Christmases White and Evergreen

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 496, 24 December 1948, Page 14

Christmases White and

Evergreen

Written for "The Listener"

by ‘

OLD-TIMER

— ©¢T UT," says an objector. "You have never been Home." A mere cavil. I went Home in the spirit a lot as a youngster and have done so occasionally ever since. As a youngster the best passports I had to Home in the festive season were Christmas cards.. We had half-a-dozen, kept in the family Bible. The two I liked best both glittered frostily with a kind of tinsel. All that glitters is not gold? Perhaps not, but it comes very near to being so where the young imagination is concerned. This was one way in which Christmas was imported into these Antipodes and

the various Cnhristmas annuals co-oper-ated in the mission (it was nothing less). As to one famous

annual, i was never certain as a lad whether it was out to push a famous soap, or, in the modern sense, to "sell’ Christmas. Then, too, of course, there were Irving and Dickens. What an oasis of overflowing humanity the episode of ‘Tiny Tim made in the rather stodgy ‘school readers of six decades ago! Dickens may have been a sentimentalist as he laughed and cried while writing his "Carols" and "Chimes," but he also had a passionate conviction to voice without restraint, the conviction that, at Christmas, in Christ all men were brethren. | » + * T was relatives, of course; who loomed largest at Christmas. The tie of blood seems to me to have been far stronger then than it is now. What embraces! What cries of delight! What surprised and confused volubility as first one and then another aunt turned up! And then, over the ever-flowing tea, how all settled down to an endless gossip and heard the real news which would be quite beyond the competence of a daily Press to narrate, even if it attempted to. Many minds to-day have an imperial, even an international sweep. It was intimate personal details that held the colonial mind of 60 years ago spellbound. The population was ‘only half-a-million, the capital contained less than 40,000 and the typical family was, so to speak, "bogged down" in its own small circle of intimates. Some of these were esteemed and respected neighbours, others were neighbours kept at arm’s length and drastically criticised, but it was your relatives, whether to rejoice in or to pass discerning judgment upon, that mattered most. We children knew where every one of them got off. The opinions of our elders parted the sheep from the goats in a manner little short of infallible. The name of a well-

known = statesman was made for me at the meal table when my grandfather said, "He was out to see that justice , was done to the landless man."

HE great tradition of Christmas demanded snow; we would have thought poorly of a Christmas picture without it, and. yet at our own gatherings we never missed it and in spite of a hot sun we did full justice to the ample Christmas fare provided. During most of the year, though not stinted -for mutton and potatoes, we youngsters prowled round for extras and unobtrusively hung about on the outskirts of tea fights and socials, from time to time, quietly appropriating cheese cakes and tarts and sausage rolls as if unaware of

what our right or left hands were doing. But Christmas was a season at which to eat your fill and

more than your fill, and our elders even made a joke of what was nothing better than greediness naked and unashamed. And then the suppressed excitement with which you saw the milled edge of a shilling on the slice of pudding being cut to place on your plate! But above and beyond such gross satisfaction there was a spirifGal quality suffusing the day. Even the oldest of our elders unbent and spoke of us with approval, though just why, knowing ourselves full well for what we were, we were rather puzzled to understand. Likenesses to relatives held in respect were discovered, and in the most unguarded. moments achievements of ours were even praised-a heady mixture this to administer to young minds and one that was counteracted a few days later by its being re-discovered that we were sad dogs indeed. oe ba ok ‘THE most, cheerful Christmases were those occurring when there was plenty of work, when your grandfather was being so pestered by opulent runholders to build them more stately mansions that he "hardly knew which way to turn." Undoubtedly the new Government’s policy was bearing fruit but the price of wool was also going up. On all counts, however-blessings on the hope that springs eternal!-the outlook was good and another such year would see the family where it had come 13,000 miles to get-on its feet. Half comprehending, the young fry gleaned . golden ears of optimism from the future thus buoyantly anticipated. In the late afternoon visitors turned up, young fellows well-known to our uncles who seemed surprisingly to take most interest in our unmarried aunts and maidens who. havine dronned in to

te ee a eee chat ‘with our aunts, let themselves be side-tracked by our unmarried uncles. How did we get to know that, in their softened mood, we had these couples at (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) our mercy and that there was something to be gained by letting ourselves be inducedsto keep out of their way? The sun, as I have said, was hot; we were full of good things and our mood was languid; but beyond doubt it was a Christmas sun substituting by no means ineffectively for "Home’s" Christmas snow, left behind but not forgotten only a short two decades before. x * * M OST of’ our Christmases were small beer enough to chronicle, even if little incidents and seasonable amenities make them gracious in the memory. but

at one Christmas there was drama. We had a wayward aunt -Olivia. She had run off with = a stranger, a lounging, good-looking, good-for-little young fellow, disapproved of in the family circle

because he seemed oblivious to the fact that he had his way to make. No one had seen or heard from Olivia for two years. She was pert, she was bright, she kept her chin up, but she had a flighty and ill-regulated mind and if she was proud we too upon provocation given could also be proud. We were lolling, Christmas fashion, under a peach tree fast becoming celebrated on the edge of the lawn. I think I ought to confess that I had over-eaten and was troubled to think what a poor fist I would make of the cold fowls cooked for tea. Suddenly, through the front gate came Olivia, winsome and defiant of bearing, and bore down upon usLS

people one and all incapable of histrionics. She carried a bouncing yearold baby in her arms. There was a collective gasp, not so much an actual physical as a psychological gasp. Olivia was not the one to lose her selfpossession and there was a dash of her characteristic pertness in it. "Well, you folks," said she, "here I am." My grandmother, aged beyond her 60 years with work and cares in her adopted land, rose from where she had been pouring out tea from an immense pot. Her firm mouth quivered and tears, the first I had ever seen there, formed in her eyes. Something, the tears I suppose, brought my Aunt Olivia’s flag,down ‘with a run. Thrusting her baby into the hands of my Aunt Nellie, she fell on her mother’s neck and cried. They both cried and half the aunts cried and we .of the younger generation wondered, little comprehending, why they cried, There was, of course, a complete reconciliation. My aunt had timed her return to a nicety and, than the bouncing baby who chuckled in my Aunt Nellie’s arms, she could have had no better passport. For the rest, the sinking Christmas. sun, a hearty Boniface, was ruddily embracing everything and everybody in the true Christmas spirit. My grandfather, never a man to rise to an occasion, but unceasing in his toiling and moiling to get ahead of things, went out of the gate and returned bringing in with him my Aunt Olivia’s feckless, good-natured spouse. Thus was my faith in the festive sea, son justified and, an hour later, with my impenitent and pert aunt, gabbling nineteen to the dozen and leading the conversation, I settled down to the business of eating a hearty tea. ---------------------_--