Holiday Gifts & Gift Baskets Blog

Archive for January, 2008

Back in his palace at Jerusalem the cruel King Herod waited. Every day he looked for the three wise men to return from Bethlehem.

"They will find that baby and will tell me where he is," the jealous man thought. "I can soon get rid of a little baby boy."

Mary and Joseph did not know of this danger to the baby. They were very happy.

Joseph had paid the taxes. Mary was rested. She had her lovely baby.

She had strange and wonderful things to remember, too. She thought of the shepherds who had come in and knelt by the manger.

She remembered the grave and richly dressed wise men with their fine new baby gifts.

She held the baby close in her arms and smiled lovingly at the tiny boy.

"You have a cradle waiting for you at home, my baby," she whispered as she laid him back in the manger. "It is a beautiful wooden baby cradle, made of the finest wood, carved and polished. Your kind father, Joseph, made it for you."

Joseph and Mary looked again at the rich gifts which the wise men had brought.

"These are very unique gifts for a small baby," said the mother. "They will make our home look very rich!"

Joseph and Mary felt happy as they lay down to sleep in the stable.

Hardly had Joseph gone to sleep before something wakened him.

He sat up, opening his eyes.

"Who called me?" he asked. He saw nobody.

"Did somebody call me?" he asked.

Mary slept on quietly. She had not called him.

There seemed to be a great brightness in the room. From this brightness Joseph seemed to hear a voice speaking to him.

"Arise at once, Joseph," said the voice.

"Now. Tonight. This very minute," said the voice. "King Herod is hunting this baby. He wishes to kill him. But fear not. Only do as you are told. The Lord is with you!"

The brightness disappeared. Again it was only a dark night in a gloomy stable.

Joseph wakened Mary.

"Come, dear wife. We are going now!" "Now, at night?" said Mary, somewhat surprised. But she did not complain.

Quickly she climbed to the back of their faithful small donkey. She sat there, holding the baby in her arms.

Softly, silently, without a word Joseph led the donkey from the stable. The small animal walked softly. He made no sound. Nobody saw the family leaving town.

"Has anybody seen a young baby here?" asked Herod's messengers. "We are seeking a new born baby. We have gifts for him."

"There were some people here, a man and a woman looking for a room," said the innkeeper. "I told them they might sleep in the stable."

The messengers rushed out to the stable. They looked all around. There was no baby in the manger. The messengers were angry and also afraid. How could they face King Herod?

"Where is the baby who slept in this manger?" they shouted to anyone who might hear.

But the cows and the sheep only looked quietly at the angry soldiers. A quiet donkey raised one ear and then went on eating hay. The doves over the doorway cooed gently but told nothing.

The animals could not talk to these angry men. They could not tell them about the beautiful little baby and his mother who had sung to him and the kind man who had sat in the stable.

They could not tell of the wonderful visitors, and the bright star, the strange brightness and the sound of singing. They kept the secret of the wonderful night. The soldiers galloped back to Herod's palace.

"It is not true. There is no baby there," they told the king.

How our customs, our beliefs, our tradition have changed over the past seventy-five years! Take Christmas for example; recall the Christmas of 1910.

You know also that your brothers as well as your father have slaughtered a young calf and a sheep or two so you will have some fresh for the festive season. Your mother and older sisters have been busy for weeks now, washing down, putting up new curtains, preserving jams and other good things for the holidays.

Everyone is home for Christmas dinner which is baked fowl with dressing, potatoes, turnip, cabbage, carrot and gravy. There's sweet bread made with molasses and raisins. For dessert there is baked apple jam and lots of scalded cream, plenty of fresh butter, all washed down with cups of hot tea.

You and your brothers and father now begin to make your rounds.

You go from house to house, singing, dancing, dressing up as the darbies, frightening children and little old ladies with your masks and the hobby-horse, and you have a wonderful time chasing, finding and blackening your friends, particularly the ones who showed any sign of fear of the darbies.

Of course it wouldn't be Christmas at all without a spree or two. You all meet at Christie's house. The men have brought the rum and stolen a few hens or brought along a couple of braces of rabbit from home. The women have brought the vegetables and the fancy stuff. While the meal is cooking you are having a breaker-down on the kitchen floor to the accompaniment of Alf's fiddle and Christie's accordion.

What wonderful times b'y! You'd know that anyone who'd visited your home when you were gone was always treated well. The men were given a drink of rum, or punch if they preferred, and the women were treated to a sample of cake and ginger wine. Any children who came were given a big cookie cake or a slice of molasses bread.

Your sisters were often taken for sweet sleigh rides. Bundled in fur rugs, a hot brick placed at their feet, they thrilled to the excitement of the sleigh bells and fast rides over the frozen ground to a neighbor's house or the home of an admirer.

Remember your youngest sister, lad. She was a wee lass of six at that time. How her bright blue eyes sparkled with that little rag doll that Santa left in her long woollen stocking behind the stove.

How pretty she looked, bedecked in her made-over coat, woollen mittens, cap, muffler and long stockings as she sat beside your mother and father as they left on the afternoon of Christmas Day to take her to see Grandma and Grandpa. When your Mother and Father came back that night she looked like the littlest angel, asleep between them.

Can we not revive some of the past? Are we not letting too much slip by, and thus go beyond our reach? I think the past holds much to enrich our present and strengthen our future. There are some things we must cling to.

The height of celebration and enjoyment was reached at Christmas when the previous summer's fishery turned out to be a good one. Those who could afford it in the city and outports laid in provisions enough for the whole winter...

 

Poole guns were loaded with three fingers of powder and ten or twelve volleys fired off. The fusillade continued for an hour, awakening the echoes on the hills and announcing to all that the holy and festive season was at hand.

 

Jamaica", introduced by the vernacular prelude "I mind one time". Those who had quarreled any time during the year made up their differences seasoned the good feeling and shook hands. The host made it a special point to see to this. A hospitable, happy, simple people! Happy and contented in spite of the fact that in those Arcadian days there were no radios, no motor cars and no movies. A neighbor was a neighbor, not only in word but in deed. The poor, the sick and the needy were visited and helped, and the place of the modem "dole" was taken by genuine charitable help through the medium of those who were well off. The poor widows had their' 'haul of wood" and in cases that I know the Incumbent of the parish fattened a cow specially to kill at Christmas, and then killed it and sent a dinner roast to every poor family for Christmas.

 The same immigrant descendants were in those years in S1, John's. Naturally they were more sophisticated. Though they lost the mummers in the middle of the last century, with their more ample means they made up for it at Christmas with arches, brass bands, processions, hunting the wren, rink skating, sleigh rides to the Inns on Topsail Road and local theatricals. Stores and shops were well decorated, especially on Water Street, with green fir and spruce, real dogberries, evergreen, and some in the imported holly and mistletoe. They had the big advantage over the outports however in the cake and poultry raffles at Lash's, Touisaint's, Chauncey & Heath's, and John Foran's. They got their quarters of beef, turkey, geese and chicken by the shipload from the P.E.I. and

Nova Scotia vessels arriving a few days before Christmas at Wood & Clift's wharf. The prices would be unbelievable today. The poorest could afford to get fresh beef at four pence and three pence a pound by the quarter, geese three shillings and turkeys five shillings; corresponding low prices for potatoes, turnips, etc. Wages and a day's pay were about a third of what they are today, but the price of most edible commodities were less than a third, and the people were contented and happy.

 

Two special seasons are, however, devoted in the large towns to merry meetings - Christmas and the New Year. At St. John's on St. Stephen's Day, little boys go about from door to door with a green bush from the spruce trees decorated with ribands and paper (in which, if they can get one, is a little bird, to represent the wren) and repeat the following verse, or something of the same kind:- The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, Was caught on St. Stephen's Day in the firs, Although he is little, his honor is great; So rise up, kind madam, and give us a treat. Up with the kettle, and down with the pan;

A penny, or two-pence, to bury the wren.

 Your pocket full of money, and your cellar full of beer,

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

 This ancient custom as well as that of the mummers, who assemble on New Year's Day is, of course, derived from home, the former from Ireland, probably, the latter from the West of England.

The mummers prepare, before the New Year, dresses of all possible shapes and hues, most of which are something like that of the harlequin and the clown in pantomimes, but the general color is white, with sundry bedaubments of tinsel and paint. A huge paper cocked hat is one favorite headpiece, and everyone among the gentlemen, excepting the captain or leader and his two or three assistants are masked. The ladies are represented by young fishermen, who are painted, but not masked. Some of the masks are very grotesque, and the fools or clowns are furnished with thongs and bladders, with which they belabor the exterior mob. Much ingenuity is observable in the style of the cocked hats, which are surmounted with all sorts of things, feathers in profusion, paper models of ships, etc.

They go to the Government House first, and then round to the inhabitants; and it has been customary to make the captain a present of money for a ball, if it may be so styled, which is given at the end of the carnival.

Wellington. They are both armed with swords and a mock fight goes on all the while, till one is supposed to be slain and the doctor is called in to bring him to life again.

I cannot recollect the doggerel used but, as it is a relic of the days of the Abbot of Unreason and the Lord of Misrule, it is interesting and harmless. I never remember to have seen anything in England resembling it (though, to be sure, I have not been much in my native country since my boyhood) excepting the now very rare Morris dancers, whom I once saw in perfection near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, when a boy ...

The custom of decorating the churches and houses with holiday evergreen, at Christmas, prevails here also... 

Well boys, with Christmas just a few gunshots ahead, I figger as hov this is a good time to forget all about our troubles over the cull and price of fish and all the other tormenting things in a fisherman's life and talk about something pleasant that we all believe in - Christmas.

 But it's not enough to say that we folks in Pigeon Inlet believe in the spirit of Christmas, Santa Claus, St. Nick, or whatever you mind to call it. Like Skipper Joe Irwin said to me the other day: "Mose," he said. "the spirit of Christmas is like the Sou'west wind. We don't haw to believe in it, because we know it's there. It's true we don't actually see the Christmas spirit or Santa Claus (as the youngsters call him) but neither do we see the Sou'west wind. But we know when the Sou'wester is there because we can feel it and we can see the good things it brings us - smooth water for catching fish and good dry weather for rnakin' it. Same with Christmas spirit. You don't see it, but you feel it blowing around like a Sou'west breeze and above all you see the good effects of it."

 Skipper Joe is right. How else can you account for the things goiri' on right here in Pigeon Inlet while getting ready for Christmas Day and the days coming right after it.

Look at the schoolboys after school last week. Straight in over the hills every evening with their fathers' catamarans and haulin' out loads of boughs - even Jethro Noddy's boys. I saw young Shem Noddy last Thursday evening comin' out with a load that even I'd have found it hard to handle - and I can pull on a haulin' rope with the next man.

"Boughs to decorate the church, Uncle Mose," he bawled out to me as I jumped out of the path. I don't s'pose the Noddys went to church ten times last year. But there you are! 'Tis Christmas.

Then up in the Women's Association Room every night what do you find? All the young fellows and maidens, instead of out courtin' like they generally do, they're sitting around those same boughs, breaking off small limbs and tying them in wreaths, to twine around the church pillars and the windows and the chancel and the font and everywhere - then some more wreaths to decorate the school for the big Christmas Tree and school concert on St. Stephen's Night. Oh, I can tell you our church and our school, too, are going to look something wonderful by Christmas Eve and we're all goin' to be proud of it because we all helped to do it.

Then again, look at Martin Prior. Martin has got a big family and had a poor fishery last year. He's hardly got a cent to bless himself with. But look what he's doin'. Martin used to be a saw-filer with the paper company for years before he got turned down for blood pressure. Now he's the best skate sharpener in Pigeon Inlet and every week before Christmas, he sharpens up all the youngsters' skates - won't charge a cent, neither. Says he can't give much money for Christmas baskets but there's something he can give. Luke Walcott is repairin' all the youngsters' broken slides - another Christmas present. Then there's Pete Briggs ... but I could go on for an hour.

Speakin' of Christmas, Grampa Walcott says we're all alike. When we're very young we believe in Santa Claus. Then we listen to a lot of nonsense from bigger youngsters who ought to know better and for a few years we don't believe in Santa Claus. Then we get some sense of our own and we find out for sure that he's there - just like the Sou' west wind.

"But Grampa," said I, night before last. "When you listen to all the stuff over the radio about only so many more shoppin' days left and how you'd better drop everything and hurry down to this or that shop right away, doesn't it make you wonder sometimes if Christmas isn't just a way to get people to spend their bit of money?"

 

St. John's come two weeks ago and there'll be no more boats before Christmas. Besides, there's nowhere to hurry except down to Levi Bartle's ... and Levi's place won't run away. There's lots of stuff down to Levi's to do till next May, let alone next week."

"But people do spend a lot of money around Christmas," I said. "Perhaps they do," agreed Grampa, "but here in Pigeon Inlet it's mostly other things they spend. Things like friendliness and helpfulness, things that the more of 'em you spend the more you've got left. Take Sophy, for instance."

"Yes," said I. "What about Aunt Sophy?"

"Sophy's just like her mother used to be when she was in her prime," said Grampa. "Now there's a girl that believes in Christmas, and gets more out of it than anybody I know. Look at her almost every night since Advent come in, training the choir to sing Christmas carols. Then up there supervisin' the decorations for the church and school - then helpin' the teachers get the Christmas tree and the concert ready for St. Stephen's Night - then seein' that the Santa Claus suit is in order for whoever gives the holiday presents off the tree - And, Mose."

"Yes, Grampa Walcott," said I.

"Sophy don't spend much money at all this. She's never got much to spend. But she spends a lot of herself. And it don't leave her any the poorer."

 

I. "About Aunt Sophy..." "Yes, Mose," said he. "What about it?" "Our quarrel," said I.

"Isn't that patched up yet?" said he. "No," said I.

"Well, Mose," said he. "With Soph feeling the way about Christmas that she feels, I should say if you can't patch it up during Christmas, there's no hope for you to patch it up at all."

"But how?" said I.

"How?" said he. "I dunno. But drop in again tomorrow and we'll try and figger out a way. I can't bear to think of everybody bein' on the outs with anyone else Christmas time, especially two fine people like you and Soph."