"I grew up in the United Kingdom, so these are the Christmas memories of my childhood:
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| Anna's home town of Brackley |
The day after Christmas is Boxing Day in England, traditionally the day when “boxes” of presents (socks, scarves, handkerchiefs, useful things) were given to the servants in the Great House, and to the tradesmen like the milkman who delivered the milk, the laundry woman, the gardener, etc. As a small child, it was my job to give the boxes to the –hopefully- grateful recipients. Boxing Day has nothing to do with throwing out the boxes that the Christmas presents came in, or with returning boxes to the mall.
Boxing Day remains a national holiday in the UK, but the giving out of boxes has died out. Now it’s a day to go shopping."
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From Eleanor Takahashi Inskip: This reminded me of my christmas 1941. After Dec. 7 that year all of a sudden my parents stopped teaching me German and Japanese words and songs. (My father came to the US from Japan in 1909, my mother in 1927 from Germany.) Right after Pearl Harbor someone came to the house and took our camera. I wasn't sure what was happening, but there was great saddness in my parents eyes. We put up a Christmas tree with real candles and on Christmas eve my mother very carefully lighted them. It would have been nice to have a picture of that tree and of the delight on my little brother's face. My brother had just had his 1st birthday in November. I turnd 6 on December 27 that year. That is a Christmas to remember.
After that we were evicted from our rented farm. A local farmer took pity on us and let us rent his two room sheep shed, It had a concrete floor and one window. Our local church hired my parents to clean the church every Saturday to get it ready for Sunday services. We were truck gardners. The police would stop my father as he was driving to the city to sell his produce. They searched the truck and were disappointed to only find crates of cabbages. The local newspaper took our photo and ran and article about the man and his family who were "all dressed up and nowhere to go" - we lost touch with friends across the border in Kansas because we were not allowed to leave the state. We were too poor to afford a dentist. Our friend in Kansas was a dentist and was making a set of dentures gratis for my mother. The upper plate was finished before Dec. 7. After the war her lower gums were too wore dowm to procede with making a lower plate.
I've always considered ourselves lucky because we were not sent to one of the relocation camps. THe first thing my parents did when they came to this country was learn English. Only recently have I discovered the book by a San Antonio author about the special relocation camp at Crystal City and realized how really lucky we were!
We always had real candles and never had a fire. Those were special Christmases. I always dreamed of a British mansion Christmas, the kind in the story books and the movies.
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