Classic Christmas Stories

by Frank Galgay

  The little Esquimaux Andrew has painted his “komatik” (or sleigh), and has put on the finishing touches, in the shape of two diamonds made of whalebone. And now all is ready, the morning so long wished for dawns at last, the gifts have been presented, loving greetings exchanged, and the joy of the young folks is complete. Dinner is served, the dogs are harnessed, the “komatik” brought to the door and, enveloped in buffalo, bear, and other skins, with many injuctions to the drivers to take care of the rapids, the rosy, laughing crowd are tucked in the coach-box, and, with one crack of the whip and signal to the head dog, they are gone.

  Their destination is the Mission House, seven miles away. Half-way on the road stands a large comfortable house, with a huge wood-pile before the door; this is “grandmama’s, ” and here the merry band get out. Grandmama is waiting for them. She, too, has not been idle. She has some little present made by her own busy fingers, for each of them, and as they enter the door, each rosy cheek is pressed in turn in her loving embrace, the packages are opened, the little gifts presented, and again, with many good wishes, the happy group are once more en route, this time for the Mission House. Here the good pastor is ready with a cordial greeting, and he, too, has something for each boy and girl. During the long winter evenings, and often far into the night, he has stolen time from his busy labors to paint a bookmark, or Christmas card, a souvenir which in after days and, perhaps, far away scenes, will bring back the memory of his loving words and earnest, faithful counsel to those giddy young folks.

  The decorations of the school-room are also the work of his busy fingers and untiring brain.

  The journey thus far over, the festivities of the evening commence, consisting of songs, recitations, tableau vivant, and last, but not least, a monster Christmas tree. So the time passes, and all too quickly comes the hour of returning.

  The journey home, however, is very different from the outward one, for during the night a heavy gale of wind has arisen and broken up the outside bay, and it will be necessary to wait two or three days to allow the ice to get thick enough to travel on. At length the start is made, and for a while the progress is smooth and safe enough, but when they come to the outside bay, it is not yet frozen over, so there is nothing for it but to take a boat. They are accordingly transferred from the warm “komatik” to the open boat, and now the struggle commences. It is bitterly cold, and as the boat moves slowly through the water the ice is forming fast and threatens to hold it in its deadly embrace, while the strong current is drifting rapidly seaward.

  Our party, however, had met at the mouth of the river a group of four or five young men from the Westward, also bound down for the Christmas festivities—tall, stalwart fellows, every one of them. With steady hands they grasp the oars, and while some of them break the ice, the others pull through slowly, and with great difficulty, till at length the firm ice is again reached, the party transferred to the “komatik, ” and soon the welcome lights of home shine out, as, wearied and cold and numbed they reach the open door. Quickly they are divested of their furs and wraps, the half frozen limbs rubbed and warmed; the supper table is soon spread: a huge haunch of venison, stuffed and roasted, a large piece of beef, roast partridges, mince pies, bowls of bake-apple and red berry preserve, and the famous Christmas pudding being some of the good things under which the large table groans again, and to which our travellers do ample justice, the last few hours’ vigorous exercise of the muscles contributing not a little to their enjoyment of the repast.

  The table is again cleared, and then the young folks engage in games, which bring the merry Christmastide to a close.

  On the morrow, the party, numbering twenty or more, disperse to their homes, the quiet moon shines out with that peculiar brilliancy known only in these regions of intense frost, and that strange silence, broken only by the sound of the aurora borealis flashing through the still night air, or the ice cracking in the landwash, settles down over the scene. So ends one of our Christmastides in the Far North.

  Christmas in Labrador

  by W. T. Grenfell, C. M. G., M. D

  WHEN I FIRST WENT to the Coast, Christmas day in Labrador was very little different from any other day in the year. For, notwithstanding a perfect setting for an old-fashioned Christmas—crackling snow, gorgeous sunshine and plenty of trees—what is the good of a Christmas tree if you have nothing to put on it; or of gathering your relatives to eat a Christmas goose if you haven’t even a seagull to offer for their entertainment?

  In North Labrador, where the Moravian missionaries have been working among the Eskimo for something like 130 years, Easter is the great festival. At that time of all others in the year the people assemble at the Mission station. All the congregation is dressed in white, and they have a great feast together.

  Here is a country where of necessity little or no attention is paid to child life, which is, of course, the very nucleus of the Christmas festival. The people are miserably poor, and even when a trapper or fisherman was so fortunate as to be able to afford a doll for his little girl, I have often seen it nailed up on the wall of his cottage, well out of the reach of longing fingers. Not that the doll was much to boast of, for it was probably a wretched specimen at best.

  Then, too, in the more northerly districts of Labrador the people live at long distances from each other; often purposely, that one man’s trapping ground may not encroach on his neighbour’s territory. Thus any sort of social life is next to impossible. If your nearest neighbour lives at a distance of sixty miles away, it is unlikely that you will be running over to pay him a morning call every other day, particularly if you happen to be a woman, and have the duties of a house and a large family upon you. Moreover, even if the people do live nearer each other, there is often no school to serve as a centre, and where one does exist, as likely as not it closes with “the close of open water.”

  It is hard to realise the complete and utter solitude of children born in a land where, from November to June, they are cut off from all communication with the outside world, except such as come to some by an occasional and perfunctory dog mail. Even in summer, the mail boat may only visit certain settlements once or twice. In the winter months the sea, the people’s main thoroughfare, is frozen for fifty miles out from the land, and the country itself is covered with a mantle of snow six to ten feet deep in places. Here and there are drifts which may surprise a householder any morning by forcing him to dig out his front door by beginning at the roof.

  To us, born in England and accustomed to consider the winter utterly incomplete without Christmas, it seemed a deplorable thing that here were children with a capacity for the enjoyment of toys and games, and an appreciation for the meagerest of attentions which is unsurpassed in the children at home, with never a chance to own a doll or a soldier, and who had not so much as a card of Father Christmas. So we started and collected some boxes of toys, which we send around during the summer to as many settlements as we can supply.

  When Christmas time comes, some local paterfamilias, or perhaps the doctor at one of the little hospitals, assumes the role of Father Christmas. Then the children who are by any possibility within walking distance in Labrador . . . assemble for the great event of the winter.

  Sometimes a tiny spruce tree is dragged over the snow and the presents hung on it.

  But there is no tinsel or lighted candles, no fruit or holly or flowers. The simplest of simple gifts will, however, evoke exclamations of wonder and delight from the small recipient, and often from his elders as well. I have seen a penny whistle regarded with as much amazed and grateful venerations as if it were a real Stradivarius.

  One Christmas a half-breed Eskimo, by the name of Shuglo, started out two days before Christmas for the Hudson Bay Post at Rigolette, to buy some supplies so that this his family might enjoy a “lassie loaf” on Christmas Day. Early in the winter he had shot a white partridge (ptarmigan), which his wife carefully preserved in our inexpensive and almost universal cold storage, so as to have some fres
h fowl for the Christmas dinner.

  In the second week in December he found a good lynx in one of his traps. Here was a Christmas indeed; for the pelt would bring in at least ten dollars at the Post, and that meant fats and molasses until Easter. There were only four in the family now, for as it happened, two years before I had found them starving miserably and almost naked, trying to find shelter at the approach of winter under the ice of some rocks. At that time I persuaded the father and mother to give me two of the boys so that I might put them in our children’s Home. Then we had moved the remaining members of the family to a place where the father could get work for the winter. Since then their fortunes had bettered materially, till this year of which I am speaking, they were able to “reach to fats.”

  On Christmas Eve, Shuglo started home from the Post bringing with him the cherished molasses and oleo-margarine, and even six tins of milk. At sunset a driving blizzard set in, so he was unable to find the trail. Two days later his wife found him frozen to death, only a mile and a half from his own door.

  Soon after I went to the Coast, I remember hearing of a trapper who lived just north of the Straits of Belle Isle. All communications between Labrador and Newfoundland is cut off during the winter owing to the running ice in the Straits. The tide drives in with such force that the channel, though only nine miles across in places, is never completely frozen over. So a man catching furs in Labrador cannot cross over and market them in Newfoundland, but has to wait till the trader comes in the spring. Or, if there is a station near enough, he may be able to sell them or exchange them for supplies at some Hudson Bay Post.

  This particular trapper, Mackenzie, had caught three white foxes before Christmas. He was very anxious to spend the day with his family. So he toiled for two days and two nights through the drifts of snow and thick drogues of forest, carrying his foxes with him. On the way he shot a rabbit, and added it to the collection in his “nonny bag.”

  When he arrived home he found his wife and children with nothing to eat in the house, no neighbours within twenty miles, and no chance of selling his three skins till the spring came, and with it open water. So the whole family had taken to the “Komatik track, ” and spent Christmas Day trying to reach a neighbour’s house, where they could, at least, get some dry flour to eat. There they stayed till his larder was empty, whereupon both families took to the road again, in search of the next neighbour. So they kept on till the winter ended.

  One of my nurses asked a little girl this year if she had enjoyed her Christmas. “My, yes, ” was the delighted reply, “I had half an apple all to myself!”

  One Christmas I was called to see a sick man living at a distance of some twenty miles from hospital. I was eager to get back in time to assume the role of Father Christmas in the festivities next evening. Christmas morning I was summoned to the village of St. Karl’s to see a little boy who had been out on the ice the evening before trying to shoot a gull for the family’s Christmas dinner. His foot slipped, the gun had exploded, and the shot had shattered his knee joint.

  The short December day was already closing and the sun had sunk back of the line of hills which loomed up dark against a dull red sky, when we finally pulled up at the door of the shack. When I entered the house, the child was lying stretched out on the floor, his knee swathed in a mass of blood-stained rags, and his broken-hearted mother was kneeling beside him weeping.

  It took only a moment’s examination to see that if we would hope to save the lad’s limb and possibly his life, we must get him to hospital at once. We laid the injured leg on to a board and strapped it fast, so as to run as little risk as possible of further damage to it on the journey. I then started off on the first komatik, and the little patient, accompanied by his father and an elder brother, were to follow me on a second.

  But what of the children and the long delayed Christmas tree? Could we get back in time? It seemed as if the dogs themselves knew how eager we were, for as they rolled away behind us, and the moon rose over the hill at our left and appeared to watch us with friendly interest.

  Then the lights of St. Anthony began to twinkle in the distance, and five minutes later we brought up at the hospital door. At first the children took me for Father Christmas, but I explained to them I had brought him from the North Pole, and he would be along directly. Sure enough, at that moment up came the two men. They were dressed in furs, their beards covered in frost, and on their sleigh they had the unmistakable box. The children fell back rather awe-struck as the men carried their burden in through the hospital door. Surely that box must be full of toys for them!

  Fifteen minutes later they were ushered into the room where the gaily decorated tree was standing. They had their Christmas toys, but we were given an even better present—the chance to save a little boy’s life.

  How Santa Claus Came to Cape St. Anthony

  by Wilfred T. Grenfell

  A UNIVERSAL ROBE OF white had long covered our country-side, hiding every vestige of our rocky soil, and every trace of the great summer fishery. The mail steamer had paid its last visit, for six months, and thus the link with civilization was broken. Even the loitering sea-ducks and lesser auks had left us. The iron grip of winter lay on sea and shore.

  At its best, the land here scarcely suggests the word “country” to a southerner—scarcely even the word “moors.” For the rock is everywhere close to the surface, and mosses and lichens are its chief products. The larger part of the country we call “barrens.” Few of the houses deserve even to be called cottages, for all are of light, rough wood. Most are of only one story, and contain but two rooms. The word “huts” would convey a more accurate idea of these humble abodes. The settlements themselves are small and scattered, and at this time the empty tilts of the summer fishermen give a still more desolate aspect to these lonely habitations.

  Early in December we had been dumped from the little mail steamer on the harbour ice about half a mile from shore, and hauled up to the little Mission hospital, where we were to make our headquarters for the winter. The name of our harbour was St. Anthony. Christmas was close upon us. The prospect of enjoying the conventional pleasures of the season was not bright. Not unnaturally our thoughts went over the sea to the family gathering at home, at which our places would be vacant. We should miss the holly and mistletoe, the roast beef and plum-pudding, the inevitable crackers, and the giving and receiving of presents, which had always seemed essential to a full enjoyment of the Christmas holiday.

  We soon found that few of the children here had ever possessed a toy; and that there was scarcely a single girl that owned a doll. Now and again one would see, nailed high up on the wall, well out of reach of the children, a flimsy, cheaply painted doll; and the mother would explain that her “Pa had got un from a trader, sir, for thirty cents. No, we don’t allow Nellie to have it. ’feared lest she might spoil un”—a fear I found to be only too well grounded, when I came to examine its anatomy more closely.

  Christmas-trees in plenty grew near the hospital; and we could easily arrange for a “Father Christmas.” The only question was, whether our stock of toys would justify us in inviting so many children as would want to come. It is easy to satisfy children like these, however, and so we announced that we expected Santa Claus on a certain day. There was great talk about the affair. Whispers reached us that Aunt Mary thought her Joe weren’t too big to come; sure, he’d be only sixteen. May White was only going to be eighteen, and she would so like to come. Old Daddy Gilliam would like to sit in a corner. He’d never seen a Christmas-tree, and he was nigh on eighty. We were obliged to yield, and with guilty consciences expected twice as many as the room would hold. All through the day before the event the Sister was busy making buns; and it was even whispered that a barrel of apples had been carried over to the “Room.”

  In the evening a sick call carried me north to a tiny place on the Straits of Belle Isle, where a woman lay in great pain, and by all accounts dying. The dogs were in great form, and travelling was
fair enough till we came to a great arm of the sea, which lay right in our path, and was only recently caught over with young ice. To reach the other shore we had to make a wide detour, bumping our way along the rough edge of the old standing ice. Even here the salt water came up through the snow, and the dogs sank to their shoulders in cold mush that made each mile half a dozen. We began to think that our chance of getting back in time on the morrow was small indeed. We were also wondering that it seemed to be a real disappointment to ourselves that we should miss the humble attempt at Christmas keeping.

  One thing went a long way toward reconciling us to the disappointment. The case we had come to see proved to be one in which skilled help was of real service. So were contented company round the log fire in the little hut, as we sat listening to stories from one and another of the neighbours who, according to custom, had dropped in to see the stranger. Before long my sleeping bag was loudly calling to me after the exercise of the day. “We must be off by dawn, Uncle Phil, for there’s no counting on these short days, and we have promised to see that Santa Claus is in time for the Christmas-tree to-morrow night at St. Anthony.” Soon, stretched out on the floor, we slept as soundly as in a feather bed.

  Only a few minutes seemed to have passed when, “’T will be dawning shortly, Doctor, ” in the familiar tones of my driver’s voice came filtering into my bag. “Right you are, Rube; put the kettle on and call the dogs; I will be ready in a couple of shakes.”

  Oh, what a glorious morning! An absolute stillness and the air as sweet as sugar. Everywhere a mantle of perfect white below, a fathomless depth of cloudless blue overhead, —and the first radiance of the coming day blending one into the other with a rich transparent red. The bracing cold made one feel twenty years younger. We found it a hard job to tackle up the dogs, they were so mad to be off. As we topped the first hill the great bay they had caused us so much trouble lay below us, and my driver gave a joyous shout, “Hurrah, Doctor! There’s a lead for us.” Far out on the ice he spied a black speck moving towards the opposite shore. A komatik had ventured over the young ice, and to follow it would mean a saving of five miles to us.