By Marlene Campbell
IN 1948, I was an eight-year-old girl who anticipated Christmas with a passion unequalled for any other holiday. I’d heard adults say that Christmas was for children and heartily agreed. Not that I contemplated why it wasn’t for adults. But that year’s festive season left a lasting impression on my young soul.
We’d survived the war years. Cash and supplies became more plentiful, and new things arrived. That summer, Father had joined a trend among the local farmers by purchasing both a tractor and a car. At the dinner table, he marveled to Mother about his increased productivity and how quickly they could scoot into town to do errands.
But unlike other farmers, he refused to sell the horses. As he explained to Mother, the car would spend much of the winter snowed in at the end of the lane, sometimes waiting days for a plow to appear after each storm. We couldn’t risk lacking reliable transport.
Mother nodded, so Father didn’t need to express his love and loyalty to our Purcheon horses, Tim and Spark. She knew how he enjoyed harnessing one or the other to a sleigh and driving his children to school or to a pond-hockey game. She understood his devotion to brushing their sleek coats while chatting to them about produce prices and world events.
In my country home, Christmas preparations started early. Actually, they began the previous spring when Mother bought roosters and made them into capons to sell before Christmas. Early orders for the delicious birds arrived by October. Each spring, Father also let Mother select a beef calf to be raised as a means to finance our Christmas.
On autumn evenings, Mother sat at the kitchen table with the Eaton’s catalogue and an order form. That’s when we children advocated our wishes for Christmas morning.
As I prepared for school on an early-December morning, Mother handed me her order form and money wrapped in cloth to place in the mailbox at the end of the lane. The mailman would ensure that both reached Eaton’s. Later, he’d deliver the resulting parcel.
Several days later, Mother gave me a new assignment. Instead of taking an after-school shortcut across the fields, I was to follow the road, collect our mail from the box and bring it straight to the house. Even if Father watered cattle in the barnyard, I was to ignore him and rush to the house. This seemed odd. Usually, Father collected the mail before coming to supper, but knowing it was the Santa season, I didn’t argue.
In the following days, Mother’s steps quickened more than usual. Aromas of fruitcakes, cranberry loaves, raisin-butter tarts and meat pies greeted us after school. Mother forever warned Father not to over-stoke the wood range and burn any of her creations.
One morning, Mother told me that Santa had awakened her from a deep sleep the previous night to say that Mrs Santa had a heavy workload. He’d asked Mother to help by knitting me a sweater. He even delivered the yarn and pattern. As a good Christian woman, Mother had consented. Unwilling to risk a miscue, she measured me up then and there.
How exciting! The sweater would button up the front and have a pattern of walking bears. I never fretted about the lost element of surprise. After all, I knew the details of several other gifts too. Aunt Katherine was making me a hooked mat to stand on while dressing on cold, winter mornings. Her pattern had Poppa, Momma and Baby Bear holding steaming bowls of porridge. The previous Christmas, Santa had left me a doll so this time I expected him to bring the clothing. If the doll’s dress matched the material in one of my own, then obviously Mrs Claus and Mother both shopped at the Holman’s department store in Summerside.
Within days, I grew discouraged when picking up the mail. It held little more than the newspaper. For that, I needed to walk an extra half-mile home.
Then one day I spotted a parcel wedged into a snowbank by the mailbox. I couldn’t have been more excited if Santa himself had appeared.
As I picked up the box and ran up the lane, something inside rattled slightly. I saw Father herding cattle to the water trough, but dutifully avoided him.
Mother took the box from me and marched upstairs, allowing no one to view its contents. For the next few days, we noticed her smiling contently at peculiar times.
To me, it seemed like Christmas Eve might never arrive. But eventually, it did.
After church, as we prepared Santa’s lunch, I noticed Mother place a parcel under the tree. Inexplicably, I assumed it had to be a special gift for me. When scurrying off to bed, I willed the morning to come quickly.
Christmas Day dawned clear and brilliant, white with fresh snow. Father and my brothers hurried through the barn chores while I helped Mother with breakfast. But first, she prepared a large chicken that she’d reserved from her sales and a goose given by a neighbor. She stuffed the cavities full of dressing, coated their skins with rich farm-butter and popped them into the hot oven. Soon the odor of roasting fowl filled the house.
The moment the breakfast dishes were cleared, we gathered at the Christmas tree, and Mother handed out the gifts. Brown paper and a pink ribbon concealed Santa’s sweater. My eager hands tore it open, and I squealed in delight at the finished product. No doubt, Mrs Santa would be delighted with Mother’s work. Happily, I mused that Mrs Santa herself must have made my doll’s clothes.
After my brothers had opened their gifts -- checkers, mittens, socks and PJs -- the one mysterious parcel remained under the tree. Smiling mischieviously, Mother handed it to -- my Father.
Looking surprised, he took it from her outstretched hand. “Merry Christmas, Bill,” she whispered. They traded smiles.
Speechless, we children watched as Father gently turned the present over and over. Then he removed the ribbon holding the wrapping paper in place.
Intently, I studied Father’s face as he stripped away the paper and revealed four beautiful, brass horse-bells mounted on polished leather. A mixture of shock, delight, wonder and pure love filled his eyes as he looked from the bells to Mother and back again.
“Th-thanks,” he said in a shaky voice.
At that moment, I understood the beauty of giving in love and the art of receiving with gratitude.
Those bells brought years of joy to Father. They hung in my parents’ kitchen long after Spark had stopped making music with them when hauling the blue sleigh.
To me, they symbolized the gift of Christmas itself.
When Father died, he left me his precious bells. Each time I hear them, I’m again eight years old, once more a witness of love. The sound always makes me give a prayer of thanks.
ARCHIVES
|
