POSTING #51

Christmas Memories from Arthur, Golders Green, and Virgil


Christmas Memories from Arthur

One December when I was about 11 and my brother Chuck was about 8, we decided to go into the woods and cut down a Christmas tree.

In Arthur at that time no one bought a tree----a farmer friend would bring one in as a gift, or invite you to visit his bush and cut your own.

The idea of paying for a Christmas tree would have seemed as bizarre to people in Arthur at the time as the thought that someday people would be paying for bottles of water.

Trees were everywhere.

Carrying our family's rusty hand saw and a hatchet that was battered from chopping ice off the sidewalk, we set out along the railway tracks for Cameron's, a farm about two miles west of Arthur.

Walking along the railway tracks wasn't as dangerous as it might sound. There were only a couple of trains a day and we knew the times by heart.

Reaching the farm, we decided on a nice bushy tree that was 7 or 8 feet tall. We set to felling it (that's bush lingo for 'cutting it down').

One of us would attack it for a time with the blunt hatchet, and then the other would take over with the saw. Then we would try to push or pull it over.

Finally the tree broke free.

Then we dragged the tree home, over the railway ties, and the gravel between the ties.

We felt proud of ourselves. We had done it.

When we got home, a relative who was visiting looked at the tree and started to laugh, "It's all flat on one side!"

Of course, dragging a tree along railway tracks for a couple of miles will do that to a tree---something we hadn't counted on.

Mom quickly moved in, "It's just fine, we'll put that side to the wall."

And dressed with lots of lights and tinsel it looked just great.

Every Christmas, I remember Mom's quick and kind response.

Christmas Memories from Golders Green

In 1964, we DID buy a tree.

Pat and I were living in Golders Green, an area of northwest London that was almost entirely Jewish.

We lived in a house rented from a Jewish couple, with a mezuzah on the frame of the front door (we had only one child at the time and he liked to point at the object and say 'zooza'---one of his first words).

We debated about having a Christmas tree and then decided that if people were offended they would probably say, "Oh, it's just those Canadians. They don't know any better."

In fact, we noticed that people passing on the sidewalk would stop and look at the tree in our front window.

They didn't seem to mind at all.

Judging from their smiles, just the reverse.

ooo

There was a church (Methodist, I think) in Golders Green that according to the sign out front had a pastor named the Reverend Goy.

This was strange because the Yiddish word 'goy' means, of course, a Gentile, or someone not of the Jewish faith or people.

When we told Jewish friends in the States about the Reverend Goy in Golders Green, they didn't believe it.

The husband had his own story about the word 'goy'.

He said that when his solidly Jewish firm decided to hire a non-Jewish person, they joked that it was because they needed a 'whipping goy'.

Christmas Memories from Virgil

We got out our boxes of Christmas tree ornaments this week to decorate our two, three-foot-tall artificial trees---the green one is on a table on the front porch and the white one on a side table in the dining room.

We noticed again how the decorations mirror the different stages of our family.

There are red toilet rolls with pipe cleaner antlers, and sheets of red and green paper with squiggly letters wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

And there are hand-made plaster angels with red ribbons that can hang on the branches of the trees.

Among the decorations are two colourful rope circlets that are used to hold on the traditional Arab headdress, which I brought back from a 1969 trip to Beirut.

I am not sure how they ended up on our Christmas trees, but they did, year after year, slung over a branch.

The branches of the artificial trees are not strong enough to hold a circlet, so we have hung one on the drawer knob of the side table.

Some traditions must be preserved!

Holiday Wishes

So there you have it, Jewish and Arabic memories mingled with our own.

It somehow seems appropriate as we celebrate an event that happened in the Middle East 2009 years ago.

Pat and I would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #52 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.