Paige Desmond
Jessica George
Every family has their own holiday traditions, or experiences from past holidays which stick out in their minds.
Christmas has become highly-commercialized, but for a few local seniors having tea and coffee last week at the Sister Kennedy Centre here, the simpler times definitely stick out.
“It was togetherness, it was being together. You don’t get that anymore,” Nick Wihnan replied when asked about his favourite Christmas memory.
“Anything we got for Christmas was knitted,” the 80 year-old added.
For Wihnan, Christmas doesn’t have the same effect anymore as too many people focus on the commercial aspects of the holiday. He remembers a simple time when the little things made a big impact.
“Everybody, a lot of people, had nothing,” he recalled, adding siblings and even neighbourhood children often would share their gifts with each other so everyone could enjoy the holiday.
“It was a day of joy and a day of understanding everybody,” Wihnan stressed. “It’s so important for people nowadays to know that.”
Wihnan’s most memorable gifts were felt shoes, which he might have received every few years, as well as a pair of skates he has kept to this day.
“There was very seldom anything bought. Our gifts those days were a loaf of bread,” he laughed.
“It’s too bad it’s not the way it was,” he reminisced, longingly. “I think the world would be more livable.”
For Roberta Jeffrey, 69, attending church with her mother and sister sticks out from Christmases past.
“We went to mass and we’d come home and have a piece of meat pie,” she recalled. “And then we’d open one present.
“It was really nice,” she smiled.
“I remember getting up in the middle of the night for Christmas mass,” said Edwina Frenette, 82. “I remember when we walked, you could hear the crunching of the snow.”
Then after midnight mass, she and her family would go to her grandmother’s. While the adults ate, the children would go in the parlour and learn different dances.
“We wouldn’t end up leaving until three o’clock in the morning,” Frenette smiled.
Sometimes the moments that stand out the most are those rooted in tradition. Such is the case for Eva Fleurie, who will turn 95 on Christmas Eve.
The Ukrainian Christmas tradition had her and her family lay hay on the table underneath the tablecloth and 12 dishes of traditional foods laid out on top.
“The food was in memory of the 12 apostles . . . and the hay symbolized the manger,” she explained.
They would sing Ukrainian carols and sometimes they would visit family and dress up as Mary and Joseph and the shepherd, with adults dictating how they should act and what they should say to properly represent the characters.
Fleurie also remembered the Christmas tree was never put up until Christmas Eve. Decorating the tree with candles, Fleurie joked that no one’s house ever burned down.
“We were just more careful then, I guess,” she reasoned.
