Father Christmas Finds Our Family
by Anne J. Fotheringham

It was two days before Christmas in 1957 and I was crying, sobbing my heart out into a pillow on our neighbour’s sofa.

Their living-room was decorated to bursting with every type of Christmas ornament imaginable and, in the middle, a Coca Cola sign blinked on and off. Mr. Gorman, our neighbour, ran the local Coca Cola bottling plant and their house was a living display of everything Coke.

So why was I crying in the middle of all this Christmas cheer? Because I knew in my heart that Father Christmas would not be visiting us this year.

We had arrived from England in late November, a week-long transatlantic ocean trip. Then there had been the crowded train ride from Saint John, N.B., to Fredericton Junction. Red Cross ladies had doled out advice to the passengers, mostly immigrants like ourselves, and given toys to the children. We had been deposited on a lonely strip of railway platform lit by one dim light and were assured by the railway conductor that this was indeed our destination. Surrounded by what appeared to be impenetrable forest, the three of us stood there alone with our baggage watching the train disappear round the bend, absolutely sure the conductor had made a mistake.

But he hadn’t. We heard the sound of a car door closing and our welcoming committee, a frazzled lady, rounded the corner of the dark depot. A quick hello and she bundled us into what appeared to be a huge car - definitely bigger than any British car we had ever ridden in -and then drove us to a hotel. The next day we were moved to a rented house along with all our trunks and our new life began.

New school - not too bad. New friends - okay. A different way of life - difficult. And tons of snow - big shock.

My parents and I had worked hard over the past four weeks to adapt and we were doing pretty well. But the Canadian Christmas phenomenon was strange to us and I was convinced that we would be totally left out of the celebrations.

Ever since I was small, I remembered us taking a bus to the market on Christmas Eve so we could buy our tree. It had to be the right size - or we couldn’t carry it all the way home. We didn’t have a car. We carried the tree together, making sure it didn’t pick up any dirt from the coal-encrusted pavements in our town. When we got home, we put it up and sang Christmas carols. After dinner, it was time for bed.

Once we were all in bed, Father Christmas would arrive with the elves and fairies to work his magic. And he didn’t come to houses where children were still awake.

On Christmas morning, my parents would open the living-room door and I would step into a world of wonder - paper streamers, bright lights, a beautifully decorated tree, stockings, presents.

Here in Canada it seemed Christmas had started in early November, before our ship had even docked in this new world. Decorations were everywhere - in the streets, the stores, the school, my friends’ homes. Christmas was also on everyone’s mind. For us it was culture shock and my parents refused to give in and join the holiday frenzy.

.Our Christmas ornaments, packed away lovingly when we left England, were still in the trunks. For us, Christmas started on Christmas Eve and no sooner.

I was so sure that because our tradition was different, Father Christmas, or Santa Claus as he was called in Canada, would bypass our house. We hadn’t done any decorating to catch his attention. Worse than that was the fact that we were renting the home of another family with one little girl and they had gone to Florida for three months. Surely this Santa Claus was expecting to find her down there and would skip this address on his list, thinking the place to be empty. And why should he think otherwise? Not a light, not a streamer, not even a wreath indicated the slightest interest in Christmas on the part of the people living there right now.

Today I had been sent to Mrs. Gorman’s house while my parents were out desperately looking at apartments as we only had the rental house until Feb 28 and we had to find a home. And seeing all her decorations had set off the crying jag as I despaired of Father Christmas ever finding us.

“What’s wrong sweetie? Missing your friends at home? Come here.” Mrs. Gorman coaxed me out of the pillow where I was sobbing, her deep arms encircled me and she pulled me onto her lap. She dabbed at my eyes with a Kleenex - another Canadian innovation. We used cloth hankies that my mother carefully laundered and ironed every week.

Goaded on by Mrs. Gorman’s insistence that I could tell her my woes, I let it all out. The prospect of no Christmas, no Father, er, Santa Claus, no magic, no tree. It was all too much. I was eight years old, my world was in chaos and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Mrs. Gorman let me finish my tale and then made me hot chocolate. All the time she kept assuring me that Santa would find me. “He knows all, sees all.” She made him sound like the allseeing, all-knowing God our Scottish minister droned on about on Sundays down at the Presbyterian Church. Elves, she told me, were scattered around the globe watching all the children, taking notes for Santa. They’d find me.

Now I was getting paranoid. I had grown up with my mother’s stories about her wartime experiences in the foreign office and of how her native country Belgium had been betrayed by fifth columnists. She had always told me to be on my guard for spies. Now I had tattletale elves to deal with too.

To divert my attention from my woes, Mrs. Gorman switched to the subject of what I was getting my parents for Christmas. I started to cry again. I had no money. In England, I had received a sixpence every week as allowance. A sixpence went quite far. In Canada, the dime resembled the sixpence in size so that was deemed to be my allowance. However the value was not equivalent. I had been in Canada four weeks. I had 40 cents. And I knew from trips to the store with my mother it wasn’t going to allow me to get my parents any great gifts.

Distressed, Mrs. Gorman sat down and we talked about what I could make or find as presents for Mum and Dad. We decided I would make a home-made card and that I would give my father my collection of Empress of Britain plastic swizzle sticks. The kids on the steamship had made a game out of darting into the various bars on board and stealing the sticks from empty drink glasses. The stewards laughed and nobody bothered us. I had 15 blue and white swizzle sticks I could give to my Dad.

“That will be great for your dad’s bar,” Mrs. Gorman said.

Everyone in this strange land seemed to have a bar in something they called a “rec room” which was located in a “basement.” In England, we moved upstairs into attics. In Canada, people dug beneath the house and created basements with rec rooms complete with bars. It seemed backwards to me. And we certainly had never had a bar in our house in England.

Anyway, I was glad about using the stir sticks as a gift if Mrs. Gorman was - obviously I was going to be giving my dad something very Canadian. That left my mother and I hadn’t a clue what to get her. “Aha,” said Mrs. Gorman. She dashed out of the room and came back with an armload of fuzzy spongy blue and yellow items. “Coasters,” she declared triumphantly. “I got them free with my Whisk detergent. We have tons. Here’s six for your mother. They can go into the bar too.”

I was feeling better. Now I had two great Canadian-style gifts for my parents and I could make a card at home. That just left the problem of Santa’s visit and the decorations. Mrs. Gorman said she’d chat with my Mum and see if she could get her to put up the decorations a little earlier so the elf spies could let Santa know where I was.

Whether Mrs. Gorman spoke to my mother or not, I’ll never know. The morning of Christmas Eve my mother told me my father was bringing home the tree after work so we had better get all the decorations unpacked. Carefully we unearthed each glass item - only two breakages. We had even brought our own tinsel and streamers as we weren’t sure which version of Canada to believe - the one the officials at Canada House had told us about or the one with Eskimos and cowboys that everyone else spoke about. “Might as well get the streamers up,” my Mum said. With great delight I helped her put up as many of the decorations as we could, leaving the ones for the tree to the side. My mother fashioned an ornament for the front door out of some ribbons and a couple of fake fir branches that we had also brought with us - unsure if they had fir trees in Canada - who knew?

My Dad brought the tree home tied to the top of a neighbour’s car. We couldn’t have carried the tree and walked home from Fredericton across the bridge over the St. John River with it - we would have frozen to death. We put up the tree and, after supper, I dutifully went to bed with a book. Lights out half an hour later and I couldn’t sleep. I lay there in dark listening for sleigh bells, hoping and praying that all the decorating hadn’t been too late, that the funny-looking decoration on the front door would catch Santa’s eye and that the elf spies got the word back to him in time. Finally I did fall asleep only to wake up in the light of a grey Christmas morning. I scrambled out of bed and looked out the window. It was snowing so no reindeer tracks were visible. I was scared to go downstairs but finally I did, step by step. The living-room door was open and I could see flashing lights. I tore down the rest of the steps and ran inside.

There was the tree sparkling with lights. All our ornaments were on it as well as some I had never seen before, among them a beautiful angel on the top. Surrounding the tree were the two presents I had lovingly wrapped for my parents, an envelope containing the card I had made and, wonder of wonders, a doll’s high chair, a doll’s baby carriage and, the biggest surprise of all, a child-sized Singer sewing machine. Two or three more gifts sat under the tree as well. I turned to find my parents standing in the doorway. I ran over and hugged them. “He found us, he did,” I shouted.

“So he did dear,” my mother said. “Ahena hoona heena hoon,” said my father in his Scottish brogue and gave me a kiss. We all sat down on the floor and watched the tree lights for a while. Then my mother handed out the stockings and gifts. My parents seemed very happy with my gifts for the bar they hoped they would soon have in the basement rec room of our new home. They loved my card and my Mum said she was glad all the words were spelled correctly. I should have known right then that she would end up becoming a teacher.

There were gifts from the Gorman family and several of the other neighbours as well. The best gift of all was a stuffed toy tiger who, I am proud to say, shared my bed until I was 12. He’s in retirement now in the back of my son’s closet.

That Christmas was a special one and, though we have lived through many more and our family has grown, we always remember every Christmas Eve that first year when Father Christmas found our family and brought us magic in a new land.