My Memories of Childhood Christmases Resonate Stronger Today

Is it just me or was Christmas really better in ‘the good old days’? Mind you, I was younger then, and more impressionable.

They weren’t any whiter in Victoria (Saanich, really) than they are now, with the rarest of exceptions. It did happen though, before global warming and all that.

One of the best photos my father ever took is of skaters on what we called the ‘Overflow,’ Swan Lake’s annual flooding of farmers’ fields. It was good enough that he made an enlargement and framed it; today it’s not only a family keepsake but, after our mostly mild winters of recent years, a collector’s item.

But back to Christmas. Yes, the merchants still decorate their stores, people do up their homes, and there are colourful street lights.

But nothing like the front windows of Eaton’s in Victoria.

They were works of art, so lovingly crafted that they obviously were the result of much planning and expense. You didn’t just glance at them as you passed by, you stopped to savour them.

Several blocks along Douglas Street, the Hudson’s Bay Co. did likewise, but outdid Eaton’s with a real live Santa Claus in the front corner window, and a massive Christmas tree mounted on the roof. A tree so big that it had to be placed in position by a mobile crane from Heaney’s (‘Big or teeny, just call Heaney’).

Planted atop what was then one of the tallest buildings in the city, its lights could be seen for miles.

That was a sight and an event!

Well, Eaton’s is gone. The Bay’s still there although not in the same iconic building and they’ve long discontinued the tree, no doubt because of both the expense and the increasingly challenging job of manoeuvring a crane in and about city streets crowded with traffic and shoppers.

With Granny Green gone, too, there are no Christmas puddings soaked in high-octane rum and set ablaze with the lights turned out. Something of a fire hazard, no doubt, but, to kids, out of sight!

There’s no Uncle Adam with the glass of Guiness Stout in one hand (I still hate the taste) and reeking of the smell of cigar or pipe smoke (the latter carefully scraped from a plug with a pocketknife—so simple an act, yet so fascinating to watch).

There are no more family get-togethers next door with my aunt, uncle and cousins. All gone, gone with the passing years, kept alive only in memory of Christmases past.

There’s no more Mrs. Wells, either, she of the mini-pancakes.

Every year in elementary school, on the last day before Christmas break, Shirley would bring in a cookie tin of her mom’s tiny favoured pancakes. They probably were your regulation, every day, baked from a bought mix variety—so why did they taste so good that we clamoured for them, year after year?

Until we graduated to junior high school, when such pleasures were forsaken as being, you know, childish.

Is it true that Christmas and wedding cakes can last for years if kept cool and airtight? When I originally wrote this column in 2002, there was a last light fruit cake of Mom’s in the freezer, from her favourite Robin Hood flour recipe. I didn’t have the nerve to try it, 15 years later, nor the heart to throw it away.

I wondered if the RCAF and NORAD still tracked Santa Claus on their radar screens and passed the information on to local radio stations to keep boys and girls posted on the old man’s progress as he flew south? Do they do this now via satellites?

Let’s see, what else has changed? Ah, yes, toys. You didn’t need so many batteries, and long past is the day when cap guns were de rigeur for boys. Can you even buy caps (containing real gun powder) today, or have they, like Halloween firecrackers, been banned?

And guns, why, we won’t even go there!

I can think of at least one marked improvement from back when. Tree lights. How many can remember when they came in parallel circuit, rather than tofay’s series circuit? Meaning that, when one light burned out, you had to replace each and every one—one at a time—until you found the culprit.

Not once, but all the while the tree was up. And I do mean up, with the lights strung in and out and around the branches, often difficult to reach without tipping the tree. Sometimes, the replacement bulb was also a dud and you could easily take 10-15 minutes to make the discovery.

Try it some time!

Some fathers needed a stiff drink after repeatedly suffering through the aggravating, frustrating ordeal. Children quickly learned to avoid the living room while Dad was “fixing” the tree.

It was Dad who got up first on Christmas morning to light the fire and start breakfast. It was Dad who, the night before, solemnly swore that the chimney had been cleaned for you-know-who’s coming, Mom who set out the slice of fruit cake and glass of milk (and who, if cynical, older mates be correct, consumed both).

Christmas Day, of course, was opening our stockings while still in bed, a late and leisurely breakfast dragged out until the last tantalizing moment, and the opening of presents. Always the best—as previously determined by repeated weighings, shakings and squeezings—was kept for last.

Then it was a lunch of holiday munchies—Japanese not Mandarin oranges that came, individually wrapped in green tissue paper in small wooden crates.

Then outside to show off your presents to neighbourhood friends. All this followed by a Christmas dinner fit for royalty.

But that was then, at least for this scribe. Now even the mention of Christmas has become an issue of contention, supplanted by Holiday in the Orwellian minds of those who would presume to speak for us all.

Surely we don’t have to be practising Christians to appreciate Christmas. It’s a way of life for most Canadians. So-called commercialism aside (but, damn, those lights are pretty) and an awareness of the fact that there are many who are in need of even the basics of life, Christmas means family, friends, good will and good cheer. Who would ask for more than that?

That said, Merry Christmas. Or Happy Holiday. Or whatever. Enjoy.