God bless the master of this house,
Likewise the mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go.
Love and joy come to you ...
Old English Carol
Children, elders and Christmas went together like pancakes, butter and maple syrup. No one was allowed to be lonely. What a privilege it was to live among several generations, and find ways to celebrate love despite our differing creeds.
There were a few pitfalls, easier for us kids to skim over than for some adults. Like Santa Claus. When my parents were very new at the job, thus vulnerable to expert opinions, a particularly vocal Toronto child psychologist was frightening anyone who would listen with dire theories of the dangers of letting children believe in Santa Claus, or, more fearful still - fairies. Fairies can be brushed away like cobwebs, or left in ill-lit corners, seemingly forgotten like religions older than Christianity, where they had pride of place.
Santa Claus, on the other hand, loomed up every Christmas, entering Toronto in triumph on the final float in a big parade. From early November a jolly man in a red suit and a long white beard sat on a throne in the toy department at Eaton’s department store, asking kids what they wanted for Christmas.
We were different, but not so different that my parents dared to deny us the same thrill that all our neighbours and cousins took for granted. We got to watch the Santa Claus parade, and go down and see Santa himself at Eaton’s. My mother must have been very worried because she tried to explain to me on the way back from one such visit that Santa Claus wasn’t real. For years afterward she repeated with relish her story of streetcar passengers around us convulsed with laughter when I chimed out in a penetrating four-year-old voice, “But, Mommy, Santa Claus is so real. I sat on his knee and I felt him!”
By the age of nine I had sorted the wheat from the chaff of the Santa Claus mystique. I remember explaining gently to my mother that she need not worry about my little brothers believing in the Jolly Old Elf, who was just a way of teaching people the spirit of giving and of kindness. “We have it in our house all the time, and especially at Christmas,” I assured her. “That’s what Santa Claus stands for. I’ve come to understand that gradually; it didn’t hurt at all!”
In our own household Christmas was orchestrated with precision and style. There was no severity, just the serene assumption that we would go along with the rules. After we hung up our stockings on Christmas Eve, the living room door was closed, and it stayed closed until five minutes after eight on the following morning.
No question of wildly tearing downstairs in pyjamas, long before parents were awake, the better to open all the presents around the tree, leaving wrappings strewn and ribbons festooned over the floor. Only once, when I was about ten years old, did I see such undisciplined joy when invited to celebrate Christmas Eve and morning in another household; I was not impressed. Their joy was not my idea of fun, either. Where were the gentle rituals attended by all generations? Where were the trays to display each person’s gifts? And where were the cardboard boxes? (One for recyclable wrappings and ribbons, and the other for twisted paper to kindle a fire in the fireplace or furnace.)
On Davisville Avenue, we could not help waking up before first light, all excited, but our parents were ready for that. We were not to get out of bed until called around seven, but there would be plenty to do there, all cosy while Dad shoveled another load of coal into the furnace.
In the grey light of dawn I could feel an unaccustomed weight at the foot of my bed, and glimpse a row of dim shapes that were not there when I said “Goodnight.” Turning on the light, I would find all my dolls in their best bib and tucker, organdie dresses freshly washed and ironed, velvet cloaks mended, face paint renewed. Until I outgrew my dolls and my brothers their stuffed animals, our mother somehow managed to get all this refurbishing done on Christmas Eve in addition to stuffing stockings, wrapping gifts and getting Christmas dinner all ready to cook the next day. When we were older, we would find one present - a game or a book at the end of the bed, to keep us busy until breakfast.
Christmas breakfast, timed for 7:30 sharp, was an exceptional one. No porridge. No healthy whole grain cereal. On that one morning of the year we were allowed our choice from a tiny box in a variety package of what now would be called junk breakfast food. We could revel in frosted flakes and other nutritionally hollow treats.
At five minutes to eight, we telephoned to the aunts next door, who came over wearing their Christmas corsages on their coats. At eight we were all lined up, in front of our closed living room door, in order of our ages, youngest first, with Aunt Anne at the rear, looking over most of our heads. My father opened the door, and we all filed in to find the tree lit up, in a sea of gifts, and stockings hanging from the mantle-piece above a cheerful fire.
We children emptied our stockings first, under the sentimental gaze of our elders. Then each of us, adult and child in turn, opened one present, watched by all the others, and so on around the room. The idea was to make them last all day, off and on, and the next, right up to my birthday, on the 28th.
At ten o’clock all these frivolities were suspended so that we could hear the King, or Queen, give the royal Christmas address that went out around the world. After the royal speech, my father would take us children out for a walk, not too far or too long, but just to get some fresh air and get out of my mother’s way while she finished cooking the dinner. We would want to be back in time to receive our dinner guests.
My mother’s relatives predominated at Christmas dinner. Uncle Matthew and Aunt Ethel, whose children lived away out west, were often honoured guests. Grandma and Aunt Tillie’s eyes twinkled above pursed lips, as we rationed the youngest member of the family to “only three more questions”, one of which was inevitably, “How many more questions do I have left?”
Evenings were spent with the Allen clan and the Oxford Book of Carols. The first such gathering that I remember was up on Hillhurst Boulevard, at Uncle Elliott’s. Aunt Ruby had chosen to dress her tree in blue lights and silver ornaments.
Uncle Berk Chadwick (cousin Mary’s father) had brought a whole battery of rhythm band instruments from Montreal. We children were grouped as an orchestra between the tree and the piano, where Aunt Jessie provided the tune and the harmony. The rest of us supplied the percussion. Each of us had to choose a favourite piece, and then conduct it.
Swing had just burst upon the music scene. While the rest of us crowded around the buffet, the teenaged cousins were down in the basement recreation room, listening to Benny Goodman. Over the ensuing years cousin Bill, our star conductor of the rhythm band, would join our cousin Jim and his friends as they “jammed” in that basement with clarinet, flute and guitar.
Our Christmas evenings alternated over the years between two houses. At my next-door aunts’, Jessie’s thinly sliced molasses and porridge bread melted away, platter after platter, but before the refreshments, we usually managed to persuade her to play her “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, or “Sheep May Safely Graze” - Bach chorales arranged by her for piano.
As our numbers grew, with friends, fiancés and fiancées joining us, we gathered at Uncle Jack and Aunt Helen’s grand and gracious Russell Hill Road home. By this time, the von Trapp Family were promoting family singing all over the Americas, and later, the world, by doing it themselves. Uncle Jack played some of their recorded music before the carol singing. The beautifully blended sound of this famous family inspired some of us to attempt more Bach Christmas chorales, and continue over the years to add more new carols to our repertoire. Somehow, Rudolph never got his red nose in.
The more popular Christmas music, dinned into shoppers’ ears in downtown department stores from early November throughout December can become wearing, especially since the standard repertoire consists of only a dozen or so pieces. Hearing “When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” a zillion times by loud-speaker, incited our family carol singers into inventing a new game: find a new tune.
And so the shepherds invoked at our carol evenings watched their flocks to “The Flight of the Earls”, “The Vicar of Bray” or even “Forest Green”, which is usually an alternative tune for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. The Oxford Book of Carols was not only for Christmas.. We caroled about spring, summer, harvest, Easter and Mothering Sunday.
As the years went by, we had to stretch our time together to fit our expanding repertoire of carols. One year it took us three separate evenings to sing through our all the “must sings”, and allow the various instrumentalists, soloists and smaller part-singing ensembles to perform.
Then, along came the babies, and often half of each couple remained home. The voices that were left grew less robust, ceasing one by one.
Yet, I wonder if they are truly stilled. Perhaps somewhere Uncle Berk is leading little angels in a rhythm band, as he did us one Christmas. Each angel will get to choose a favourite tune, as we did. Then it will have to get up and conduct the band.
Uncle Matthew may very well be guiding newcomers from inside the pearly gates to their long-awaited heavenly homes on divinely designated Golden Streets.
Among Green Pastures there could be a sunlit house with open windows that let out the inimitable sounds that Aunt Jessie could coax out of a piano when she played Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze”. I can hear her still practising for accompaniments. With those rippling fingers as backup, she could have made a gazoo-player feel like an artist, and even play like one.
In some realm of Paradise, where “hearts are brave again, and arms are strong”, I see Uncle Jack on a clear blue lake, making a canoe almost fly over the waves, double-blade paddle flashing in the sunlight.
I can imagine him organizing a flotilla of canoes, rowboats and sailboats for a sunset singsong, as his parents and their friends used to do on the St. Lawrence River. Ringing from rocky shores I can hear again that magnificent baritone voice, leading Jack’s favourite hymn: “For All the Saints” - the Vaughan Williams tune, of course.
