It may be the first day of the 12 days of Christmas, but instead of a partridge in a pear tree, we would like to gift to you some of our readers’ favourite memories and traditions of Christmas over the years (all wrapped up inside one of the ubiquitous Eatons clothing boxes we always found under the tree).
But, before we tear open the wrapping on those Christmas memories, I would like to share “A Christmas Poem,” written by Cathy Talamelli and printed in The Northern Life exactly 45 years ago (technically, December 14 1977, but I digress).
A Christmas Poem
Christmas is a time when celebrations awake,
They come out of the dark and into the light.
They make people happy
It puts them in a mood,
Even old timers get into the groove.
Everyone is singing, it's a time to rejoice,
It's a time to have parties and hang up mistletoe.
It's a time to go shopping
to wrap and to give,
to have a light heart,
tear your worries apart.
And when Christmas is over,
the memories will remain
of joyous happy times.
That come only once a year.
Now, of course, “everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe will help to make the season bright”, or so Nat King Cole told us, which jives with memories shared by readers, most of which centre on traditional foods, family dinners and decorations as the season’s centrepieces.
Karen Laidley-Linley remembers the magic of the season in her household revolved around the Christmas tree.
“The tree had to be just right,” she noted. “It remained empty of presents until Christmas morning. What a huge surprise for our family of five children. It never ceased to amaze me. Then add in Santa gifts. The day was just so magical.”
Louise Gauthier noticed in one of the photos that accompanied the previous article a tradition that was shared by many families as a means to display a family’s Christmas greeting cards.
“We used to hang our Christmas cards on the curtains also,” she remembered.
Of course, speaking of the previous article, unlike the asbestos “snow” that was unfortunately used for years on the family Christmas tree, reader Joanne Laughland’s family preferred a different method to create a snowy bough.
“I remember using Lux Soap Flakes instead of the asbestos products mentioned in the story,” she wrote. “I believe the Lux flakes were mixed with warm water and beaten with a mixer to become a kind of fluffy foam which you buttered on the tips of branches where it hardened into snow … It was pretty and smelled soapy!”
Judy Courtemanche wrote to us about a tradition which she started (“an old Irish tradition”) as a way of including long gone relatives in the Christmas of the present.
“I put a candle in the window,” she wrote, “so my parents know where we are at Christmas time.”
Linda Derkacz’s one memory of Christmastime from her youth was that her family always opened their gifts on Christmas Eve. Her reminiscences of that time could just as easily have come from the verses of Clement Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
As she recalled, “early to bed to wait for Santa’s arrival. So excited I was, I'd fall asleep staring out the window to the twinkling of the blue Christmas lights erected outside on the house windows. About midnight, we were wakened by bells ringing, my mother telling us Santa arrived: ‘Come see quickly out the front door before he flies away in his sleigh.’ Of course, looking outside we saw no Santa, my father stopped ringing the bells, but we could not wait to open the presents Santa left behind.”
Cynthia Matthews’ also had memories of Christmas Eve that were similar to Linda Derkacz. She remembers “seeing reindeer ‘footprints’ in the snow outside our house on Eastern Avenue,” as well as “being told by my older siblings that, indeed, they saw and heard the reindeer on the roof on Christmas Eve after I was in bed.”
In fact, Cynthia Matthews’ Christmas memories do not end there. She still marvels at “the magic of being allowed to open your jingly knitted Christmas stocking in the very early morning, each little item to unwrap, every little special treasure, right down to the mandarin in the toe. To this day when I smell a mandarin orange, I am transported back to Christmas in Sudbury as a kid.”
Furthermore, how could she forget the latter part of that Christmas morning with her “mom conking out exhausted … on the sofa on Christmas Day because we got her up so early Christmas morning. So, then my dad took us tobogganing at the big sandpit off of Robin Street by the power lines. Or skating on the creek behind the houses on Madison to give her a break before the big meal prep began.”
Ah, food! Special desserts made only for the Yuletide, the family meal and stuffing oneself into a coma (that darn turkey) is probably the longest lasting tradition of Christmas, even pre-dating Santa and the copious amounts of gift-giving that are facets of modern Christmas.
Jenn Bouyoukos has fond memories of her family’s Christmas parties at the Venetian Room at Cassio’s Hotel “with probably close to 150 of us at its peak. Nick Dellelce played Santa. So many musicians in our family would play piano, guitar, gutbucket, harp. We dressed up and ate homemade ‘worm’ soup (passatelli) and the men would cook the meat and serve it. This went on for years and years and was the best party of Christmas no question.”
Suzan Marcon wrote that “visiting Family was always a priority” and when Christmas dinner at her grandparents came around, “taking turns eating supper (was necessary) as there wasn’t enough room,” with so many children and adults in such a small house. Then, after dinner, with her uncle breaking out his guitar and banjo, “there (would be) singing and dancing every Christmas” until late into the evening.
(Ok, mom, I included one of your memories … can I have my Christmas present now?)
Local business owner Tammy Maki “was raised in a Finnish family, and celebrated the night before Christmas. Pulla making was big around Christmas and massive family get togethers … It just isn’t the season without it!”
Food preparation, like Judy Courtemanche’s candle above, can also bring about memories of family lost to time. As Tammy Maki continued, “My daughter, Kirsten, would be bugging me to make hers (the pulla) with cinnamon and apples. She passed away this year, but I’ll be making a batch of cinnamon apple pulla to remember her by.”
A few of our readers’ best memories of the season rest in the sights and sounds (and smells) around the city as Christmastime progressed. Maki remains nostalgic for “the beautiful lights in the downtown core. I’m 59, so when I was young it was so gorgeous!”
She paints a wonderful picture of a bygone era, echoing the memories of others.
“Silverman’s was pretty awesome. There were always so many people everywhere. The downtown was bustling. Christmas music and lights everywhere and the smell of Dino’s popcorn.”
Of course, Christmas shopping was always in the cards too as her and her dad “would spend hours in Canadian Tire downtown, too. So much time my mom used to get mad … I so loved the holidays.”
A couple of our readers recalled the Christmas Eve tradition of the Midnight Mass, but also the decidedly non-Christmassy feeling they endured on the way to church.
Carole Larrett remembers the Christmas of 1959, when “there was no snow (making it feel) funny going to Midnight Mass in shoes instead of snow boots.”
Then, 20 years later, Dan Oeschler went through a similar situation that turned into a Christmas miracle. “I can remember walking to the midnight mass at St. Andrew's with my parents,” he wrote, “and it was drizzling outside and we had no snow yet. Come out from mass and it was a winter wonderland with all the snow falling. Very memorable.”
The jolly man in red stands out in the minds of many as being among some of their earliest memories of Christmas. Every year on Christmas Eve, your author’s family would get together for the evening. And, just as the night was winding down, the strains of Gene Autry signing “Here Comes Santa Claus” would hit and there came Santa Claus in all of his ho-ho-ho-ing glory to hand out a Christmas present to each of the children.
Linda Lachance remembers “lining up in Eaton's to see Santa, and posting letters to Santa at the big mailbox outside Woolworths. Then we'd wait impatiently to get a letter back from Santa!” Cheryl Lowry recalls “visiting Santa at the CKSO studio and being on television” in the 1950s.
At this time of year, the need to help the less fortunate have a great Christmas has been manifested for the last 75 years through the Lions Club’s annual Children’s Christmas Telethon, which occurred earlier this month (and for many years has included a visit from yours truly’s Santa mentioned above).
The telethon itself has become a tradition with many families who undertake a round of carolling to raise donation money and others who take the telethon as the official start to the Christmas season, where they put up their tree while enjoying the day’s entertainment.
A couple of our readers also had memories of helping the less fortunate at Christmas.
Cliff Price remembers “going with my dad in 1958 to deliver gifts for the children in the orphanage.” It was something that he would never forget, “as I never realized how many orphans there were (since) I was 14 at the time.” Brenda Hoskins remembers “helping my dad and Uncle Primo (of Venturi’s Red & White) do big baskets for the needy in Coniston.”
And, finally, Vicki Thurlow wrote in to us to regale us with a memory of her uncle, Andy Kirk, who was known as “the Christmas tree guy.”
As she wrote, “One year a local doctor had moved into a new home that had a special place just for a Christmas tree. The ceiling was higher in that part of the room. Uncle Andy delivered the tree, the day before Christmas, as (their) family tradition was to decorate it on Christmas Eve.
“Late afternoon, he gets a call from the family, looking for a taller tree than he had delivered. He had no taller tree. So, he drove out to his farm in Wahnapitae, cut down and delivered a taller tree at about 8 p.m. He then showed up at our apartment, where we had our tree lit up. He came in with a mini pine tree and insisted that I decorate it and put it in my two-year old’s bedroom.
“We set it up, plugged it in and then Uncle Andy woke him up to see his reaction! The squeals of delight satisfied Uncle Andy and he could finally go home and let Santa take over for the night.”
Well, dear readers, thank you to everyone who shared their wonderful memories and photos of the Christmas season. Now, I drop the needle back down (or load Spotify, if that’s your thing) on that Nat King Cole Christmas classic, and leave you, the kids from one to 92, with this simple phrase that’s been said many times and many ways: “Merry Christmas to you.”
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
