Lögberg-Heimskringla - 17.12.1993, Page 1

í Lögberg ]
eimsknngia
The lcelandic Weekly
Logberg Stofnaö 14. janúar 1888
Heimskringla Stofnaö 9. september 1886
Inside this week:
Prairie Fires........................................2
Christmas as it was..................................3
Gimli worth big bucks................................4
Coast Guard saga unfolds.............................6
Austman wins Canada Medal............................7
Christmas Contest Winners...........................11
All roads lead to Þingvellir........................14
Best way to be in love..............................17
Watch for your next issue of L-H coming Jan. 21, 1994.
A Child’s Prairie Christmas
by Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Childhood Christmas
memories are selective,
so that when I play my
first carol of the season or walk
in the first snowfall, all the
years on the farm swirl together
and I remember a collage of
adults, homecomings, star-
strewn skies as we drove to the
Rose Vale Christmas concert in
the open cutter, tucked up in
the old buffalo robe and, final-
ly, Twelfth Night - though we
didn’t give it a name - when we
searched the house to ensure
all the decorations were
removed to avoid bad luck
while we listened to “Little
Christmas” carols on CBC
radio.
Christmas preparations
began in October, everyone in
the house lining up for a stir for
good luck. Christmas ritual was
very much centered around
luck, good and bad, and no
one talked about the distance
between absolute belief and
interesting tradition. To discuss
it, most probably, would have
been unlucky.
At school, any minute that
wasn’t being spent on
rehearsals for the Christmas
concert was used to decorate
the classroom and to make gifts
for parents - fretsaw plaques,
carefully painted, tie racks
sanded smooth, cigar box jew-
ellery boxes much decorated
with shells and beads, a present
for a mother who owned a
wedding ring and one set of
glass beads “for good.” Such
formal school work as we did
was fitting around the more
important pre-Christmas events
and never burdened us over-
much. We leamed to read from
our play scripts and studied
math by calculating the number
of chalk angels it would takc to
trim the entire top of the black-
board.
The arrival of Eaton’s cata-
logue made the holiday bcgin-
nings official. The Christmas
catalogue was a magic book, a
faiiy story, a fantasy land peo-
pled with little girls in real silk
dresses, the endless dreamy
possibilities much more excit-
ing than, the ultimate reality of
the presents.
Dad would bring home the
tree and the old ornaments
wöuld come out from their tis-
sue paper wrappings, while
Mom would talk, again about
her childhood and trees that
were decorated with real, tiny,
lighted candles.
The Christmas concert sig-
nalled the true beginning of the
festive season. As in most
prairie rural communities. Rose
Vale replaced the church as the
real heart of the community.
The concert was for everyone,
with the adults squeezed into
our little desks and with Santa
arriving at the very end, to pass
out our gifts and the brown
bags of candies and nuts, man-
darin oranges and shiny red
B.C. delicious apples, and the
magic Christmas candies that
had holly and Christmas trees
imbedded in their white cen-
tres.
Mcanwhile around our
house there was an agony of
baking, and activity that inten-
sified by carefully staged
degrees as each of the oldcr
girls arrived home for the holi-
days. Saturdays were fraught
with the fragrance of “to be
saved for Christmas” baking.
At the bottom rung of a lad-
der of older female siblings, my
Christmas memories are fillcd
with thc remembered knowl-
edge that nothing would have
been baked without my encrgy
and dexterity as the provider of
missing ingredients.
“Thc woodbox is almost
empty.” On with the scratchy
blue wool leggings and the blue
coat, a littlc too short in the
sleeves, the cable stitch green
mittens, a heavy scarf and the
snap buckle boots and out to
the wood pile.
“The reservoir’s cmpty.”
Ladle dipper after dipper of
water from the big drinking
water pail into the reservoir on
the side of the stove then strug-
gle back into slightly soggy
snow suit and out for water, to
a hand pump that like as not
demanded priming with a pint
of boiling water before it
would yield up a singlc drop of
fresh.
Continued on page 8