Christmas on the Prairie, Early Days

I have just flown home from Medicine Hat where I spent many enjoyable hours with Uncle Olaf.  We had a wonderful Norwegian style lunch put on by Doris and Ed, where we were served the traditional lutefisk and other delicacies.  We were also treated to a turkey dinner at the lodge where Uncle Olaf resides.
Having had at least 70 Christmas’s in my logbook, there is much to remember, ponder, and for which to be thankful.  Although mainly reminiscing here about my early childhood as a little fellow living with my family on the prairie in Alberta, nothing is as important as celebrating our lives now.  Carpe diem.  Although I have, up to this episode, mentioned grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts and my sister, Kristine, others entered the picture and became part of my existence.  My brother, Graham, arrived in 1952, my wife, Pat, in the early 60’s and then my own children, Laura, Kirsten, Olaf Jr. and Graham, arriving in our family one by one, making each Christmas more and more magical.  Now we also have grandchildren, Shenna and Nissa in New Zealand and Juliette and Erik Olaf here in Ottawa, not to mention our “kids in laws”, Carm, Shawn, Tammy and Carole, to help celebrate Yuletide and bring the magic and innocence of childhood back into the picture.  Only now, Christmas is a bit more lonely as the kids are only here for half of the time as they have their other parents and grandparents to visit.  We are also blessed in having many other relatives and friends here in Canada, Norway and other parts of the globe.  And for this, we give thanks. 

I am now going to go back to earlier times to show you how we celebrated Christmas before we had  modern conveniences such as electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, telephones, etc., but were able to experience the joys and peace of the season with family and friends.

Christmas is a magical time, especially for children, and when you live on a farm or a small community on the prairie, it is also very meaningful to adults as well.  This is a time for celebrating, socializing, baking, preparing traditional fare and visiting with neighbours.  Harvesting is over and there is a bit more time to relax although caring for the farm and the livestock is a full time responsibility that cannot be ignored in any season.

There are many memories of Christmas times passed on the prairie.  Memories of deep snow banks, cold, crisp clear days and nights, northern lights and stars that lit up the snow blanketed countryside with their brilliance, and looking forward to seeing relatives, especially grandparents, while waiting impatiently for Santa Claus.
 
In Bindloss and Buffalo, there was no electrical power so the tree was decorated with, of all things, candles!  There was no such thing as artificial trees that didn’t resemble bottle brushes so Mom or Dad would come through the door dragging a more aesthetic real tree and then setting it up in the living room.  We would hang home made strings of popcorn around the tree and tinsel icicles, that sparkled in the glow of the coal oil lamps, would be placed among the branches.  Maybe there would be a few extremely fragile glass ornaments to hang – many were so delicate that they would break just from handling, leaving shards of sharp glass on the floor.  Then, the little candles would be clipped onto the limbs in strategic locations so as to be quick and easy to light and, more importantly, to extinguish.

After checking that the family cat had not ascended into the branches as he was wont to do, Dad would light the candles one by one but with great haste as this was an extreme fire hazard.  We could only admire the candlelit tree for a few seconds before the candles, wavering in the draught and heating the overhanging needles almost to the point of combustion, had to be extinguished.  Then, we were left with the fragrance of the extinguished candles as they smoked and cooled off.  We kept a pail of water close by just in case the tree or the cat caught fire.  Dad loved that cat, as reflected in the lavish praise he heaped on it while he tried to shoo it out of the room and away from the tree.  Some of the verbiage indicated to me that the poor thing maybe was capable of having kittens even though there were no felines of the opposite gender nearby and that he or she had been “fixed” which should have, in my childish mind, made such happy events possible. 

Speaking of fire, I can still remember the so called fire extinguishers that hung on the wall.  They consisted of a glass bulb filled with colored “extinguisher” fluid and a spring loaded lever that resembled a mouse trap, held back by a thin lead foil.  The theory was that, in the event of a fire in the room, the foil would melt and the lever would smash the bulb and the fire would be doused by whatever chemical was inside.  Thankfully, this apparatus was never tested in any of our homes, but my friend, Harvey’s family was not so fortunate as they lost pretty well everything in a house fire.  Christmas is the saddest time to endure such an event.

Preceding the Big Day there would be the inevitable Christmas concert put on by the local school and most of us children would have some sort of a part in one or other of the pageants.  Alas, in my case, this did not launch me into a lucrative career in acting as I usually was assigned a minor part such as a shepherd tending his sheep whilst the more talented aspiring actors played Mary and Joseph or one of the three wise men or perhaps even a cow or a sheep hanging around the manger at center stage.  The entire town and surrounding farm population would turn out for the festivities to hear us hollering out carols and attempting to play various musical instruments whilst our admiring parents looked on. There were occasional periods where the heating must have failed as I noticed while I peeked through the curtains, some of the adults seemed to have impending frostbitten ears as they would warm them up with their hands clasped to the sides of their heads until the music ceased.  It was especially cold when one of the young virtuosos screeched out a tune on his fiddle sending the dogs outside into fits of howling as they tried to join in the festivities.  Santa would always appear at the end of the dramatic presentations and carolling that would, at last, end, much to our relief, as we were anxious to see what he would bring.  It was strange to us that his voice would be usually be familiar and that some kid’s father, including my own on occasion, would temporarily disappear.  Santa would pass out little gifts to the kids, whose names would be called individually, and then, after gleefully opening the packages and comparing gifts with the other kids, we would head for home, clutching our little souvenirs, and attempt once more to burn the house down  by setting fire to the candles in the tree -  after, again, being certain that the cat was not lurking on a branch and ensuring that exits were not blocked.

One Christmas, in 1949, we drove to Buffalo to spend time with the Skjenna’s on the way into the ‘Hat to be with the Murphy’s.  There was a ferocious winter storm in progress that necessitated shovelling our way through gigantic snow banks as we struggled for the twenty or so miles to the farm.  On numerous occasions, we were unable to make any progress and Dad would have to shovel the snow away and push as Mom gunned the car.  Although, I don’t remember him as being pious or attending church for other than weddings or funerals, I could hear him praying as he pitched the snow over his shoulder.  He seemed to be asking the Almighty to construct some sort of dam to hold the snow back, although that would prove to be impossible.  But despite the vicissitudes of winter driving, and with more worship, we finally made it.   I don’t think that it was our intention to stay at the farm that time, but there was no choice as the roads were basically impassable as the requested dam didn’t seem to function. Grandpa Skjenna was quite a learned  man and thus, the present he had on hand for me was a book by Zane Grey titled “ King of the Royal Mounted and The Ghost Guns of Roaring River.”   I don’t know whether or not you have read any of Zane Grey’s books but his works are literary works of art.  The vocabulary in Ghost Guns is complex and descriptive, making it a difficult read for a young lad, but the story was exciting and compelling especially for a boy whose heroes were the likes of Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry.  I still treasure the book with its yellowing pages and have tried to read it to our kids on several occasions, but it was just too esoteric for their young ears.  I still have to have a dictionary nearby when I read it.

Yuletide in Medicine Hat was different from that in the country.  For one thing, most people had electricity and natural gas (methane - no not that kind) for heating and cooking.  Rudyard Kipling once called Medicine Hat “the city with all hell for a basement!” in tribute to the abundance of this resource.  Even the street lamps were gas burning and were never extinguished except, perhaps, to replace a mantle or make some other repair or adjustment.  So the house was generally warmer than its country counterparts.  I don’t remember ever awakening with a frozen nose in the ‘Hat, unlike in Bindloss.

Because of electricity, the tree could be decorated with colored Christmas lights peeking out of silvery metal stars and other Yuletide objects that, not only were pretty, but protected the rapidly drying needles from the heat of the bulbs.  It was interesting to me that the blue bulbs were always the hottest and most difficult to change and it took me several years to figure out why.  These lights were series wired, so if one burned out, the entire string would go dark and my Papa Murphy would be seen and heard, happily digging the strings out from the branches, replacing bulbs one by one and loudly lavishing praises upon the genius of the inventor of these “infernal contraptions” and perhaps wishing he could pitch the entire tree out the door into yet another dam.  Pity the day when more than one bulb burned out at the same time, as the permutations and combinations would present Papa with an almost insurmountable mathematical problem, sort of a Gordian knot type of exercise during which he was frequently heard to pray more vociferously than usual while my grandmother sat red-faced on the couch.  

As a real treat, I was sometimes allowed to sleep under the tree; as much as I could sleep, as excitement would nearly always shoo away the sandman as I waited for Santa to arrive and consume the cookies and milk placed expectantly on the coffee table.  In the morning, there would be gifts under the tree and the stockings were filled with candy canes, chocolates and other goodies, with a mandarin orange always stuck in the toe.

The most important parts of these early Christmas’s would always be the gatherings of family and friends, especially feasting on the vicious attack turkeys that had lurked in the farm yard and that had terrified me many times earlier in the year, knowing that their hordes had been reduced by at least one.

There are more Christmas episodes to come, mostly funny, but always precious, as I look back on them.  Meanwhile, I hope and wish that everyone has a happy and memorable Christmas and health and happiness in the years to come.

“Be forever kind and helpful toward each other as you have always been.  Rather than practice anything like sinful and hateful doings, be forever kind and forgiving towards each other.”
Olaf Skjenna Sr. 1880 – 1957, Last Will and Testament