Taking time to pause and reflect during a holiday can take you down memory lane in so many ways, whether it be a song that whisks you back or a taste or smell while you’re eating Christmas dinner.
For many East Coast seniors, Christmas memories recall a simple time full of handmade holiday cheer, when one or two gifts were opened and people gathered around a Christmas feast.
For Claudette Cramm, the holiday began with midnight mass and culminated with a meat pie.
Her mother would put it in the oven as they left for the church service in their small Acadian town. Their entire house was full of pie aroma by the time they’d returned home.
“My earliest Christmas memory is of driving our car alongside others in horse-drawn sleighs, all heading to mass,” she says. “That, and the smell of my mother’s meat pie.”
A time of tasty treats
In a small Acadian town like Miscouche, P.E.I., meat pie was a central ingredient for any decent Christmas feast. The filling consisted of pork, chicken, and onions and, most important, summer savoury, which Cramm swears is an Acadian invention.
But from there, each pie - referred to in the community as pâté - is unique.
“Everyone has a different recipe for their crust. My mother’s was different from her friends’,” she says. “She made it the same as her mother, and grandmother before her and so on.”
The family would lay out their socks, which Cramm recalls were always full of treats like an orange, hard nuts, gum, and hard candy which, at the age of 74, Cramm still remembers always sticking to her sock.
Christmas was a simple affair, Cramm says, with each person receiving a couple of presents, along with one new box of chocolates that the family would fight over as they looked for their favourites.
“Christmas was a time when you got treats, things you never normally got,” says Cramm. “You’d maybe have a Pot of Gold box of chocolates, and you’d be so excited to open them.”
Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L. resident Ruby Patey, 65, grew up in St. Jacques and also recalls placing her sock out for Santa to fill on Christmas Eve. This, along with a decorated Christmas tree, would surprise her and her siblings on Christmas Day morning.
“We used to get an apple and orange, and one stick of gum, some candies, and grapes. That was a big thing back then,” she says. “Even today, I still try to find the hard candy and licorice I used to get.”
Lasting memories of gifts
The most memorable gift Patey ever received was at the age of eight when her mother gave her a beautiful doll carriage. Since Patey didn’t have a doll, she dressed her cat, named Kitty, up and promenaded her around her street in the doll carriage, much to her neighbours’ amusement.
“Christmas morning was overwhelming that year, and even Mum was crying. She always told that story, even in her final years, because this was the Christmas we remembered the most,” says Patey. “Our family didn’t have a lot of money, so that was special.”
Memorable toys are also the reason that Halifax, N.S. resident Cameille Sherman, 76, will never forget a particular Christmas when she was told to stay out of the basement of her Dartmouth home, where her father was secretly at work building toys to give the kids on Christmas.
“We could hear sawing and drilling, but weren’t allowed to find out what that was. Our father built us things like airplanes and dancing dolls, made from wood,” she says.
For Sydney, N.S. resident Bernie LaRusic, cruising the massive snowdrifts lining his driveway on his Christmas toboggan felt glorious at the age of six. He says these slopes felt like mountains as a kid, and that one close call landed him in a heap of snow.
He remembers it felt like a let down because his sledding had been going well up until then.
“I jumped a drift by a tree into a pile of fresh snow and spent 30 minutes digging myself out,” he laughs.
Combining traditions old and new
As more Christmases pass, old traditions are often combined with new ones.
For Patey, her family’s tradition of guessing who they knew among their visiting mummers and visiting neighbours house to house has shifted to celebrating just with close families.
She remembers the days of sharing a glass of homebrew or rum with mummers, whether they were friends or strangers, fondly.
“You have to phone before going to their house now, but back then, you’d just open up the door and walk in,” she says.
Cameille and her husband, Marvin Sherman, celebrated both Christmas and Hannukah as they sang with their fellow Northwood Players at synagogues, churches, and schools. Though Marvin has since passed, Cameille feels he’s with her when she lights her menorah or plucks at her ukulele.
“It was the greatest thing of life, being married to Marvin. There is no sadness,” she says. “The magic never comes to an end, really. I’m still like a child on Christmas Day.”
LaRusic and his wife Jancia, whose parents moved to Canada from Poland, have adapted Polish traditions into their celebrations. These include sharing a package of wafers among their family at Christmas as communion and setting an extra plate and leaving it empty for a certain special visitor.
“It didn’t take too long to mesh these traditions together,” says LaRusic.
Both are now 85 and celebrate the holiday alongside their children and grandkids, many of whom live close to home.
Cramm, who still lives in Miscouche, also celebrates her holidays alongside her daughter, Kimberley Studer, who lives next door with her husband and three children.
Her children are starting their own traditions, but Cramm says there are some that will stick around for good.
“I still hang my sock, just like I did when I was younger … and I still make my meat pie,” she says.
