Dec 14, 2023 2 min read

Well, it’s December; the days are short, the nights long. Christmas lights are coming on throughout my neighborhood. Parties are being planned. Amazon is going like crazy to keep up with deliveries.

Unfortunately, we have some grinches in town who are stealing packages off people’s porches. We are no longer immune in Carmichaels.

I look back to the time when I was a kid in the 1950s. We would get gift packages from my grandparents, and aunts and uncles from England, several weeks before Christmas. Life was rough in Britain after World War II. Everyday items like food, clothing and shoes were still rationed until the mid-1950s.

But the packages were always received with joy and excitement. Each one would contain little gifts for me, my brother, and sister. Toys, socks, Cadbury chocolate with nuts and raisins, and Cadbury flake bars were among the things they would send. My mum always got a homemade Christmas pudding. This was a black fruitcake, which we lit after Christmas dinner. My dad would pour a “wee” bit of Johnny Walker Red on it and light the pudding. It burned blue with the kitchen lights off. The whiskey came included in the packages.

Our Christmas tree was real, of course. The aluminum tree fad hadn’t come in yet. I saw an aluminum tree in Solomon’s Chevrolet Buick on Friday. They were built to last, like Chevys.

Our real tree was decorated the night before from whatever we had for years. I remember running down the stairs to see what a “haul” I had made. We always got several toys and some school clothes.

I never remember mum or dad ever getting anything for each other at Christmas.

We always went to Mass Christmas morning.

We always celebrated Russian Christmas at my grandparents in Richeyville.

We were grateful for what we had. The relentless materialism we have today was a generation away.

Paul Lesako

Carmichaels