A Christmas unforgotten
I grew up on a farm in Metchosin. Christmas was a time of great excitement. We could hardly wait for the Sears Christmas Wish book to arrive.
My sisters, brothers and I would spend countless hours circling and checking off items from the toy section.
It was a tradition that my aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad’s side of the family, who lived in Victoria, would come to the country for Christmas dinner. Poor Mom! We tried our best to help her prepare the turkey dinner, polish cutlery and silverware, dust and clean up the Christmaspresent wrappers and make ourselves presentable. I remember one Christmas, mom had made a beautiful fruit cake and decorated it with a covering of almond paste and colourful candy poinsettias that was intended to be the centre piece on the dinner table.
My dad, when she wasn’t looking, thought it looked too good to resist and took a big piece out of it. My mother was devastated because it was unmendable and she had to think of something else to replace it.
Mom did a beautiful job of decorating the fireplace mantles with pine boughs, cones and candles. Once everyone arrived, the old farmhouse was in a orderly fashion and no one would have guessed what kind of chaos took place. We managed to serve the adults in the dining room at the huge five-leaf oak table, and the kids at a smaller table at the side. A good time was had by all after filling our bellies with turkey and all the trimmings, and singing carols around the fireplace with my aunt Evelyn playing the piano.
When I ask myself which Christmas stands out the most when I was a young child, it’s the one when I was seven or eight years old. My oldest brother, Ray, and my sister, Joan, were already on their own and had jobs in town. There was my next oldest brother, Dick, and my younger brother, Kenny, at home. My little sister, Jeannie, was yet to be born.
It was just before Christmas and mom was busy writing letters, sewing special little gifts to send to faraway relatives. The weather was typically rainy and windy and the old farmhouse was hard to keep warm. Mom was always stoking the fires and going to the wood pile for more wood. We had fireplaces in the dining room, living room and the upstairs bedrooms. My brothers and I were complaining that we didn’t feel well. Our throats were sore and we were really hot. She checked our temperature and it was very high. She called the doctor and he came out right away (that’s when they used to make house calls).
The doctor said we had scarlet fever. He gave us a shot of penicillin in the butt and it hurt. He quarantined us for 10 days. I will always remember the big sign on our back door, warning people not to come in. I felt that I was in jail and had done something wrong. I loved being outdoors even at that young age.
Dad was the only one that was permitted to leave so that he could go to work. He was a logger and had his own sawmill. Mom and dad rigged up a hospital room in the dining room with three cots. Mom slept with us and dad kept the fireplaces going all night. A couple of days after the doctor’s visit, dad came in with the most beautiful fir Christmas tree and placed it in the bay window in the living room. It smelled so wonderful and made me want to be outside. The only thing separating the dining room and the living room were the fireplaces, so I could see it from my makeshift cot.
Even though we were not feeling very well, Mom let us help decorate the tree with her cherished ornaments and lots of tinsel. They would leave the Christmas lights on until we went to sleep. I would half shut my eyes so that the lights would blur into one beautiful mass on the tree.
Our neighbour across the road, who we called auntie Ann, was unable to have children and treated us as her own. She made us a unique Christmas branch tree with all kinds of decorated cookies attached to the branches with red and green ribbons, and left it at the door.
The night before Christmas, my older brother and I were so full of excitement and anticipation that we lay awake unable to sleep. We crept out of bed to see if it was snowing. Lo and behold! There were huge, fluffy snow flakes falling to the ground.
It was an unusually quiet Christmas morning. But there was something comforting about just being cosy with just my mom, dad, brothers and sister. There was no hustle and bustle to prepare a large banquet meal for aunts, uncles and cousins. I remember how excited I was to get a Barbara Ann Scott doll under the tree.
The snow remained for the day. Not being quite as ill as my brothers, I pulled on my boots and coat while mom was out at the barn milking the cow and feeding the chickens.
I crept outdoors to play in the snow. Mom caught me and scolded me about what a silly thing I did.
She pulled off my wet clothes, rubbed me down with a warm towel to get my circulation back and made me sit by the wood stove to warm up. It was all well worth the freedom! Soon it was forgotten and we carried on playing with our new toys. After having a pleasant Christmas dinner, we kids gathered around mom in the living room by the fire and she read us out of a book called The Little Red Train That
Could. This was before we had TV. By the time the Christmas holiday was over, we got the OK from the doctor to be released and could take down the ugly quarantine sign on the door.
Freedom at last!
Barb Henson