‍The magic of a summer Christmas, by Melissa M. 

In case you missed it: This author shared more of these holiday memories (along with details on a memorable Christmas gift she gave to her parents) during a recent edition of The Storyworth Podcast. You can listen to that episode here.‍

My favorite holiday as a child was Christmas. Since we lived in Australia, we celebrated Christmas during the middle of summer holidays, and combining my favorite season with my favorite holiday seemed only natural. December always began in a swelter. Flies stuck to the screen door and the bush hummed with cicadas and the Blue Mountains shimmered sapphire in the heat. We drowsed through the last week of school, our legs sticking to the chairs while flies buzzed through the open windows. 

On the last day of school, we chattered excitedly on the bus and then ran home from the bus stop. Not only was the school year over, but we had six weeks to explore the bush-covered foothills and swim in the Nepean River behind our house. And Christmas was only two weeks away.

During the first days of summer holidays, I’d forget about geography and math and lay on a lawn chair in the shade of our backyard gum tree and read Christmas stories, to the sounds of ski boats on the Nepean, and swimmers’ laughter floated up through the heat. 

While Mum baked fruit cakes stuffed with Brazil nuts and cherries to give to the neighbors, my siblings Todd, Shellie, and I roamed the bush. As the oldest, at 12, I warned my younger siblings to watch out for death adders and to not pick the plants with prickles on them. 

Some afternoons, Shellie and I set up camp by a nearby creek that pooled and bubbled over slippery rocks before spilling into the Nepean. We breast-stroked through one of the deeper pools, pretending we were the girls in the Skinny Dip perfume commercial. Afterward, we sunbathed on sandstone slabs jutting over the water, and talked about our Christmas lists. Meanwhile, Mum decorated the house for Christmas, filling it with vases of pink roses, yellow wattle, and red bottle brush. We waited until a few days before Christmas to buy our tree, so it wouldn’t wilt too early in the heat, and put it in a bucket of water in the dining room. Sunshine streamed through the windows, and we listened to Christmas records on the stereo. I helped Mum with the last of the baking, sweating in our muggy kitchen. The scent of baking cookies, mixed with roses, pine, and eucalyptus, filled the house.

Finally Christmas Eve arrived. We sang carols while the cicadas hummed through the open windows, celebrating in the darkness. Then we ate a special dessert: pavlova filled with whipped cream and passion fruit. 

On Christmas morning we woke before dawn, groping our way to the living room to find our presents. By the time Mum and Dad came in I was already listening to my new transistor radio. 

After we opened our gifts to each other, we ate breakfast in our sunny kitchen and then I ran next door, barefoot, to show my friend Dezohn my radio, and then she, Michelle, and I played outside all morning.

Soon it was time to drive up the winding road to Grandma Small’s house. All of the aunts and uncles and cousins were there. The uncles had set up a large tent in the backyard, where sausage rolls, meat pies, roast chicken, and salads were laid out on long tables. My cousins Lindy and Sandra and I had to shoo flies away from the food while Mum and the aunts finished bringing out the trifles, and the piece de resistance, the plum pudding, for dessert. Grandma boiled the plum pudding in brandy weeks before Christmas and then strung it up in the laundry to cure until Christmas Day. She always hid a ten-cent piece in the pudding, and whoever got it would have good luck all year. Mum warned us to bite carefully.

As dinner began, we popped our Christmas crackers; inside each was a paper crown, which we all had to wear, and a small trinket, like a miniature jacks set or a tiny joke book. We ate on picnic blankets on the lawn, sweating over meat pies and trifle. Then we ran off to have races on Grandma’s swing set.

After we got home in the early evening, Dad took us for a swim at a nearby cove on the banks of the Nepean. We set out with our poodle Suzette and hiked down to the little beach, where other swimmers were celebrating in the waning daylight, roasting sausages over small fires. I plunged into the river, the coolness enveloping me as I swam out, then returned to the tangle of willow and gum trees on the shore. 

We played tag on the beach and threw rocks and sticks into the water for Suzette to retrieve. Finally, at dusk, we wrapped towels around our waists and idled home to play with our new toys one more time before bed.

Our summer Christmases ended when we moved from Australia, and at first, cold Christmases depressed me. Eventually I grew used to spending December lounging by the fireplace, drinking warm cider and cocoa, and playing in the snow, and now I embrace our winter Christmases. But sometimes on a June day, when I lie in the shade and listen to the crickets hum, I think of Christmas carols and new toys and plum pudding—and I remember the magic of a summer Christmas.

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Creating new traditions from the old, by Charlotte E. 

We were new Canadians who had immigrated from Germany in the early 1950s. We set our tables with a European soup spoon at the top of the plate. The soup bowls were the European style with a wide rim around them. I’ve always used European soup bowls and put the big European soup spoon at the top because it represents a different part of the world and my heritage. It’s a little thing but quite important to me.

My Mom loved Christmas so much and it was a time filled with traditions. She would begin baking early. She made a traditional German Christmas cake with Brazil nuts and red and green maraschino cherries and white dough. It was sweet and tasted good. Mom always used to say, you need lots of butter and sugar to make cakes taste good. She was right. Mom would bake so many kinds of traditional German cookies, most made from ground nuts; macaroons, hazelnut slices and some names of cookies I would have to copy the names of from her cookbook because I can’t even pronounce them! She put them in cookie tins with a mandarin orange peel inside to keep them soft and stacked them on the shelf in the back hall. We were not supposed to ‘steal’ any but we did. Maybe that’s why she made so many. I still marvel at my Mom’s energy to accomplish all she did during the Christmas season. I still make traditional German cookies but only the favourites.

Making Christmas presents to give away was just what we did. It gave them meaning. I learned this from my Mother. I remember making play dough Christmas decorations with my children and home made thank you cards written after Christmas. I made Christmas stockings for our family many years ago and this year and last Morgan and I made stockings for her little boys. I really enjoyed it but even more I loved knowing how important this tradition was to Morgan. I always give packages of homemade German cookies to my friends who seem to appreciate them. Giving them something I’ve made is a tradition that brings me pleasure.

Angels were an important part of Christmas in Germany. My Mom brought the angels her Mother and grandmother had given her to Canada. They are beautiful. Their heads and hands are made of beeswax and have delicate eyes and eyebrows painted with gold. Two little dots for the nostrils and lovely small red lips make them look angelic. They are dressed in long skirts and tops or dresses made of pleated gold foil or velvet or brocade and they have little pieces of trim around their necks and wrists and heads. They have gold foil wings and some are holding real candles in one of their hands or a sheet of music. Some have painted hair and one I have now has white silken long hair that looks crimped. Every year when I unpack these angels I think of my Mother’s Christmases as a child and the wonder she had in her life. Many years ago my Mom decided to make angels, first to give as gifts and then to sell at the local markets and at a European gift shop. She enlisted the help of all three of her daughters to help. We each had a job. Philine would paint the lips and put a touch of rouge on the cheeks. I would paint the eyes and eyebrows and put the two dots in for nostrils. And my Mom would do everything else. In the summer we would go shopping for fabric and trim. It would all get packed away until it was time to cut the patterns, which Mom designed, for the skirts, dresses and capes. She searched high and low for double sided gold foil for the wings and had a mould made for the hands and heads and wrapped their bodies with a special cotton and wire. It was so much work. Making Inge’s angels was a lovely tradition shared with my sisters and our Mother.

Christmas Eve is filled with traditions. In Germany it is the most important evening. There the tree was lit with real candles and the children didn’t see it until Christmas Eve. We did not use real candles but my Mom found lights that looked like candles in a cluster of three. She also brought star shaped tin reflectors punched with little holes all the way from Germany. They were placed under the bulb to reflect the light. Her tree was beautiful and covered with ornaments she had brought from Germany and been given by friends. I gave her a new angel each year to hang on her tree. I so enjoyed searching for just the right one.

My Mom lived in our family home and it wasn’t very big so people would end up sitting on the floor. There was lots of laughter and Christmas music and conversation. After everyone had arrived and visited and helped themselves to as many helpings of food as they liked my Mother would announce it was time for the children to go to her bedroom where they could eat mandarin oranges. The adults enjoyed a bit of peace and then my Mom would ring her Christmas Bell. It was a signal the children knew; they could come out and present opening would begin. The older children would distribute the presents and then it was chaos. Later, the children would get into their new pajamas, the women, mostly, would do the dishes together, some people would walk down candy cane lane and others with little ones, us mostly, would pack up and go home. We looked for Santa’s sleigh on the way and the children would go to sleep faster than any night of the year.

I have continued with this traditional Christmas Eve with our family. We celebrated it at Mom’s house until a couple of years before she died. Then it moved to our condominium. I have Mom’s Christmas bell. It is my favourite evening of the year. We try hard to gather the whole family each year. Thinking of the family gathering and the traditions we enjoy together makes me cry.

We started our own tradition of having brunch on Christmas morning. I would use the leftover meats from Christmas Eve and buy an abundance of croissants. I’d buy caviar and jams and honey and everyone‘s favourite food. The night before I’d make the wife saver casserole of cheese, eggs and buttered bread and bake it in the morning. We had champagne and fresh orange juice and coffee with real cream and crystal and candles. It was a lovely way to begin Christmas morning. When the children were younger we would open presents first and then feast. When the children were older we would feast first. Henry would make his famous ‘all of it’ sandwich. He put all of his favourite foods inside one croissant....it was big. We would all watch in amazement as he took the first bite.

I love it when my adult children phone me for instructions on how to make my stuffing or cook the bird or make the gravy. I know these traditions are alive and well.

Now I go on rounds visiting our grown children and their families. We enjoy watching old traditions still alive and new ones emerging.

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The night Santa Clause almost missed our house! By Thomas B.

Christmas in our public housing community was an enchanted time. We would spend the weeks after Thanksgiving making paper, paste, and glitter Christmas decorations to adorn the windows and doors of our homes. Hand-made cards, ornaments, and presents were crafted for close relatives. My sister and I, drawn to the kitchen by the warm oven and heavenly aroma, helped Mom bake cookies and deserts celebrating the holiday season.

Our discussions turned to Santa Clause and the lapses in judgment we hoped he would overlook and the presents we planned to ask him to bring. We worried about how the jolly old elf would manage to penetrate the security barriers in place to keep strangers out of our units. None of us had a fireplace or a chimney to hang our stocking by. Although he managed it every year, it was still hard to believe that even a magical figure like Santa could somehow find his way from our roof into our homes. Nevertheless, we steadfastly believed that on Christmas morning our stockings would be filled to overflowing, and there would be a present under the tree for each of us.

One of the Christmas traditions observed by most families in our neighborhood was buying the tree the day before Christmas and decorating it after dinner that evening. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out that the tradition had its roots in financial necessity. Trees the day before Christmas could be acquired at very deep discounts from a vendor willing to take something rather than face disposal costs after the holiday.

Decorating our tree was more complicated than most because we owned a Lionel train set that once belonged to my deceased grandfather. He was an unsuccessful prohibition era bootlegger, who left the family train-rich but cash-strapped when he made his departure to the great beyond. Our tree sat on top of a raised 4 x 8 foot plywood train platform. Dad would place the tree in its stand on the floor, making sure it was perfectly plumb. Then, using a drill and wire, he would attach additional branches picked up from the tree merchant’s lot to fill in any bare spots. It was, after all, a bargain tree. Once Dad decided the tree was as good as it was ever going to look, he attached strings of multi-colored lights. The completion of this task was the signal for Mom, my sister, and me to commence placing ornaments and silver tinsel in their most advantageous spots, being careful not to hang anything heavy on a wired-up branch. To do so was to chance incurring the wrath of father, whose patience was in short supply at the best of times. We all knew Christmas Eve was classified as high stress, and confrontations were to be avoided at all cost.

Once our masterpiece was complete, father would carefully lift the tree onto the platform while Mom served homemade eggnog and cookies. Dad then began the task of wiring the train and setting up his prized collection of hand-painted lead figurines and plastic buildings on the platform. The Nativity set with baby Jesus in His manger was the first item put in place. Then Dad attached the star to the tree top. That was our signal to put out milk and cookies for Santa Claus and carrot sticks for the reindeer. After that, it was off to bed for my sister and me with Dad issuing a stern warning about getting up too early. My sister and I had a standing arrangement that the first one awake on Christmas morning would tiptoe down the stairs and check to see if Santa had arrived. If he had, we agreed to wake the other before officially going down to celebrate.

On Christmas morning of my sixth year, I woke early and quietly got out of bed. Employing the stealth of a ninja, I crept silently through the bedroom, across the hall, and began to move like a ghost down the stairs to the point where the wall ended and the banister began. Near bursting with excitement in anticipation of Santa’s gifts, I pressed my cheeks against two balusters and discovered, “OH NO!” Dad was asleep on the floor with the platform display unfinished. Even worse, the man had eaten Santa’s cookies. This was a disaster of epic proportions! There was no way the jolly old elf was going to show. I intuitively knew two things: 1) someone had to wake Dad and move him or Santa wasn’t coming and 2) I wasn’t the person who was going to do it! Returning back up the stairs, I woke my mom from a sound sleep and informed her of the tragedy that was playing itself out in our living room. With love only a mother knows and a look that can best be described as “Why me Lord?” she assured me there was still time for Santa to visit our home that very night. After rousing my father from his nap, she tucked me into my bed and told me that Santa would visit after I fell asleep. My parents then retired to their bedroom, and I closed my eyes. As fate would have it, sleep did not come. I lay awake for what seemed like eternity until I heard sounds of quiet movement in the hallway. It wasn’t Santa, but Mom and Dad heading down the stairs to the living room. A short while later they returned to their bed. “HMMM…” went the old grey cells!

The next thing I knew, my sister was shaking my arm and telling me to get up - Santa had arrived! In my excitement, I forgot to tell her of my night-time discovery. After opening our gifts and eating breakfast, I pulled my sister aside. She is a year-and-a-half older than me, so it was a rare occasion for me to inform her of anything monumental. Quietly, so our parents wouldn’t hear, and as gently as possible, I broke the news that I knew who Santa really was. Judy looked at me with eyes wide with amazement, shook her head from side to side and said, “I knew that over a year ago! It’s about time you figured it out you dope!”