Christmas Every Day

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 tractor to 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.

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.