OTHER LANDS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21410, 28 February 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

OTHER LANDS

(By Valentine Diakoff)

Although the children in Manchuria were far away from Russia and lived surrounded by Chinese, they enjoyed their life with its varied customs and interests just the same as the Russian children in their own country. As I told you before, we loved our Christmas, and it was a real Christmas, too, right in the middle of winter with heavy i snow and biting frosts. Besides, [three weeks' holiday made a very welcome break in our strenuous school year. Our Christmas tree parties and school concert never began before Christmas Eve. On that night the Christmas tree was lit up for the first time and people usually arranged big parties for children. Christmas was considered a time especially for the children, but the adults enjoyed it a great deal, too. They usually decorated the tree behind Jhe closed doors, and a >ireat time they had doing it. The first time the children saw it was in the ej/ening, when the doors were j opened at last, and they rushed in eager to see the lovely tree brightly lit up with numerous coloured candles. Underneath the tree they usually found a pile of toys—one for each child. How exciting it was to find a present with one's owri name attached to it! After, .of course, there was trouble with the tiny tots, who wanted a <toy intended for somebody else. Some people had "Grandfather Frost" giving the toys out. He came in carrying a big bag dressed exactly as your Father Christmas is. Sometimes instead of the toys there were bags of fruit, nuts, and sweets. They were made of coloured material and looked ever* 1 so pretty —red, blue, green, yellow, mauve —of every imaginable colour, all piled up under the tree. My parents allowed us to take part in decorating our tree. We spent many happy hours beforehand helping to make stars or long chains out of gilt and silver paper, gilding and frosting walnuts, or making little grandfather frosts, fairies, angels, and all sorts of pretty little toys out of cotton wool and tinsel, sprinkling them with shiny silvery powder that looked like frost sparkling in the candle-light. We loved to help mother with choosing shiny balls of different sizes, birds, tinsel cords —all sorts of things we couldn't make ourselves. In our home Polish and Russian customs were often intermixed, as my mother was a Pole and father a Russian, so a quiet Christmas party was the family's tradition—if anyone was invited at all they

CHRISTMAS IN, MANCHURIA

; were only the nearest relations. Just as the first star appeared in the sky, we sat down to a special dinner; it was a fast day, so no meat was allowed. There was hay placed under the tablecloth to, remind us how Baby Jesus lay in the hay in the manger at Bethlehem. The dinner usually began with fish soup with "ushki" in it (ushki were little boiled pasties with mushrooms in them), then followed cold stuffed fish and some other fish course. A special Christmas Eve sweet, "kutia," completed the dinner. I never thought it was wonderfully tasty—it was just cold I boiled rice with raisins, served with sweet sauce made of honey and water. After dinner tea was served with special apple or prune pasties, puffy seed roll (something like your jam roll only with thick layers of specially treated poppy seeds instead of jam) and vatrashi, something like flat buns with sweetened cream cheese on top. Very different from your Christmas dinner, isn't it? After dinner we lit the Christmas tree, played with our new toys, recited poetry, or played little pieces on the piano we specially learnt for our mother and father. In the end the whole family settled on the big cosy divan and quietly watched the candles gradually burning down. As the last candle went out we switched the lights on. The evening' was over, and we went to bed contented and happy. On Christmas night, or on the night of the first day of the Christmas, as the first three days were called Christmas, we usually went to a party, the second day there was a party at our home, then there would probably be a Christmas concert at school, then a party at another place, and so on, nearly till New Year's Day. The school concerts were often held in the daytime, but somehow no one ever thought of having afternoon parties. I suppose the Christmas trees would not have looked their best lit up in the daytime. At all the parties we received presents or little bags—so truly Christmas was a glorious time for children. Two or three days after the New Year the Christmas tree decorations were taken off and the tree itself was carried out to be chopped up for firewood, as by this time it was nearly dry and there was quite a carpet of needles on the floor every morning. How our hearts ached when we watched the tree being carried out, for it meant the end of Christmas and of its jolly festivities. Soon there would be school with its hard work again, and this would continue until Easter came, bringing with it spring and the joys pertaining to this wonderful season.