The soon arrival of Christmas has me revisiting the old farmhouse where I spent much of my childhood. Our living room was the focal point for family life, the recreation room as well as the library.
A Hide-A-Bed sat in front of the big windows, a simple armchair at right angles. It had a low back and was covered with an aqua fabric. There was an older rocking chair, a streamlined pump organ in a dark case, stained almost black. The shared wall with the kitchen held a large oil heater. It vented out the chimney along with the cookstove.
Along the wall supporting the staircase to the upper floor sat a large stereo system. One side held an enclosed turntable with storage for a dozen vinyl records. The larger part of the set was our first television. The item had been purchased from Don Major’s appliance store in Sundre. It wasn’t just a television; it was a massive piece of furniture, dusted faithfully every Saturday morning.
We had always enjoyed family games nights: card games, Scrabble and crokinole. Dad purchased the TV shortly after Marvin died. He was the whistler and guitar strummer. He teased his sisters, complimented mom’s cooking and went about his chores with a cheerful spirit. I think the silence was overwhelming.
I’m trying to remember some of those Christmases. I think a natural evergreen stood beside the organ, pressed into the corner and crowding the couch. We had a lot of homemade decorations. Occasionally we helped mom with popcorn, stringing it into garlands to drape the tree. She sent one of us to extract a few dusty boxes from the crawl space behind the upstairs closet.
Inside were treasured ornaments sure to be antiques at this point. Carol has a few of her favourites. We had icicles: a spiral metal that was maybe four inches long. Some had a hint of red, some of blue. There was another box of smaller globes with an opening on the front. These were also metal and the interiors were painted festive colours. I still have one of those, also a small green bell-shaped ornament and a larger pinkish one shaped like a child’s spinning top.
Mom kept everything within the boxes carefully wrapped, in papers saved over the years from Christmas oranges. The papers remained soft as crepe. Ornaments that came in their own box remained stored in that container within the storage box.
As the tree was decorated the small boxes returned to the empty one. All those wrappers? Mom smoothed them and set them back in the box as well. She never treated them carelessly, scrunching or tossing. The box went back into storage for the duration.
I recall crepe paper garlands that folded flat for packing. When extended they were perhaps eight feet in length. I remember red honeycomb construction. I believe that there was also one in the design of a large bell, which also extended into a garland.
I can still hear Christmas music on the turntable. Mom and Larry loved Handel’s Messiah. Larry says when the record reached the Hallelujah Chorus, Mom hollered up the stairs to warn him. She cranked the volume and left the door open. As the stereo was along the stairwell I’m sure it provided great acoustics as the triumphant tones rose. That is still one of our favourites today.
- Joyce Hoey is a longtime Gazette columnist
