Shades of Christmas past

SHADES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

As Christmas comes again, to me it always brings memories of Christmases past.

Being raised in a Christian family (for which I shall be eternally grateful), the Christ Child was always the centre of our Christmas. We attended a Lutheran Church and from the time we were old enough, each child participated in the Christmas Eve Service. Pastor A.O. Borchardt retired at that church after 50 years of service. His Christmas Eve children’s service was exactly the same for all the years that he was there, except there were different children. The younger children did group recitations of the old Christmas hymns and the older ones sang the carols. Everybody got a bag of candy with an orange on the way out. It was an exciting time for us children. My father had gone to this church all his life and had participated in exactly the same the Christmas Eve Service himself as a child - which probably contributed to his absence from the yearly service from about the time I was a youngster. He would be found resting on the chesterfield while his parents (who lived next door) and my mother and us four children would go off to the Christmas Eve Program. It was our custom to open most of our gifts on Christmas Eve, and lo and behold while Dad had been sleeping, all the gifts miraculously appeared under the tree. One special gift was saved for Christmas morning to open. I don’t know if that is a German custom or not, but it was a Christmas tradition at our house.

Recalling Christmas as a child brings the realization that times have so changed. We were delighted with the gifts we received, which in comparison to what today’s children expect, no offense, were mere trinkets. A doll, a sleigh, a G.I. Joe, a cassette tape, now would barely qualify for a decent birthday present… It makes it impossible for grandparents to compete in the Santa department. I know a lot of us don’t even bother any more. And I don’t even want to go to the place where written “thank you’s” were an expected courtesy.

Looking back over our own family Christmases, it is surprising which one I recall as a very SPECIAL Christmas. It was not the Christmas that we took our children age 11 and 8 to Disneyland. It was a very wonderful trip, but the four of us sitting in a motel room in Los Angeles was not the thrill we thought it would be for Christmas. We drug in a palm leaf off the street in absence of a Christmas tree. It was memorable in that it was the coldest Christmas there ever. ALL of the million, or so it seemed, poinsettias in the Disneyland complex froze! I was very thankful I had inadvertently brought along my “pink marshmallow” full length quilted winter coat. The locals were not prepared for such a deep freeze, and one homeless person died sleeping out on the street that week.

It also was not the Christmas, when we lived in Creston, that we took our young children to visit John’s brother and his wife in Kelowna. They have no children of their own. Guess what – somehow all of the gifts we had bought for the kids were left at home! We had to run about the day before Christmas buying a few new presents we thought they would like to have and not duplicate what they would get when we returned home!

Our best Christmas ever was the first year we moved into Creston from the lake house. As it was impossible to bury our water line on the rocky mountainside, when the freezing wind blew across the lake and up our side of the mountain, the pipes froze. The first year that happened, it was no big deal. We had a woodburning stove in the kitchen and it was kind of fun. We just “roughed it” for a week or so. There was snow to get in and melt for doing dishes, etc., and we got drinking water from the neighbour. It wasn’t so much fun the next year when the same thing happened. There was a little house in town that was for sale for a very reasonable price, just waiting for us to come along and need it. It had been my previous conviction that we would NEVER leave our mansion (so it was to me) on the lake with our crystal chandelier and million dollar view of Kootenay Lake. But then, I did not know “the bigger picture”. It was the first step to prying me off my mountainside and eventually moving to Prince Albert for reasons I can share in another story sometime.

But I digress. We moved into Creston and our first Christmas there, we were feeling quite lonely and disappointed that we could not afford to be home in Saskatchewan with our family that year. It had not snowed much at all in December, but while we four were walking to the church from our nearby little home, the sound of the church bells ringing was heavenly and the snowflakes were gently falling. I still get goosebumps just remembering the feeling. At church we were greeting Darren’s young friend’s parents who lived in Wynndel. They are from Germany and did not attend church regularly, but of course this was Christmas. Realizing they may just be going home after church to their empty house, as we were going to be doing, we invited them over for a visit. They accepted and we had a wonderful time of fellowship and getting to know some virtual strangers. Our children were absolutely thrilled with the few small gifts they received that year. That is the Christmas that I recall with special fondness!

As for my husband, he says BAH HUMBUG!

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.