Village Squire, 1975-12, Page 10An old-fashioned Christmas
Remembering Christmas
as it used to be
BY A.L. RODGES
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting
fat,
Please put a penny in the old man's hat,
0 you haven't a penny, a farthing will do,
If you haven't a farthing --God bless you.
The trees were laden with snow. In the
corners of the snake rail fence, the fence had
all but disappeared. A cloud of blue smoke
curled from the chimney above the house, for
gas and oil were seldom used for heating in
the rural areas of fifty years ago. The geese,
turkeys and ducks had all been marketed. The
wood cutting in the bush, if it had commenced
before Christmas, was about to be suspended
until after the holidays. Although the
woodsheds were filled to the beams with
wood, fuel had to be cut for another winter.
Fifty years ago, chain saws were unknown.
A cross cut saw with a man on each end of it,
was the method used. There was an old and
very true saying that wood warmed you twice,
when you cut it and when you burned it.
When the tree trunks were cut into stove
lengths, then the axes took over to split it and
later gasoline fired engines cut the limbs into
stove wood. Horses and wagons were used to
haul it home where mostly the women and
children piled it in the woodshed. As a child,
the writer.still recalls lying in bed on a cold
night and listening to the wood crackling in
the stove and a very pleasant sound it was
indeed. On a cold night, Dad would get up
several times to put wood on the fire in order
to maintain heat through the night.
The festivities of the Christmas season
generally started with the school concert
when every child had a "piece" to say or took
part in a skit or dialogue. There were, of
course, always the rousing Christmas carols
to be sung and many a recess and noon hour
were spent rehearsing for the great occasion.
If the village boasted both a church and a
school as ours did, the church concert
generally followed the school entertainment.
Rehearsals for the church concert, often took
place after school or occasionally at night.
Parents' drove the • children to these
rehearsals, chatting in the church and
keeping warm, while the hor<es waited in the
church shed with blankets on them and of
course, every owner had a set of bells that
jangled through the frosty night as we drove
homeward. These bells were a part of the
8, VILLAGE SQUIRE/DECEMBER 1975
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harness or three or four loud but melodious
bells were fastened to a shaft. As vehicles
carried no lights in those days, bells were
essential and one learned to identify the
neighbors passing by the sound of their bells.
On a clear, frosty, moonlight night, the bells
were a pleasant sound indeed and often if a
sleighload of people were going somewhere,
there was much singing as the horses trotted
down the roads and the bells jangled
pleasantly in the clear frosty air. The sleigh
had a layer of hay in the bottom. Boards were
laid across the sleigh box. Blankets covered
the seats and the people sat back to back.
This way, one blanket covered two seats and
the back to back method of seating people
prevented the wind from blowing around
them. Rugs and buffalo robes tucked over
one's knees helped to conserve warmth and
often hot bricks, warmed in the oven, were
used to keep feet warm.
Inside the houses of rural Ontario,
everyone was very busy indeed. Early in
November, the Christmas cake was made.
The writer recalls her mother making a large
Christmas cake in a bread pan and all callers
between Christmas and Easter were given a
piece of Christmas cake and a cup of tea.
Christmas pudding or plum pudding, as it
was generally known, was made a long time
ahead and steamed for hours on top of the
wood stoves. This, too, Mother made in Targe
c antities and it was used as dessert for
Sunday dinner after returning from church on
cold wintry mornings.
In the kitchens of yesteryear, the old coal or
wood burning stoves were hard to beat. They
had four lids, a firebox, an oven, a warming
closet and were equipped with a reservoir at
the back. A woodbox stood nearby and it was
the duty of the children to keep it filled with
wood from the shed. It also served as a
heating unit. Many a kid raced down to dress
by the kitchen stove on cold mornings and
then drew a a dipper of warm water from the
reservoir in which to wash.. Potatoes, two
vegetables and meat could be cooked on top
of the stove at once while a dish of baked
beans, pies, cakes etc., could be cooked in the
oven at the same time. No one worried about
the kilowatts because the stove was always
going anyway. No home economists
suggested that we wait until we had an
oven -full of baking to do before we turned on
the oven and energy shortages were
unknown.
Long before Christmas the cards were all
addressed and stamped. Then as now, many
cards had to have letters with them. At one
time, cards could be mailed anywhere in the
British Empire, (and the empire was large at
that time), and also all over the United States,
for a cent. As cards and postage were a great
deal cheaper then than now, a great many
cards were mailed. Christmas gifts were not
as expensive then as now but they had to be
wrapped in the gaily decorated papers and as
the postal rates were not as great then as