Christmas used to be so simple

“The Christmas concert was always a major highlight,” says Rathwell, who was raised on a Cumberland farm and now lives just outside Navan. “Each class would have something special – a play, a rhythm band, a recitation. There would always be a visit from Santa Claus. Someone always did the nativity scene; now, you can hardly even use the word ‘Christmas,’ it has to be ‘holidays’.

“It was a really special community event. The room would be warm and full of parents and siblings. We always had a piano and Christmas carols. Everybody participated. It was a wonderful experience, looking back.”

Like many others, Rathwell also recalls horse-drawn sleigh rides later in the season. “We’d ride across the fields, this was in the heart of winter in January and February, right over the fences.”

For Norman Garvock, raised on the Cumberland-area farm where he still lives, Christmas in the 1950s meant “lots of stuff under the tree – I was the only child here.”

He remembers especially a sleigh from his grandfather Garvock who lived on the farm and favoured him. “Since I was at home, I was ‘our boy.’”

The Christmas meal was turkey and trimmings. Farm animals, however, don’t much care what day of the year it is, so late afternoon meant a hike to the barn for chores and milking. Christmas night, says Garvock, “we sat around and ate some more.”

Christmas is still a family time for most people, he says. The difference is in the gifts. “There weren’t the shopping centres we have today. Mother used to get things from the Simpson-Sears and Eaton’s catalogues.”

Lola Larmours, 90 and now living in Sarsfield, was raised on a mixed farm in Cheney, southeast of Navan. One of seven children, she says the fun part of Christmas in the 1930s was “was going with my dad to cut down the tree: we had our own bush. There were homemade decorations. My mother would buy crepe paper and mix up flour and water (for glue), and we’d make interlocked chains.”

One year her father made the children a toboggan as a present, another year, skis. Her mother knit them all clothing. Stockings were stuffed with homemade candies. Oranges, a staple stocking-stuffer for many of us in the 1950s, weren’t part of the Christmas package in Cheney circa 1930 unless brought by family visiting from Ottawa.

“I’m a great-great grandmother now, and I’m confused about what to buy for the children because they already seem to have so much. I gave up on it this year.”

Decades ago, she says, Christmas didn’t cost so much. “It was simple, but lovely.”

Merry Christmas to all readers. If you have ideas for columns, please contact me at careerac@ca.inter.net.