Yesterday, I posted an excerpt of Albert Bryski’s autobiography and his memories of a Canadian prairie Christmas in the mid-20th century. Here is his reminiscence of how his family contrived a Christmas “tree” out of a single spruce branch.
We were poor and couldn’t afford a tree from a commercial lot so, my dad would look at me one day in the last week before Christmas and announce that it was time for us to go and cut our tree from our usual source.
We would take a cross-cut saw, hitch our Allis Chalmers tractorto a two-wheeled trailer, and head for the abandoned home-site that was located on one of the quarters of land my father owned. On this site grew four of the largest spruce trees for miles around. Each stood about fifteen metres tall, and each had a girth of about two metres. My dad would carefully walk around each one beforemaking his selection. I would climb up into the tree with the saw until I reached the branch he had so diligently selected. I would cautiously saw through the branch close to the trunk, then hand the branch down into the hands of my dad. He would lay it gently onto the trailer. This branch was now destined to become our two-dimensional Christmas tree.
At home, my dad would mount the tree in a five-gallon pail of sand soaked with water. The firm sand kept the tree erect, and the moisture in the sand helped keep the tree from drying out too quickly. Our tree had to last until at least January 20th, which was the Feast of the Epiphany on the Julian calendar. Because our family celebrated Christmas on December 25th, as it fell in the Gregorian calendar, our tree had to serve its purpose two weeks longer, because all our Ukrainian neighbours celebrated Christmas on January 7th, the day Christmas occurred in the Julian calendar.
The tree would be placed in the corner of the living room. My mom would carefully turn it so it lost its two-dimensional look and resembled a real tree from the front. Because of its location in the corner, you couldn’t see the flatness of the tree from the sides.
In earlier years my brothers and sister would decorate the tree, When they all went to boarding schools for their high school education, my mom and I were left with the task of “putting up” the Christmas tree. Mom and I would decorate the tree with the few cherished ornaments we had. We would hang tinsel and icicles on it, and we would encircle its branches with a golden garland made of twined tinsel. On the top – or at the end of the branch as it really was – we would place an ornament that somewhat resembled a star. The pail at the bottom would have green or red tissue paper covering it. The top of the pail had to be left uncovered so we could water our “tree” daily.
It didn’t even come close to comparing to the magnificence of our present day Christmas trees, but to me in that distant time and distant place, it was a thing of great beauty, and it made our home a warm and happy place during our Christmas celebrations with family and friends.
Albert Bryski grew up on the Canadian prairies in the middle of the 20th century. His farming family was Polish Catholic on his father’s side and Ukrainian Orthodox on his mother’s. Their Christmas celebrations were largely drawn from his mother’s customs but the family marked it on December 25th rather than on January 7th. In his autobiography Saskatchewan Farm Boy, he recounts the special day.
The most important part of Christmas was the Christmas Eve evening meal called “Holy Supper” in literal translation. According to custom, all members of the family should be home that night for a family reunion. 0ur last Christmas Eve supper on the farm where our whole family of six was present occurred in 1951. The next time we would all be present as one unit had to wait for another thirty years in the city of Winnipeg.
The supper on this special evening differed from other evening meals, having twelve Lenten dishes, as a symbol of the twelve Apostles who gathered at the Last Supper.
In many households the dishes were prepared with a vegetable shortening or cooking oil, omitting all animal fat, milk and milk products, because Christmas is preceded by a period of fast which ends on Christmas Day after midnight or morning church service. The day of the Christmas Eve is a strict fast in commemoration of the hardships endured by the Virgin Mary, Jesus’s blessed mother, en route to Bethlehem. The table was set according to time-honoured tradition. It was the chore of the children to cover the table with a small handful of fine hay in memory of the Christ Child in the manger. Over it my mom spread her very best tablecloth adorned with embroidery that she had lovingly and carefully done by lamplight, seated at the same table through long winter evenings. We would also spread hay on the floor of the kitchen and the living room. My father would scatter walnuts, filberts, pecans, Brazil nuts, almonds, and peanuts, all in the shell, in the areas where we wouldn’t walk on them. After supper, while the older people visited and sang Ukrainian Christmas carols, we young people would search out the nuts, and take turns with the nutcracker to shell them and enjoy this special treat.
Bread (kalach), symbolizing prosperity, was the main table decoration. Three round, braided loaves, which my mom had baked the previous day, were placed one on top of the other with a candle inserted into the top loaf. The bottom loaf was encircled with tiny twigs of evergreen left over from trimming our Christmas tree. Lit candles on both sides of the loaves completed the table decoration. If a member of the family had died during the year, a place was set for that person in the belief that the spirit of the deceased unites with the family on that Holy Night. A lighted candle was always placed in the window as an invitation to any homeless stranger to join the family in celebrating the birth of Christ.
In many Ukrainian households before the evening meal, a spoonful of each dish was mixed into the feed of the domestic animals, because animals were the first creatures to behold the newborn Christ. The first star in the eastern sky announces the time for the beginning of the meal. It was the children’s duty to watch for the star. This “honour” often fell to me. I suspected it was to keep me from underfoot during the meal preparation.
Sheaf of wheat (Didukh) on Ukrainian embroidered cloth as a symbol of Christmas
Each member of the family was dressed in their Sunday best. Ukrainian fathers, in keeping with tradition, would bring a small bundle of wheat, or what was called “did” or “didukh” (grandfather), a symbol of the gathering of the clan. The father would greet everyone formally with traditional salutations, expressing joy that God had favoured us with good health and general well-being. The sheaf was then placed in the corner of the living room and remained there until New Year, when it was taken out and burned.
We would all gather around the table, and begin the meal with the Lord’s prayer in Ukrainian. The first dish was kutya, a preparation of cooked wheat dressed with honey, ground poppy seed, and sometimes chopped nuts. This ritual dish of very ancient origin has survived innumerable generations without losing its importance in the Christmas festivity. My father would raise the first spoonful of kutya, invoking Gods grace, then greet the family with the traditional Ukrainian Christmas greeting, “Khrystos Rodyvsya” (Christ is born), to which we would reply in unison: “Slavimo Yoho!” (Let us glorify Him). Following this, everyone had to partake of the kutya, if only but a spoonful. Occasionally, my uncle would take a spoonful of kutya and carefully fling it at the ceiling. If it stuck that meant a prosperous year. My mom was not crazy about this tradition.
Kutya was followed with a serving of my mom’s most excellent borsch. After which came one or more preparations of fried fish, two kinds of meatless cabbage rolls made of buckwheat and rice. My mom was famous for her cabbage perogies, or vereneki or perohi as we knew them, and her potato-cottage-cheese ones with a fried butter-and-onion sauce. We also had mushrooms, picked and dried the previous summer and fall, cooked in a special gravy on Christmas Eve morning. There was a pickled beet relish along with an eye-watering hot horseradish relish. There were pickled herrings. We ended the meal with more kutya and Christmas pastries.
During the course of the meal, we would toast each other with sweet wine. Usually, my father would raise his glass and say, “Dy Boszhe,” literally “God grant us.” We would have to put down our utensils, grab our glasses, and respond with “Pay zdorovya” or “To your health.” Nowadays you may hear it said as “pave the road” by non-speakers of Ukrainian. After the meal we would sing carols and then the older people would reminisce about the past year. There would be a minimal number of gifts under the tree. Times were rough, and gifts cost money, which was better used for daily survival. Nevertheless, this was one of the the best evenings of the year.
Bridget (1303-73) wasa Swedish mystic and saint, patron of Sweden, founder of the Brigittine Order, and a visionary whose revelations about the Nativity were highly influential in the way it was artistically depicted during the Middle Ages.
After the death of her aristocratic husband Bridget entered a convent and began to have a series of visions, some political, some personal and some of which dealt with the birth of Jesus. Until Bridget’s revelations it was believed that Mary had given birth in the normal fashion but after she announced that it had been revealed to her that Mary had given birth standing in prayer, without pain or effort, medieval art changed its portrayal of the Nativity.
Bridget was canonized in 1391 and her Revelations were printed in 1492.
What an apt name for a Christmas treat. Kringles seem to have originated in medieval Scandinavia as a kind of pretzel made by monks — its name is derived from the Old Norse “kringla” meaning a circle or oval. Brought to the United States by 19th-century Danish immigrants it is an oval delight made with layers of sweet, flaky pastry, filled with fruit, nut, chocolate chips or cream cheese filling and topped with sweet icing. In 2013 it was named the Wisconsin State Pastry.
On New Year’s Day in Romania children practise a custom known as sorcova (derived from the word for 40). They tap their elders lightly with a small branch or stick decorated with artificial flowers (also called a sorcova); the forty light touches correspond to the forty words of the poem they recite while doing so.
The Merry sorcova Long may you live, Long may you flourish, Like apple trees, Like pear trees, In midsummer, Like the rich autumn Overflowing with abundance, Hard as steel Fast as an arrow, For many years to come! Happy New Year!
In Transylvania a similar custom is carried out by children who go door-to-door with a colourful handkerchief on a stick wishing householders well in the following verse:
As many lumps of coal in the hearth, Just as many suitors to the lass; As many stones in the river, Just as many wheat stacks in the field; As many chips from the cutter, Just as many children around the hearth!
Like the feast of Saturnalia that preceded it, Christmas has a long history of social inversion, of the world turned upside down, of the first being last and the last being first. It begins with the bith of God in a lowly manger and the angelic announcement being made to a group of shepherds. It continued after Christmas had become a state holiday and Byzantine court officials indulged in festive cross-dressing and parody of sacred rites. The Feast of the Ass, the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop all had elements of social inversion with the latter designed to reflect the Christian notion that one had to be like a little child to receive the kingdom of Heaven. Inevitably these reversals of the norm were abused leading to irreverence and violence — clergy in Exeter in the fourteenth century, for example, took to throwing mud at each other during Christmas-time services — and they were suppressed by church and governments.
Some echoes of these customs still exist: the Boy Bishop has been revived in some English churches; in Italy children are encouraged to preach at Christmas in front of the Bambino of Ara Coeli; in many armies of the British Commonwealth officers have traditionally served Christmas dinner to the troops. Some have detected social inversion in the Irish hunting of the wren on St. Stephen’s Day — a bird protected all the other days of the year.
Though Egypt is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, millions of Copts celebrate Christmas there every year. The Coptic church is one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world. They note that Jesus spent his infancy in Egypt where the Holy Family fled Herod and claim their spiritual descent from St Mark, one of the original disciples. Copts have survived over 1300 years of Islamic rule by clinging to customs such as their unique Christmas which is far more a religious holiday than a time for conspicuous consumption.
Copts are great fasters — in fact most of the Coptic calendar is occupied by one fast or another. Christmas is preceded by a 43-day fast in which food and drink should be shunned from midnight to 3 p.m. and all meals should be vegetarian or fish. Prayer meetings and special Advent hymns are part of the pre-Christmas ritual as is increased charitable giving.
Because Copts also cling to their ancient calendar, Christmas itself is held on the 29th day of the Egyptian month of Kiakh — January 7 to that part of the world that uses the Gregorian system. The celebration begins on the night of Christmas Eve when families go to church for the midnight service. Qurban bread, marked with the cross and twelve dots representing the apostles, is distributed to those at the mass. Because tensions often exist between Muslims and Copts the Egyptian government and church officials are at pains to press for toleration and communal dialogue at Christmas. This is one reason why state television broadcasts the celebration of the midnight mass from the cathedral in Cairo.
After church people return home to break their fast and open gifts — Christmas Eve is an especially good time to receive new clothes. Christmas food includes a kind of shortbread or sweet biscuit known as kahk. Christmas Day is a holiday for Christians who will spend it visiting friends and relatives and eating.
In Egypt tourists can visit the Virgin’s Tree, an ancient sycamore in Mataria which supposedly sheltered the Holy Family and the Church of Abu Sergah (St Sergius) whose basilica is built on the cave in which the Holy Family is believed to have stayed.
One does not automatically think of Christmas when hearing the phrase “Gilbert & Sullivan” but in fact that celebrated English duo was active in writing words and music for Christmas entertainments in 19th-century London.
Sir W.S. Gilbert wrote pantomimes and short stories. One of the latter, “Maxwell and I” was about two men rushing to finish writing a panto which is to open on Christmas evening.
Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote music for Christmas carols such as “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Upon the Snow-Clad Earth.
The first Gilbert & Sullivan collaboration was Thespis: or The Gods Grown Old, a comic opera for the Christmas season commissioned by the Gaiety Theatre in 1871. The plot of this 2-act opera was the switching of roles of mortals and Roman gods on Olympus. The first performance was over-long, under-rehearsed and awkwardly performed; it ran an hour over time and was hissed by impatient viewers. The libretto has survived but not the score with which Sullivan was reportedly not happy anyway. One of the songs “Climbing over rocky mountain” was used again for The Pirates of Penzance”.
In 1879 a “Christmas version” of HMS Pinafore appeared at the Opera Comique in London with all parts played by children. G&S societies in the USA have staged “A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol” with Dickens story set to Sullivan’s music. Includes such songs as “Three little ghosts for Scrooge are we”.
• 2002 In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, about 30 hard-line Serb nationalists prevented dozens of worshippers from attending an Anglican Christmas Eve church service that was to be held in a Serbian Orthodox chapel.Pro-Moscow Chechen leader murdered.Sayed-Amin Adizov, a construction company chief who also headed the Grozny chapter of the United Russia party, was killed as he rode in his truck Tuesday night, said the official.
• 2004 The worst earthquake in 40 years (and the third-largest ever) creates a huge tidal wave which kills 250,000 in Asia. •
2005 Benedict XVI issues his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, a meditation on human and divine love.
• 2006 James Brown,“The Godfather of Soul”, dies of heart failure; Hiroaki Hidaka, Japanese serial killer, and three other murderers are executed as Japan resumes capital punishment. Ethiopian jets bomb two airports in Somalia in a widening operation against the Islamic Courts Union.
• 2007 Afghanistan expels diplomats from the E.U. and U.N. Turkish forces raid Iraqi Kurdish insurgents. Mighty King Kong, Kenyan reggae musician, d. Riots erupt in Nepal between Pahadi and Madhesi townspeople.
• 2008 German navy releases Somali pirates, despite their attack on an Egyptian vessel. A state of emergency is declared in the Marshall Islands, due to widespread flooding. Harold Pinter, English playwright d. Eartha Kitt, American singer, d.
• 2009 “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempts to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan.
• 2013 In Argentina an attack by a school of palometas, a carnivorous type of piranha, injure 70 people bathing in the Parana River in Rosario. Seven children lose parts of their fingers or toes.
• 2014 At the Vatican, Femen protester and Ukrainian activist Yana Zhdanova shouts “God is woman” when she uncovers her chest in St. Peter’s Square and attempts to steal the Baby Jesus from the nativity scene. She is detained by police and will be released on December 27 with orders to never set foot again in Vatican City State.
• 2017 At the Vatican topless Femen activist Alisa Vinogradova tries to snatch the statue of the baby Jesus from the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square but is stopped by police as she grabs it.
• 2021 The James Webb Space Telescope is successfully launched using the Ariane 3 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
1908 American Jack Johnson defeats Canadian Tommy Burns by TKO in Sydney, Australia to become the first black man to win the heavyweight boxing championship. Johnson stands 6’ ½” and weighs in at 192 lbs. while 5’ 7” Burns tips the scale at 168 lbs.
1910 Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson beats his mistress Etta Terry Duryea to the point of hospitalization. He suspects her of having an affair with his chauffeur. They will reconcile and marry in 1911 but Johnson’s abuse and infidelity, in addition to the hostile reaction to their interracial relationship, will lead Duryea to commit suicide in 1912.
1922 Russian Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin dictates his “Political Testament”. In it he discusses possible successors and harshly criticizes Joseph Stalin.
1927 Police officers of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, fight a gun battle with the Marion County, Sheriff and his deputies. 5 police officers die.
1932 King George V makes the first royal broadcast to the peoples of the British Empire. The 2 ½-minute speech is written by Rudyard Kipling.
“Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled, this Christmas Day, to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire. I take it as a good omen that Wireless should have reached its present perfection at a time when the Empire has been linked in closer union. For it offers us immense possibilities to make that union closer still.
It may be that our future may lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken. For the present, the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders; to regain prosperity without self-seeking, and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or overborne.
My life’s aim has been to serve as I might, towards those ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me has been my abundant reward.
I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness, or infirmity; and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and grandchildren. To all—to each—I wish a Happy Christmas. God Bless You!””
1942 Russians unleash a tank attack on the surrounded German Sixth Army at Stalingrad who are eating the last of their horsemeat.
1954 Johnny Ace, rock star, born John Marshall Alexander Jr., dies of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot.
1966 During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the All-China Red Worker Rebels General Corps closes down the Ministry of Labour in Beijing; in a move termed the “December 25 Great Action” 6,000 Qinghua University students arrive in Beijing to criticize Liu Shaoqi and sing patriotic songs.
1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador is murdered in the midst of saying Mass.
1989 Nicolae Ceausescu and wife Elena are executed after their Communist regime collapses.
1991 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns; the USSR is to be replaced by a Commonwealth of Independent States. It is the last day of the Soviet Union.
