Classic Christmas Stories

by Frank Galgay

  The missionaries were, however, surprised and gratified by the great responsiveness and support of the settler families living in the area, who considered the new station their home.

  Next to the Inuit schoolteacher, Thomas, and the new chapel servant, Nathan, two settler families stood out in the congregation. Amos Voisey, who had once worked for a Moravian competitor, had joined the congregation at Zoar with his extended family, while the Merrifield family, living at Merrifield Bay, also came to consider it their spiritual home. Especially in those two families the missionaries saw the Spirit moving.

  The English settler Amos Voisey of Voisey’s Bay fame, originally a member of the church in Hopedale, sought spiritual counsel from the Zoar missionaries and later also entered into a business relationship with them, as did his son George, who was a member of the congregation.

  One evening, the spiritually troubled Amos had unburdened himself to missionary Peder Dam, asking him earnestly whether his sins could be forgiven. Dam answered that the resurrection of Jesus was witness that all sins had been borne by Christ, even those of Amos Voisey. For Voisey, a religious backslider, these words initiated a spiritual breakthrough.

  “Waking as from a dream, ” Dam wrote of this encounter, Voisey “exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, half-loud: ‘This is it! This is it! I was missing the resurrected Christ.’ Upon that he went home, and I recommended him to the faithful care of the Holy Spirit. Now he goes gladly about his way and is a friendly, very relaxed and happy man.”

  Changed lives in the Merrifield family also encouraged the missionaries at Zoar. Thomas’s wife, Elizabeth, became the first convert of the Zoar church. The daughter of James Lane and an Inuit woman by the name of Clara, Elizabeth lived a life without religious commitment until she met the Moravians at Zoar and became the first person baptized at the new station. Later, her adult daughter, Harriet, and her husband would follow her into membership.

  Also at Zoar, the last unconverted Inuit south of Nain, Itorsoak, the forty-three-year-old son of Pualo, was baptized in 1868 and received the Christian name of Jeremias. As the congregation, swollen to seventy-four people, crowded into the Zoar mission house on that Christmas Day in 1866, the missionaries tell us of an especially great religious intimacy and fellowship that was experienced by the assembled congregation.

  “We felt, ” the diarist of Zoar writes, “so real the blessing of His birth in the stable. Our visitors seemed to feel the same. Brother Merrifield said: ‘How delectable is such a celebration of the birth of our saviour! It is the first time in my life that I celebrate it in such a way. And I hope I will never return to my old ways.’”

  The weather worsened that Christmas Day so that all visitors had to remain at Zoar for longer than they had planned. But there were no complaints, as each enjoyed the company of the others and their Christian fellowship.

  Christmas in Labrador

  by E. S.

  CHRISTMAS TO ALL PEOPLE means the Birthday of The King; and secondly, meeting old friends and renewing acquaintances. But to children everywhere it is “Father Christmas Time.” To the boys and girls of Labrador, like those in England, it is an eagerly awaited event.

  Conversation, for many weeks before Christmas, centres around “Fat’er” Christmas and of what they would like him to bring them, and carols and new hymns are practiced for the Christmas Eve Service.

  About a week before the great day every boy and girl at school writes a letter to the “Present-Bringer.” How they assiduously write down all their “wants.” Some are quite modest, merely asking for a book, pencil, or hair-ribbon: one or two hope for new motor-boats and “komatiks” (sledges); while one little fellow, evidently with “high” ideas, wrote for an aeroplane!

  The tiny tots, just learning how to write, are the most anxious. These the teacher helps and must explain the meaning and importance of every stroke, word and comma. What paper, ink, time and thought is necessary before the letters are despatched (for all want Father Christmas to see their very best writing).

  The day draws nearer and there is much excitement. At last, December 23rd, lessons finish. Now to decorate the tree!

  Each has a little task to do and this is generally done on Christmas Eve morning. In the afternoon the younger scholars rest, whilst the others go for a walk, accompanied by the teachers on duty. At three-thirty begin preparations for service. They are all anxious to look their best, adorning themselves in Sunday array and giving an extra “polish” to hands and faces.

  As the clock strikes four the Children’s Service begins, a service attended not only by children, but every person in the village.

  The church is a lovely sight; at either side of the table are Christmas trees ablaze with lighted candles, while decorated round the walls and pillars are fir and spruce boughs. One could never forget the picture; the trees, lights, villagers and children.

  Little faces are flushed with excitement. Some who have never spent Christmas at school before, look dazed, others look wonderingly, as if they expect “Fat’er” Christmas to peep from behind the trees, yet on every face there is reflected the eternal message: “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

  After one or two hymns, prayers and a short address, the children sing one of their hymns. And how they have practised this! They stand and sing with gusto and confidence, but how relieved they are when the last notes die away. The choir, also, have “one glorious hour of life” and sing an anthem or two.

  The children again. This time singing “Morning Star, All-cheering Sight, ” and, as they sing, two of the Church servants enter, bearing pieces of turnips into each of which is placed a lighted candle.

  Watch the singers! Their eyes open wide, one or two look amazed and forget to sing, and as each receives a candle some of the boys (those farthest away from the teacher) even manage to nibble at the “candlestick.”

  There is great excitement when the missionary announces “that for the past few days tracks have been seen around the school, and might possibly be those of Father Christmas, so that if everyone went down to the school perhaps he would be calling.”

  The service ended, there is a general scramble to get to the schoolroom, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts joining with the children. When all are seated the children once more sing, this time “We’re All at Home for Christmas.” Loud footsteps are heard; the volume of sound dwindles rapidly, and “thud, thud!” . . . in comes Father Christmas!

  Every year he looks the same, neither older nor younger; the old red cloak, dog-skin boots and the same “peculiar” face. Happy face! Kind old face! Who would lose the spirit of childhood make-believe? He carries two sacks which the boys and girls eye with eager anticipation, but before the contents are displayed to “mortal” view he is allowed a few remarks. Isn’t it surprising how he knows who has been naughty!

  Now for the bags. Each is crammed full with parcels, all labelled, and, one by one, names are called, until all, old and young, have been given a present. In one bag are gifts, in the other Christmas cards, so kindly sent by friends at home. There are many exclamations of delight, chief of which is “Piojok, ” meaning “Fine.” Everyone happy, the party breaks up, the villagers returning home and the children marching in to supper, yet so excited are they that they forget to eat!

  Prayers follow and then bed, but not before stockings have been placed in readiness for Santa. About nine o’clock they are all in bed and seemingly asleep, and then the “Father (Mother) Christmases” begin their duties.

  The great day dawns and one is usually awakened by the sound of the village choir singing carols. The children are awake even before the choristers, and what joy there is when the signal is given for “stocking exploration.”

  At ten-thirty is the service, and how the children love to hear of Jesus, the Christmas Child. After dinner everyone is well wrapped up and off they go carol-singing. We are invited to enter every house in the village to see their Christmas trees. One of the most interesting visits is to “J
oshua’s” house. He usually has two trees, plentifully decorated with candles, and round the house are lighted candles and paper stars. He loves to sing to us in Eskimo; often he sings three or four hymns, and would sing more if only we had time to listen. Our visits over, we return to school, ready for an early supper. At half-past six we have our evening service of thanksgiving. The choir and children again give special anthems and hymns. Service ends with the children unusually tired and quite ready for bed. Yet the festivities are not ended.

  The following day (Boxing Day) is Children’s Day. On this day they have their own morning service. During the afternoon they have their Lovefeast, and in the evening another service in which old and young combine.

  So ends Christmas-time in Labrador enriching, as everywhere, the Greatest Truth that Christ came to bring peace on the earth and goodwill unto all mankind.

  A Christmas in Labrador

  by Hesketh Prichard

  The following article by Hesketh Prichard is taken from the Christmas number of M. A. P. It will, we are sure, be read with much interest.

  CONTRAST IS SURELY THE salt of enjoyment and delight, and in the ideal Christmas of my imagination I picture a wary individual battling his way through the snow behind his tired dog-team over the desolate country of the Labrador Peninsula.

  It is Christmas Eve, and already the short day is drawing in. The wind comes roaring down the gullies unladen by any hint of human presence. It has swept across the untenanted limitless leagues of the interior. It carries the promise of snow. Underfoot the ground is covered with a white cloak several feet in thickness. The one fear of the traveller is that he will not be able to reach his destination; indeed, he has almost given it up, and is looking for a sheltered, or comparatively sheltered, place in which to build his snow-hut, when, rounding yet another of the innumerable promontories, he sees before him the gleam and wink of lights. They are those of the Moravian mission station at Hopedale.

  The dogs see them, too, and lose their lassitude. In a very short time the komatik is drawn up outside the palisade, and the traveller is being welcomed by his friends. And such a welcome it is! Quite different from the welcome of a civilised land, for here men are allied closely in a struggle for existence; their common enemies are Hunger, Cold, and Darkness. “So you have come, after all, ” cries the House Father. “We were afraid you wouldn’t win through. This is splendid. Come in! Come in!” And the traveller enters, to meet a second welcome from the ladies of the mission, whose gracious and unselfish presence goes so far to render life less arduous in the inhospitable and lonely land.

  And now as the traveller sits down by the stove he knows and experiences all the joys of contrast. He is in the midst of European life transplanted. He thinks of the wind which is raging seaward upon the other side of the Hopedale promontories, of the snow-hut and labour of unharnessing his dogs, which so nearly has been his portion, as he discusses the news of the lonely coast.

  Instead he sees the ruddy lights of the mission-house shining on the snow and upon the squat forms of the Eskimo, who are attending to his komatik. And I think that he experiences one of the most joyous sensations in life.

  Next morning, after a long dreamless, tired sleep, he is awakened by the bell of the church. The scene upon which he looks out is like the pictured Christmas of boyish dreams—a flag is flying on the flagstaff, the glittering roofs gleam through the frosty air, and in the wild, straggling village on the hill the Eskimo hunters and fishermen are shaking hands in great good-fellowship.

  Later, from all the surrounding huts and from distances up to forty miles to the settlers, or planters, as they call themselves, throng in to service, which is in Eskimo and in English, and to spend Christmas Day.

  The missionaries, men who call Labrador “home” and whose fathers and grandfathers have been Moravian missionaries before them, have the power of making Christmas the happy and splendid day it should be. They transform the mission-house into a rest-house upon the road of life, and the stranger who is within their gates realizes what life on the Labrador coast would be without them. I think the ideal Christmas is one such as the Moravians spend in the eight months’ winter of Labrador.

  Around the Christmas Fireside

  by Nadie

  “Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly; the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passengers to raise the latch, and join the gossip-knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.”

  Christmas in Old England, Washington Irving

  AND SO IT WAS in the good old times in St. John’s, before there were so many attractions to induce those of the home-circle to spend their Christmas otherwise than gathered round the Yule log on their own hearth-stone; and so it is yet in many outports, where the neighbours cluster round the Christmas fire and beguile the long evenings with “legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.” Where such a proportion of the people go down to the sea in ships, and wrestle for their daily bread in deep and angry waters, they always have to pay the toll; and so it happens that very few merry-makings, but are sobered at the thought, and many eyes dimmed in memory of those who, perhaps, in the preceding year, were “noisiest of the merry throng, ” and many a heart sighs for those who nevermore will gladden their sights in this world, and say with the poet:

  “This year I slept, and woke with pain;

  I almost wished no more wake,

  And that my hold on life would break

  Before I heard those bells again.”

  Amongst the stories and folk-lore detailed around the Christmas fire in Newfoundland, tales of wreck and disaster at sea, unfortunately, claim too much attention, and as befitting a people, the greater portion of whose lives are spent on the water, those tales are often tinged with an undercurrent of mystery, that makes it hard for an unbiased listener to distinguish where fact ceases and imagination holds sway. The belief in omens, warnings, apparitions, and other uncanny subjects, is so universal that it cannot be despised or ignored by the most unimaginative.

  In very many places around our coast, even to-day, it is firmly believed by thousands, that in coves, or on headlands, where ships have come to grief, with the loss, perhaps, of all on board, that sometimes, especially before the coming of a storm, voices are heard calling, calling, and as the storm rages, the voices of the dead mariners rise higher and shriller than those of the angry winds and waters.

  “Each voice four changes on the wind,

  That now dilates and now decrease.”

  And those who hear it, if they be on shore, hasten out of the reach of the terror-inspiring phenomena.

  Years ago, it was said, that out near Freshwater Bay, on the coming of a storm, voices would be heard; the same is true of many other places on the coast, where vessels have been lost.

  Near St. Shott’s and Chance Cove, and the other points along that coast, which has earned for itself the gruesome name of the “graveyard of the Atlantic, ” many people will tell you that the calling of unearthly voices is still heard.

  In the gale of the year 1816, the transport Harpooner was lost near Cape Pine, and for many years after (and maybe to-day for that matter), it was believed that the cries of the drowned could always be heard at the coming of a storm, I heard the tale many years ago, and afterwards came across an account of it extracted from the English papers, and was surprised how nearly the oral account tallied with the official record of the officers. The narrator, from whom I heard the tale, had in turn heard it from a man who saw and helped the survivors, when they arrived in St. John’s in 1816. I had always treated the wreck, and incidents connected with it, such as the warnings and the voices, as more or less legendary, but since I have read the official account, I have often wondered, after all, if there be no more things in Heaven and earth than are counted in our philosophy. The account of the wreck is interesting from various standpoints, principal
ly because when all human agencies failed, the survivors were saved through the intelligence and sagacity of a Newfoundland dog.

  On the 27th of October, 1816, the transport Harpooner, Joseph Briant, master, sailed from Quebec, bound to Deptford, with detachments of the Fourth Royal Veteran Battalion and their families, in all 380 souls. On arriving in the Gulf, the weather proved boisterous, and so foggy was it, that they could not get an observation for several days. On Sunday night, the 10th of November, while beating under close-reefed and greatly reduced canvas, she suddenly struck on the outermost rock of St. Shott’s, near Cape Pine. She beat over, and proceeded, when she struck again with terrific force; the seas, mountains high, dashed over her; in a few minutes her timbers were crushed like the pipe-stems, and above and below decks all was awash.

  Who can paint the terror and despair of those unfortunate men, women and children on that black, November night, with the tempestuous winds screeching through the rigging like the voices of Furies, the angry sea surging over the ship’s yards, and washing to destruction those who were not holding to something for grim life; no land in sight; impossible to launch a boat, even had they not been smashed to matchwood; and nothing before them but despair and death in its most appalling and fearsome shape. The mind almost faints at the contemplation of their distress, and mere words could never describe it.

  From about eleven o’clock, on this dark, stormy night, till four o’clock next morning, these poor unfortunates were clinging to what was left of the wreck, praying for God to send the daylight. To heighten the terror and alarm, when the ship fell over on her larboard beam ends, a lighted candle in the captain’s cabin set fire to some spirits that were stored there. The attention of all hands was arrested for a short time, and after a vigorous fight they succeeded in putting out the fire, and thus escaping death by burning. But the relentless sea rushed in, and carried away the berths and stanchions between decks, and amidst the most despairing and indescribable scenes, men, women and children were washed out into the inky blackness, and in a moment, their last, appealing cries were blent with the voices of the tempest, and forever ceased to be human. One boat remained, and at dawn it was lowered down from the stern, and the first mate and four seamen, at the risk of their lives, made for the shore. They, with difficulty, succeeded in effecting a landing on the mainland, behind a high rock, nearest from the rock that the boat had been “stoved.” The log-line was thrown from the wreck, but the tremendous surf that beat rendered it impracticable. When despair was once more seizing them, the possibility of sending another line ashore by dog occurred to the master. The animal was brought aft, and thrown into the sea, with a line tied around his middle, and with it, he swam toward the rock upon which the mate and seaman were standing.