Classic Christmas Stories Read online

  When Melchisedek ventures to find fault with his wife about any trifle, the old flash from her mischievous black eyes comes back as she sings, “the Schoolmaster kissed the Parson’s wife—heigho.”

  Reminiscences of 1854

  by Canon Smith, R. D.

  MANY CHILDREN READ WITH delight Christmas Bells, therefore this article is intended principally for their entertainment. Being a clergyman, I suppose I am expected to speak principally of the Church services and Church decorations at Christmas of the period named in the heading of this article. In 1854 I was a child living at Trinity, of which place my father was Incumbent. He was also Rural Dean of both Trinity and Bonavista Bays. Mine is the first instance in the history of the Church of England in this Diocese of a father and son both having held the office of Rural Dean.

  On Christmas Eve great effort was made by housewives and kitchen maids to be the first in the town or settlement to have the kitchen and parlor, and indeed the whole house, thoroughly “tidied up” for Christmas. Work at this began in every house long before daylight on December 24th, —for before that tidying had been accomplished the Christmas “back junk” or Yule-log could not be placed in position on the shining “dog-irons, ” and the great Christmas fire lit. The placing of this “back junk” was proclaimed by the discharge of a sealing gun. Result, Christmas Eve was heralded in by a heavy fusillade of musketry. I regret to say that in the Church of England in the outports at that time no Church services were held on Christmas Eve, though we had them in full the next day. No, sad to say, not the sound of Christmas carol or of hymn of praise was heard on Christmas Eve, but rather the shout of revellers and not infrequently the sounds of blasphemy and strife. At 9 a.m. on Christmas Day the sound of the Church going bell was heard pealing o’er hill and dale, notifying the congregation of old St. Paul’s that there would be service on that day at 11 a.m. Old St. Paul’s at Trinity had a square tower, with a flat roof, surrounded by a wooden parapet. In the upper chamber of this tower was the bell; on the roof a high flagstaff—in order that people living at too great a distance from the Church to hear the bell might yet have notice of the service; half an hour before service commenced a flag was hoisted on the flagstaff. There were two flags, one a plain red St. George’s Cross on a white ground; this was for ordinary occasions. On the greater festivals a larger flag, also a St. George, but with the ensign in the upper corner, was hoisted.

  On Candlemas Day—Festival of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin—being the day when the Trinity Benefit Club walked in procession to Church, the Club flag was hoisted on the Church staff; this was a very pretty flag, having the English Rose in red colour, the Irish Shamrock in green, and the Scotch Thistle in both red and green embroidered on it on a white ground. This is, I believe, still the flag of the Trinity Benefit Club. This Club was formed as far back as 1838 by the late William Kelson, Esq. It is one of the oldest benefit Clubs in Newfoundland. The entrance fee and the annual subscription thereto, is two dollars with twenty cents to be paid on the death of a brother by each of his surviving brethren. The weekly allowance, in case of sickness, paid to a member in good standing was two dollars. In the event of his death his widow and relations received forty dollars to pay the expense of his burial, etc. for those times, when the wages of a day labourer was only fifty cents a day, and for a tradesman eighty cents, this Club allowance was considered to be, as indeed it was, liberal.

  On Good Fridays a flag was hoisted on the Church tower, of a deep purple color. This was testimony of the awful Sacrificial Death which that holy-day commemorates. This flag had been first hoisted by the Rev. William Bullock and 1825. Mr. Bullock, before his ordination at the bombardment of Algiers by the British fleet under Lord Exmouth in 1816. I have heard that it was customary a hundred years ago for the King’s ships to hoist a flag of this color in a prominent part of the ship’s rigging while Divine Service was being held on board on Good Friday morning. It is more than forty-five years since this flag was last hoisted at Trinity. The old flag given by Mr. Bullock became worn out. It was never replaced, which I think a pity.

  To hark back to my story. At 9: 30 a.m., the children assembled in the C. C. C. S. School, where solely religious instruction was given as on Sunday. We said our Collect and Gospel, and the oldest of us the Epistle too, and were questioned on the Catechism. There were no Christmas prizes, and Christmas cards were not invented. Yet we were happy, and the Sunday School (if I may so call it) was always thronged with the children on Christmas morning, and all the teachers were sure to be present. Just fancy children now-a-days being required to go to school on Christmas morning. Why, if we attempted to enforce such discipline, I fear we should meet with little long faces—longer than the longest Santa Claus stocking. At 10: 45 we were all mustered, 200 strong, under our teachers, and marched in procession to Church.

  Now, the art of Church decoration had not made much progress in Newfoundland outports in 1854. In most of them no attempt whatever was made at Christmas decorations. Not so in Trinity. On Christmas Eve a large quantity of boughs (principally of pine but with spruce and fir intermingled, also some palm) were brought to the Church by the old sexton and his family. Then armed with a gimlet the old man proceeded, according to the prophets’ teaching, to bring into the house of God for its adornment, the pine tree and the fir. The modus operandi was to make a hole with the gimlet in the top of the long high pews, the pulpit and the reading desk, together with the communion rails, and to “dibble” into the said holes sprigs of pine and fir, etc. The result was, the Church presented to view a mass of greenery. This decoration was all removed on January 2nd.

  The singing in those days, in Church of England places of worship, in the outports of Newfoundland was confined almost solely to Tate and Brady’s metrical version of the Psalms of David. We had a few hymns printed at the end of the Book of Common Prayer which were sung at Communion and Christmas and Easter Days. We had also “The Lamentations of a Sinner” for Ash Wednesday. We had Bishop Ken’s Morning and Evening Hymns. The Evening Hymn was frequently sung at Evensong. The Christmas Hymns were only three in number— “Hark! The herald-angels sing, ” “While Shepherds watched their flocks, ” and “High let us swell our tuneful notes.” But the grandest and oldest of all Christmas Hymns, the “Adeste Fideles, ” was absent. I was a young man before ever I heard it sung at public worship. During Revd. Mr. Bullock’s charge of Trinity the Hymn Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U. S. A. was in use at St. Paul’s; but after Mr. Bullock left Trinity in the autumn of 1839 this book fell into disuse. In the earlier part of my father’s time at Trinity a hymn from this book was occasionally sung at a funeral, but on no other occasion. The first Hymn Book used in this Diocese by authority, viz: by order of Bishop Feild, as late as 1862, was the first edition of hymns, 300 in number, published by S. P. C. K. I remember well how some of the old folk grumbled at the use of this Hymn book, and derision called the hymns, “babies ditties.” They said that the hymns were none of them worthy to be compared with Tate’s, “O come, loud anthems, ” or “Thou Lord, by strictest search hast known.” Indeed for years the custom was to sing a psalm and a hymn alternately at public worship. Prejudice dies hard.

  There were then no furnaces in outport Churches. We had two stoves at old St. Paul’s, but most of the heat from them went into the galleries. We on the floor got but little of it at the morning service. Jack Frost was in evidence at Christmas time fifty years ago. Sermons, too, were long. Never less than half an hour, generally ten minutes longer. I remember how enviously, as a little boy, I used to look upon my mother’s large muff and wish that I could have it on the pew floor, and taking off my boots, slip my icy-cold feet into its warm embrace.

  The choir was in the gallery at the west end of the Church. In 1857, we had from London a large harmonium, of Alexander’s make but previously thereto the musical instruments in use were a violin and a “cello, ” or, as we used to call it, a “bass viol.” In Mr. Bullock’s day ther
e were two violins in the choir’s a first and second, and also the bass-viol.

  Now I must, I suppose in conclusion, say something about the sports we indulged in fifty years ago. At Christmas we had as outdoor amusements, “rounders, ” football, and “coasting” with sleds. Also, if snow suited, combats with snow balls—one side calling itself English and other Russian. I need hardly say that the English always gained the victory, for the Russian party deemed itself in duty bound to run away towards the close of the fight. You see it was the time of the Crimean War. In the accounts of the war’s battles, Alma, Inkerman and Balaclava, and the siege of Sebastopol then in progress, we were deeply interested. In winter, we had only a fortnightly mail; sometimes stormy weather and ice prevented our hearing from the world south of us for a month or six weeks. Owing to a tremendous ice-blockade in the winter of 1861-62—and Trinity is only sixty miles north of St. John’s.

  When the condition of the ice favoured it, we had skating and sliding. Though few of us could accomplish any fancy skating, yet many of us could skate swiftly, and also a long time, without getting tired. Our footballs was of primitive construction. It consisted of the inflated bladder of some animal. The instrument of inflation was not a small air-punp, and rarely a bellows, though bellows were common enough in those days at every fireside. No, it was the broken stem of a clay tobacco pipe in the mouth of the strongest winded person, male or female, that we could get to undertake the office of inflator. This bladder was carefully enclosed in a bag made of the strongest canvas procurable, for if it received only the slightest puncture it was past all repair. Our football was not always in shape globular, but more frequently it assumed the form of an oblong cylinder, like an empty cartridge-case. I forgot now exactly how the “grown ups” played football, but I remember that we youngsters played it by no certain rule. We had not even goals. The champion player was he, who by one kick, could either send the ball highest into the air, or to the farthest distance. But if the latter, he must send it over the heads of the other players, or else in such a direction that none of them could catch it while in transit. If thus caught the kick was counted a failure. All very primitive you will say, but nevertheless we managed to get a good deal of fun of our play. We played solely for amusement, therefore there was no sore feeling engendered by our sport. From the night of Christmas Eve and during Christmas week and on New Year’s Night the “mummers” were out. Of these and their amusing antics I need say nothing now, as two years ago I described them in the columns of Christmas Bells.

  Fifty years ago we who were then children spent a happy Christmas. I trust that all the readers of Christmas Bells, and especially the little readers, may in this coming Christmas of 1906 be even happier than we were in the Christmases that are so long ago. I must needs love the children. While seated by my own fireside on Christmas Day; if spared to see it, there will come to me visions of happy children`s faces that were once here with me in the flesh, but now, like Rachel`s children, `They are not. “The Christ-Child has taken them to Himself. By his abounding mercy. They have reached a fairer region, far away!” When at eventide the lamps are lit, we, their parents, trust that we too shall be permitted to go in and with them worship Christ the King— “The God, the Lord, by all adored, for evermore.”

  Christmas 70 Years Ago!: How the Festive Season was Spent in the Outports in the 70s

  by P. K. Devine

  THE PRESENT GENERATION OF young people have no idea of the enthusiastic and whole-souled manner in which Christmas was celebrated seventy years ago in the Outports. They only read now and then a short sketch in the Christmas publications of today of some few of the salient features of times or occasionally listen with doubt to the recital of isolated events by the inhabitants. Although our forefathers had few of the necessaries and inventions of modern civilized life that nowadays make existence so luxurious, nevertheless they enjoyed their existence with more zest and freedom from care than their restless and discontented descendants. What a number of inventions our fathers and grandfathers lacked that we possess today. They had no stoves, no painted canvas on the floor, no kerosene oil light, no sewing machine, no telegraphs, no railways, no street cars, no daily mails, no automobile, no electric light, no motor boats. We could go on and enumerate a score of other useful inventions, the product of man’s brains, during the last half century.

  In spite of all these accessories of modern life, the people who kept Christmas in those old days, we are inclined to think, enjoyed life with a keener zest and derived more pleasure from their surroundings than their descendants do today. In the first place, the friendship and good will were genuine and thoroughly sincere, and doing a gratuitous or kind turn for a fellow man or woman came as natural to them as swimming is to a duck when thrown into the water. This was the normal attitude all the year around, but when Christmas arrived the feeling was intensified, and warmest feelings that were in everyone’s heart came to the surface.

  Christmas, as a season of good will and fraternal affection was a reality and not merely an empty expression as it is now too often in conventional society. Every door was open to the visitor and the neighbour, and the gatherings that took place at Christmas were suggestive of the golden age that the poets now so often sing of and sigh for.

  People visited from home to home in the Christmas holidays and hospitalities were displayed with a lavish hand. At night the young men and young women assembled in the largest kitchen in the village and dancing and other games were kept up with unremitting merriment “till the sun peeped over the hills.” The use of the term kitchen here does not convey the correct idea to the younger generation who know it as a small room where cooking is done. A kitchen in the old dwelling in the Outports was parlor, sitting-room and dancing hall. It was in fact the largest room in the house, and in some instances had a floor space of 24x30 feet, including the open blue-flagged fire place, where the Christmas fire, built up six feet high with cross junks, triggers and back junks, went roaring in a sheet of flame up the open chimney. The floor was covered sometimes with sand and at others with sawdust in order to keep it clean as long as possible. On the rack overhead, near the fireplace, lay the big sealing gun, one of the treasures of every prosperous fisherman. The pots, kettles and such culinary utensils hung on a crane over the fire, which could be swung in and out at will, and on each side of the fireplace were homemade cosy chairs and a long pine or fir bench known as the “settle.” The building of a Christmas Eve fire was an important work, and generally only one in a family could aspire to it. The big Yule log, generally called the “back junk, ” four feet in length and round as a flour-barrel, was rolled in close to the back of the chimney and was supposed to last during the twelve days at Christmas.

  Powder guns were fired off out of doors near each one’s house as soon as the sun set on Christmas Eve. The cod-oil lamp trimmed with zealous care and brightened to reflect the fire light like a mirror, were then lighted, one swinging from a hook in each corner. “Hooking” the lamp and keeping it bright all the time was a work of art which generally fell to the tidiest girl in the house.

  After the supper table was cleared away the neighbours began to flock in, and soon the red decanter and old-fashioned cut glasses were produced. This was called “breaking” the ice, and when it was broken it grew fast and furious. The younger folks soon asserted themselves and claimed fifteen square feet of the floor for dancing, compelling the older people to move back the “settles” and chairs close to the walls. Merely a dance that broke the ice was all that was indulged in on Christmas Eve. The religious aspect of the feast must not be forgotten, and it seldom was, in spite of all the carnal temptations in the way of eating and drinking. The real thing in the dancing line was not witnessed till St. Stephen’s night, and it was kept up every night at one kitchen or another till the twelve holidays were over. The lion’s share of this business was done by the “mummers, ” fools or “jannies, ” whichever name you wish to give them, as they were alluded to by all
three.

  Probably in no outport in Newfoundland were the old Christmas customs kept up and were wholeheartedly celebrated than in Trinity. The back-bone of Trinity’s prosperity in the days under review was the seal fishery. The three big mercantile firms were Brooking’s, Slade’s and Stoneman’s. A score or more of smaller stores and shops did active trades by reason of the existence of these wholesalers. The principal sealing skippers whose names are handed down to us in sealing history and deep sea voyages are Andrews, Facey, Ash, Coleman, Field, Dorothy, Morris, Eagan, Fowlow, Christian, Answorth and Verge. Harry Andrews, known by his friends under the familiar name of “Billy Lindy, ” was for many years the high liner in the sealfishery before the coming of the steamers. His first ship was the Selah Hutton and then the Peerless. His name was known all over the country.

  It has been said of Brigus that it lived on the fat of the sealfishery for half a century after the industry was prosecuted in wind-jammers. This could be said with equal if not greater truth in Trinity. Not only was it a town of shops but also a town of mechanical tradesmen. There were shoe makes, tinsmiths, carpenters, blacksmiths, sail makers, masons, coopers and tailors who kept the town trade going on the money circulated amongst all the residents of the town—a self-supporting country. The decline came on gradually after Bremner closed the Brooking premises and Walter Grieve withdrew, but the traces of quondam prosperity are there today in the neat well-kept homes and gardens and streets, churches and schools. Even a stranger visiting the place for the first time and meeting the residents cannot feel to be impressed by the fact that he is in the midst of a cultural and hospitable people imprinted with the heritage of a prosperous past.