by David Goss
Christmas is certainly one of the strongest links most Canadians have with the past. It seems like it has changed very little, yet changed it has.
Clockwise, from top left:
Santa's familiars are typically reindeer these days. But the photographer for this turn-of-the-last-century postcard chose a more Biblical animal for his presentation. Could eight of them pull a sleigh?
A very Canadian variation on a Victorian Christmas card theme.
Presents unwrapped, a family poses against a stark prairie landscape.
In the background: The front parlour of a well-to-do Victorian home decorated for Christmas, circa 1896.
Doreen Gould, Toronto Reference Library, Glenbow Archives, Dalnavert, The MacDonald House Museum.
Christmas has been celebrated in English-speaking communities in the Maritime provinces since the arrival of the Loyalists in 1783. At first it was a simple, almost totally religious affair, but by 1830 the New Brunswick Courier was lamenting in its December 23 issue that the social joys of Christmas and opportunities to lake a break from the workaday world were eroding.
The same issue of the Saint John newspaper carried the first New Brunswick appearance of a poem that was destined to change the season even more, filled ”Christmas rimes,” its first couplet began, ”' Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house.”
Clement Clarke Moore’s poem, which created an image of Santa Claus and the toys he would bring, augmented the religious observance of the 25th, but more importantly, it signalled the shift, many decades in development, from a festival for adults to one focused on children. In Maritime Canada, milestones included merchant William Prior erecting the first decorated tree in Halifax in 1846, and the British regiments stations at Fredericton in the 1860s adding decorated trees to the live greens used to brighten their barracks for the long-established Christmas dances, plays, and banquets. In the early 1870s, merchant Charles Sampson arranged Santa to deliver gifts from his Fredericton store, and in the mid-1880s costumed Santas began appearing in department stores and around the Christmas tree at Sunday School gatherings.
By 1874, the December 27 edition of the Saint John Globe was bemoaning the growing burden of the season, stating: “The Christmas holidays impose much work and worry upon all sorts and conditions of men and women.” But it was a burden Canadians seemed anxious to assume, for as the Globe went on to explain, Christmas “gives the opportunity for the display of many kinds and beautiful feelings ... of extra care for other’s welfare, of extra thought for other’s happiness —all acts,” its editor concluded, ”no doubt, gladly performed!”
Indeed, this is seen through letters, diaries, stories, books, and newspapers of the era, which combined give a composite look at how our ancestors in all parts of the nation marked the season as the nineteenth century became the twentieth.
With few women and little of the comforts of southern Canadian domestic life, Christmas in Yukon around 1900 (opposite) was a humble interlude in a hard life. At least it was an opportunity for perhaps more than one postprandial drink.
In the background: The 1909 congregation of Centenary Church, Saint John, New Brunswick, gathers its contributions for the city's poor. Then, as now, Christmas was the focus for an eruption of charitable giving.
BC Archives and David Goss/Wilson Studio Collection.
Let's start with the coastal extremes — St. John's and Victoria. Newfoundlanders in 1900 still referred to Santa Claus as Father Christmas, and mummers (masked or costumed merrymakers) still walked the streets. However, newspapers lamented that other old customs, like dragging in the Yule log and volleys of musketry fire from old sealing guns to mark Christmas Eve, had disappeared. In an article titled “Last Christmas ol the Century,” the Evening Telegram noted the usual ”levees, receptions, concerts, theatricals, college reviews, and kindergarten exercises,” for the “social enjoyment” of St. John’s residents. Like all papers of the era, it printed extensive lists of church services and noted the offering was to be for the poor, as was customary a century ago. Mumming was restricted to ”places where police are not stationed.” But, the story continued, ”every night there are scores of young lads from 12 to 18 years of age dressed in fantastic costumes, visiting various houses.”
At the opposite end of the county, the Victoria Daily Times had a much more commercial tone to its pages as Christmas approached. Among its leading advertisers was the Hutcheson Company’s Westside (“Victoria's Popular Store”), the home of Santa Claus. According to a letter in the Times, the old gent had quite an adventure reaching the Westside, claiming that he had been attacked by bears on the mainland (which he drove oil with a Gatling gun), and was in great peril from a school of whales as he crossed to Victoria. From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on December 13, Santa was at the Westside (along with Cinderella) giving away boxes of candy (a thousand in the first hall hour alone!) at the grotto. Children were encouraged to follow a red line from Santa's Christmas tree to Santa’s dip pond, where ”you put your hand into a Big Red Box and draw out a prize every time.”
The advertisement makes no mention of cost, but the editorial coverage notes a ten-cent charge for the greened grotto and a nominal charge for the “dip” or fish pond. With 3,623 visitors on his first day alone, the commercial advantage taken of Clement Moore’s 1823 characterization of Santa is easily seen. It was not limited to the Westside alone, though. The Times devoted a full column to other stores’ efforts at decorating (some with an engraving of Santa) in a “battle of the windows,” which they described as “places of splendour.”
The effort paid off. The December 26, 1900 edition of the Times noted: “The holiday trade this year outran that of any previous season by a very large figure,” claiming it was due to “intelligent use of printer’s ink by the different firms of the city.”
Looking back, no newspaper of the time did a better job for advertisers than the Times, which used photos for illustration when other papers, especially in the developing prairie provinces, were still without line drawings. Indeed, some prairie communities had no newspapers at all with which to report Christmas celebrations.
Instead we must look to private correspondence. A collection of letters by Alice Rendall, who emigrated from England to Lloydminster, Saskatchewan in 1903, gives a good account of her first prairie Christmas. “There is to be a general gathering of the whole colony on Xmas day ... church services at 10:30, High Tea at 5, followed by a Concert [a “Musical Union” with 110 names on the list had been formed] and large Xmas tree for the children.” She explained it would be held in a large store lent for the occasion and, to conclude the festivities, “on Boxing Night we hope to hold a dance.”
A subsequent letter confirmed that all went as planned, and, indeed, there were additions to the festivities — a big feed prior to the concert, and the arrival of an “ideal ‘Santa Claus’” at the interval, who distributed gifts from the branches of the “prettily decorated” tree.
The periodical Western Churchman also gives a look at festivities across the prairies, and includes details on church services, decorative efforts, social events, and food enjoyed, despite hardships of winter weather and distances between settlements. Festive decorative touches mentioned included the importation of English ivy at Maple Creek, and ferns from the Pacific coast at Lethbridge in 1897. At Moose Jaw that year, the periodical indicated, “we have had a right merrie’Christmas” — an opinion based on a doubling of communicants at the Eucharist. Carols were also sung from printed booklets donated by a parishioner; a lantern service (early slide show) featured pictures of the Holy Land; and during Christmas week, children sang a cantata, “Santa Claus’ Mistake.”
In the larger centres, the commercial aspect of Christmas was starting to grow. Calgary, only seven years old as an incorporated city, had stores with a ”Christmas display unexcelled between Winnipeg and the coast,” the Herald reported on Christmas Eve 1900. “The prosperity of a place is known by its stores,” the newspaper continued, “and judging from the Christmas display ... Calgary must indeed be a most prosperous place.”
The text continued,“The excellence of goods kept in the Hudson’s Bay Stores all over the Territories, not to speak of Manitoba or British Columbia, are too well known to require any laudatory remarks [here], but the manager of the Calgary branch appears to have excelled himself in the purchasing line to judge from the stock that is now on hand.”
The Manitoba Morning Free Press noted “churchgoing could hardly be said to be the most prominent feature” of Christmas Day 1900 in Winnipeg. Perhaps the citizens were just too tired out from late-night shopping on December 24, when “throngs come out in force to view the brilliantly illuminated shop windows and make belated purchases of seasonable presents.”
A lengthy column entitled “How the World’ s Holiday was Observed in the Prairie City” noted the General Hospital was beautifully decorated with evergreens and with “colored lamps” on the children’s tree. Christmas Day menus at the Clarendon and Leland Hotels rivalled hotels in the biggest Canadian cities. Other columns noted that at the ‘B’ Squadron mess, decorations “surpassed ... former years,” and at the jail “prisoners were given quite a treat in accordance with the usual Christmas custom” — besides a bountiful roast beef dinner, oranges, and fruits, each man received a flourishing hyacinth plant. The hearts of fifty-five children at the annual Christmas tree entertainment of the Children’s Home were gladdened by the receipt of an abundant supply of “toys of great beauty and value,” an annual gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart of Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, in northern Canada, Madame Tremblay of Miller Creek provides a glimpse of a Yukon Christmas in 1894. Being the only woman in the area at the time, she decided, with her husband, to invite the twelve local miners for a Christmas dinner. Her invitation, according to Sam Holloway, who published her tales in Yukoner Magazine, was circulated on birchbark and included the admonition, “bring your own spoon, fork and knife.” She prepared stuffed rabbits, roast of caribou, brown beans au bacon. King Oscar sardines, evaporated potatoes, sourdough bread, prune pudding, and cake, and cut her own long skirt for the tablecloth. One prospector walked fifty kilometres to join the feast and brought a bottle of rum to “enhance our little celebration,” as Madame Tremblay wrote. After supper, when she gave permission to smoke, they filled their pipes and played cards through the evening. She concluded “all went home late, taking with them their own utensils.”
Six years later, the Dawson Daily News commented, “Christmas in the Yukon, while circumscribed by hard climatic conditions, can yet be made pleasant and cheerful by an exercise of the three great virtues. Faith, I lope and Charity.” Whether they knew Madame Tremblay’s story or not, they knew of and reported other similar celebrations that showed the spirit of the season alive and well in the Yukon a century ago.
In Quebec, there were varied situations. The English experience of Montreal differed little from that of Winnipeg or Victoria. An S. Carsley Co. Limited advertisement in the Montreal Daily Star would surely have enchanted the city’s children, as it contained a letter from Santa explaining how he would escape the Boer soldiers—a big news item that year as Canadian soldiers fighting in South Africa were scheduled to return home in time for Christmas. In fact, a program flyer has survived from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ontario, that details a special Christmas 1900 service to welcome 'B' Company home from the “Transvaal War.” Similar services for other churches were noted in newspapers countrywide.
A middle-class Manitoba family (below, right) sits down to Christmas dinner in 1908.
Toronto Reference Library.
French celebrations in Quebec, however, very much centred around the midnight Mass and the réveillon or festival meal that followed. Storytelling was included in the celebrations, and one story in particular, “The Loup Garou,” was oft-told. It concerned a mill owner who refuses to attend the Christmas Eve midnight Mass. As the church bell sounds the midnight hour, his mill stops dead. Investigating deep in the bowels of the mill, he meets the loup garou, the werewolf. He ends his days in an asylum.
To mark the turn of the century, the Toronto Star challenged leading Canadians to reflect on the milestone Christmas. Among the many responses was that of Toronto merchant Robert S. Gourley, who reflected that the world had passed through eighteen centuries of slow and costly development since the first Christmas.
“In Canada.” he continued, “We enjoy to the fullest measure of any country in the world the gathered fruits of this ... development.”
Now, another century has passed; a hundred more Christmases have come and gone. Christmas today is not what it was a hundred years ago, and we can be sure that a hundred years hence, it will be different than it is today. We can hope, however, as Gourley did in 1900, that it will still be a time to enjoy in fullest measure.
The nineteenth century ended in the South African War (Boer War) for several thousand Canadian soldiers. The Christmas edition of the Toronto Globe featured this illustration (below, left) of a returned soldier greeting his wife, mother, and sailor-suited son.”Welcome Home!” the caption read.
Provincial Archives of Manitoba.
David Goss is a columnist for the Telegraph-Journal in Saint John, New Brunswick. He is the author of Old Tyme Christmas in New Brunswick.