Lookout, here comes Christmas! I don’t remember it ever coming this fast! Even when I worked full time it didn’t take me by storm like this one has.

As a boy, Christmas always seemed to take forever coming. As soon as December 3rd ( my birthday ) rolled around, I knew it wasn’t far off, but it still seemed a long wait. When school closed for the holidays the waiting tension increased.

Of course the adults around me were busy. The United Church always had a big banquet in the church basement and both Wally and Auntie Kay participated in the production of that event, I sometimes helped with the dishes.

As a child, I didn’t have to keep track of the time and where we went as a family. We would go to house parties during the evenings leading up to Christmas, and between Christmas and New Years, and perhaps the odd house party after New Years.

The families we had dinners with were all United* Church attendees. Most had children but some did not. The adults always played bridge and I was too young to learn, so if there were no other children I had to find something else to do. On one occasion I read a book all evening.

Our family always went to church for an hour on Christmas Eve, and then back home to make sure our stockings were hung from the mantle in preparation for Santa to fill them. Our mantle was made of plywood ( a Wally creation I think ), and we hung the stockings with thumb tacks.

On Christmas morning the stocking was the first item to examine. The trinkets and toys in the sock were not wrapped. I fished each one out and examined it along with the chocolate and candy until I reached the ankle of the sock. It was there that I found all kinds of nuts in the shell. There were filberts, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, and pecans.

Once all the nuts were pushed aside or removed, the toe of the sock always had a mandarin orange in it. I rarely ate the orange for it was a candy day! I never did get a rock or a lump of coal so I guess I wasn’t a bad kid.

When Wally and Auntie Kay came into the living room, then we opened the wrapped presents that lay under the tree. Afterwards, it was off to the kitchen to have cold cereal from the tiny individual Kellogg boxes that came in 10 or 12 to a set. It was the only time of the year we ate from those boxes so it became a tradition.

When breakfast was done and if the weather was cold enough, we went skating on Park Rill or on the dugout which lay next to Park Rill; or, we might stay inside and play table games such as Snakes and Ladders, PIT, Monopoly, or Crokinole.

Before I knew it, Christmas was over. That happened way too fast! I usually felt a little disappointed with it all. With all the build up, shouldn’t it have lasted at least three days to make it worthwhile? We will never know.

Merry Christmas everyone!

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