Lögberg-Heimskringla - 17.12.1993, Qupperneq 8

8 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 17. desember 1993
A Child’s Prairie
Christmas Cont'd. from p. 1
Big chores done, I was
available to scrape bowls,
to lick spoons, to crack
nuts, to race up arid down the
basement stairs to fetch forgot-
ten cupfuls of this and that.
Finally, with a fistful of
slightly burned or broken
cookies and a glass of milk, I
could slip away and curl up in
my favourite spot, on a bed-
room box under the hall win-
dow where, lost in a book from
the endless supply in our
house or deep into the Eaton’s
catalogue. I would be faintly
aware of the good smells teas-
ing their way upstairs, and
content, I would lean my head
against the cold pane and drift
off across the slough where the
muskrats had built their winter
homes, and away, drcaming
the dreams that were a real
and valuable part of the
enchantcd world of a prairie
childhood.
Christmas Evc supper was
thc prelude to days of rich
feasting - cold meats, bread
and buttcr, thrce kinds of jelly,
rcd and grccn and gold, mince
pies and apple pics, thrcc
kinds of salad, nuts to crack
and bought chocolates for
al'tcr, big bowls of polished
apples and mandarin oranges
in their little green papcr wrap-
pings, the cookies, finally
available for eat-
ing, and divinity
fudge.
We opened
our gifts Christ-
mas Eve, of
course, being
Icelandic, be-
cause Mom said,
the Christ Child
was born on
Christmas Eve.
There’d always
be one gift be-
fore supper, a
little trinket, a
ball, some bal-
loons or a book,
a good, homey
practical way to
calm down the
frantic excite-
ment of the lit-
tlest angels.
We hung our
stocking on the
bannister railing
just before we
crept off to bcd
and, in the early
predawn hours,
we crept down
for them and
slipped back
into bed to keep
warm, engaging
in a wondrous
orgy of apples
and oranges,
gum drops and
c h o c o I a t e
creams, while
we explored the
more permanent
contents of our
stockings, sim-
ple pleasures all because in our
house “real” presents came
from “real” people though
Santa was, in his own way,
real, the embodiment of loving
spirit, of unselfish giving, of
fairies and magic, all carefully
monitored by CBC Radio on
the evening news, his south-
ward joumey tracked by radar
so that reports had to be taken
seriously.
Although Christmas really
happened on the eve,
Christmas moming had a
special significance. We didn’t
have to eat oatmeal porridge
for breakfast.
The focus of the day was
the dinner; roast chicken, gold-
en brown, crisp, stuffcd with
sage and savory, moist, round-
ed up beside the potatoes and
gravy, the turnips and carrots,
the homemade pickles, the
cranberry sauce, the coleslaw
madc from one of the cabbages
that hung in waiting from thc
cellar rafters, Waldorf salad,
and tomatoes picked from the
plants that hung upside down
beside the cabbages. At the
end, there was mincemeat pie
and Christmas cake and vínar-
terta, and just about the
time we got all the dish-
es washed the men
would rise from what
ever chair they had fall-
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en into, in a food-logged stu-
por, and they’d enquirc polite-
ly as to whether there was any-
thing in the house to eat, and
we’d start all over again.
Christmas memories are
selective, so that I re-
member the excitement
but not the gifts, except for a
very few - a white stuffed
bunny from Kris which was
special because he was home
to deliver it in person, tiny
plastic fumiture and an orange
box for a house and tiny peo-
ple to live in it, and endless
hours of arranging and rear-
ranging their lives, the year I
got 13 books and lived for two
weeks on the bedroom box
with my pockets stuffed with
apples and my head stuffed
with dreams, a real box of real
chocolates, the ultimate
“grown up” present from Aunt
Mary Finnbogason, and the
yearly box of nativity animal
cookies from Mary, the neigh-
bour down the
road.
We didn’t
go to church
at Christmas
while we lived
on the farm,
but CBC radio
provided the
carols, and
thc scripture
rcadings, and
became a sort of substitute, so
that Christmas was a very
sacred time although church
wasn’t a part of the ritual until
we moved to Foam Lake when
I was 12.
Christmas was form
and ritual, tradition
carefully saved and
savoured, part of the
magic coming from the
anticipation of the
known, the familiar, the
loved, the very same-
ness of the holiday sea-
sons bringing them all
together so that each
one was richer for the
one that had passed.
told Mom one time,
much later, that, fol-
lowing family tradi-
tion closely, my family’s
special holiday bird was
roasted chicken, not
turkey, which, in our
opinion, is a much ovcr-
rated fowl.
“But Joan,” Mom said, “I
only served chicken because
we were too poor to buy a
turkey.”
Of such moments are the
finest family legends made.
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