrictions. Scott Moe (or Movid) is quite happy to sacrifice some of us to keep his base happy. Arrggh...I won't go any further than that.

    Memories of Christmas are so special. The photos are priceless. I hope you have some with you and your sister too. Boy, do I remember the tinsel. Mom would let us put it on the tree, but only one piece at a time - no throwing clumps of it at the tree. And our tree, like your grandmother's was cut from our land or one of the neighbour's. Dad would go out and find the worst looking tree, I swear. But by the time the ornaments, lights and tinsel were on the tree it looked beautiful. When they moved to town they bought an artificial tree. A couple of years before she passed away, she had Dad cover the tree with garbage bags with all the decorations and lights still on and put it in the basement. Then it got carried up the next year as it was. :p

    Hope your back is much better by now.

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    1. Yes, those trees cut from a bush lot were not necessarily the most beautiful, were they? But it's true, they would look so much better fully decked out. And yes, you had to be very careful and precise when applying tinsel!

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  8. This was an enjoyable read, thank you for sharing these memories! Merry Christmas to you and yours!

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  9. Children always seem to have so many presents these days whereas when we were young we only had a few - but I am sure we had just as much pleasure from them.

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    1. We probably gave our own two too many presents as well.

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  10. I enjoyed reading this Jenn. We came from a farm as you know. There were often rows at Christmas time and I think that accounts for me not liking Christmas all that much. It was busy, money was short and my mother didn't like her Mother-in-law, our Gran, who lived in the main house. It was a bit like you remember going to the farm 2 minutes up the road. Xx

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    1. Family, money, holidays - not always a recipe for a jolly time. I always like your farming posts.

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  11. I love your Xmas memories. Thank you for taking me away to a different place and time. How nice to see the photos too.
    Merry Xmas to you and your family Jenn

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    1. Merry Christmas to you, too! I've been enjoying reading about your Greek holiday times.

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  12. That takes me back. Thanks, Jen, for the happy memories.

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  13. A fascinating post. Jen. I remember those apples--those were a big hit back then. I had them too, and little red bows and white lights on the tree. But I quickly went back to my old traditional glass balls. It looks in the one photo like your brother is holding a jack-in-the-box. And that couch--did it have that scratchy, rough fabric? I swear I almost bought one a few years back, but we have to have a hide-a-bed for company, so I had to leave it behind. Sturdy old things, they were. I wonder if your grandmother had arthritic hands, and that's why you opened her gifts for her? Lots of memories in this post, so poignant. Thanks for sharing.

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  14. I remember that livingroom furniture. Ours was burgundy. I ended up with it when I got married in 72.

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  15. Like you, I have vivid memories of childhood Christmases. Many good memories and a few not ideal.. You always had a nice live tree then the popular apple ornaments were added which made me laugh. My mother replaced our nice live tree with a silver tinsel 6 foot tall tree. She loved it as much as you mother liked her apple ornaments! In the 50's and 60's what Mom said was gospel.

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  16. I don't remember a tree, ever. But we did have a Wellington boot each for presents! A bit like the Dutch tradition.
    Mother did not believe in Family, so any time we went to stay with my father's family it was fraught.
    I like to bring in green boughs and decorate them.

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  17. That was a fun stroll down your memory lane. Christmas has certainly morphed into something bigger & shiner than I remember from my childhood. I have silver sparkle apples on my horse tree (it's all horse related decorations) but our main tree is more tradition & not an apple to be found on it (col). Happy Christmas Jenn. ... Mary-Lou =^{..}^=

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  18. We too had the icicle tinsel and I carried on the tradition on my own trees and also carefully collected it back each year. There gets a little less each year. I haven't seen any replacement for many years. As we have been on our own last year and this year due to the current situation we haven't bothered with a tree but this brought back the memories. Have a lovely Christmas and lets hope for a better new year for everyone.

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  19. I really loved reading about your childhood Christmas memories. (You wrote this so well, I was captive!)
    We all have such different Christmas (or any holiday for that matter) traditions and memories. We always had tinsel, but I don't recall saving it. Although we were not wealthy, I can't imagine my Mom being organized enough to salvage it from one year to the next. Funny about the apple ornaments. The fact that you chose and wrapped your own presents, kind of blows my mind. Your Mom must have been tired and Christmas seemed daunting to her.
    I love the old photos.
    We always do stockings for everyone, even the critters. I think we have more 'stocking stuff' than actual wrapped gifts.
    Thank you for sharing this with us.
    Merry Christmas!

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  20. Some posts you read and you just go, "Wow. I want to read that over again." This was one of them. I loved the memories you shared -- the fun and the frustrating, because there are always frustrating ones! And there are so many similarities! I think I had that same "Christmas at the Farm" visiting my grandparents! Only, I was an only child and no other kids to maybe play with! My mom would say the same thing -- "if you don't like the color, we can exchange it!" I didn't open her presents but a lot of times I've seen parents with little kids (especially real little ones) let them help open! But there's one real kicker here. Wait for it..... I have that same manger scene. I didn't put it up this year because I didn't have a spot, but I have in years past and now I'm thinking maybe I should go to the basement to get it, because I loved it! I have a photo of me that might be on my Christmas day blog that shows a part of it!

    Loved those old photos! Oh, and on our tree up at the lake, we had apples on it, too (among other things.) Must have been a thing in the 60s!

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  21. Kitching's Marketeria, was that on Hey 59 north of Woodstock?
    Christine

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  22. Oh the similarities! 1. The long silver "icicles." My mom always put them on herself. The 4 of us girls (this was before #5, baby brother came along) got to put on the ornaments, but she, alone, put on the icicles. I think it was her time to zone out on something rather mindless. She separated the icicles by length. It took her 2 days. And our tree was always "live."
    2. We had that exact Nativity Scene when I was growing up. And then I found a smaller version for our first one when I got married.
    3. After I got married, we had little pasture Christmas trees. Always cedars that smelled good but were so "stickery."
    4. My parents had a couch like that, in brown pokey fabric. My in-laws had similar drapes in a darker color.
    5. And now my mom, lives in an apartment, so we go to her & my brother lives in the same complex comes over. We give mom gifts and she gives us money even though we tell her not to. It makes her happy. We will go out to eat with it and take a selfie to send to her and make her smile.
    She doesn't have a tree anymore but she has the big bulb colored lights in her window. She bakes up a storm to share with all her neighbors. She loves getting photo cards with all the grownup grandkids and their children, her great-grands. We are spread out so we don't have a gathering but she's happy to go to a sibling's home.
    Thank you for the memories.

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