Members Stories

Christmas Treats

It was the year 1932, right in the middle of New Zealand's worst depression in a country gold mining town of Waihi.

As a five to six year old, life was full of Christmas expectations for me. This was shared by most of the ten children in our family. It must be said though, that the four older ones in our family were out working at live-in jobs as farm hands for the boys and housekeeping for the girls.

The Intermediate School age members (the non-Santa believers) no doubt would be as keen to receive what goodies were in the offing as us younger ones. "Goodies in the offing" you may ask? Goodies in a household with all those children to feed and care for by a widowed woman in her forties? They were the hard realities she just had to endure.

Mother had to drip-feed a shilling or two per week to the local stationery shop during the year to ensure a Christmas present was put aside for all of us. How she concealed that large number of presents from us, we never did discover.

During the week all hands were engaged making our own Christmas decorations which included coloured paper streamers, cut out Santas from magazines and hand drawn Christmas cards. It became an art in itself to decorate the kerosene lamp that hung from the centre of the kitchen ceiling. How the streamers never caught fire from the heat off the lamp, one will never know.

Christmas Eve I guess, as in all small country towns, was a special event as all the family dressed up in their best clothes and went up town to do the Christmas shopping. In our case us kids didn't have pocket money - so Christmas presents, even for poor Mum, were out of the question. Santa naturally, was the big draw card. He walked through town and sparingly dished out free lollies to the under ten year olds - with complements from the local Businessman's Association one can only guess, although the Miner's Union I know were always keen to see the children did not miss out.

The men, accompanying their wives, were continually raising their hats in respect to women they knew to wish them season's greetings.

Season's greetings, were in the main, a few days holiday in those times. It was not until 1938 that the 40 hour week plus two weeks paid holiday was introduced by the Micky Savage Government. But just the same, the Christmas spirit meant as much, if not more to everyone in those days. Apart from Santa, a weird but spritely man, heavily disguised, had dozens of small lolly bags pinned all over his overcoat. He would come running out of a well known retail store to head down town with all and sundry over ten year olds in hot pursuit of a bag of lollies as they dropped off his coat.

Some teenagers had purchased their own water pistols and with plenty of warm mineral water from the Martha mine running down the gutters through town, they had a ready source of water to refill the pistols to continue the water fights. One lady, I well remember, endeavoured to intervene, much to her sorrow, as the teenagers turned their pistols on her. Delinquency was never a modern craze!

Gathering the family together, traipsing home was next on the agenda. Who can recall the excitement going to bed on Christmas Eve with the knowledge that Santa was to come during the night? Such anticipation kept me awake well past sleep time.

To be expected, the slightest sound next morning had the whole household wide-awake and out of bed to be first to examine the Christmas stockings that hung from the bed railings. In this case there was a double bed where three boys slept, a three quarter bed which accommodated two boys and the oldest boy who worked had the luxury of a single bed to himself - all six of us in one room!

The bun-fight then started to find the stocking with your name on it. Stockings, as I remember them, were made of red toughened onion sacking. We could easily identify the items and by memory there was an orange - something we were denied during the year through lack of money. A handful of mixed nuts in their shells, a good number of mixed lollies, some small toy cake tins (good for making mud pies), a tin whistle, clicker bugs, etc.

A prize, we thought was a small glider made of balsa wood. This toy was launched with the aid of a piece of wire and a rubber band, shanghai style. Unfortunately, such a delicate toy should only be launched in open spaces with no obstructions to its flight. In our case, they either struck a tree, the outhouse, cowshed, or fowl run. Subsequently their life span was very short.

My twelve year old sister that year received her first dole!

An added prize for us two younger members of the family was a brightly coloured tin racing car and an aeroplane presented to us by a cousin who came to stay for Christmas. My brother Les was so excited that he ran next door to show the neighbour's kids his racing car and because their family's financial circumstances were worse than ours, one boy took hold of the car and twisted in up into a knot and handed it back to my brother. Needless to say, relations between the two households were very strained for some time.

When the novelty of Santa's visit waned, the next thing was breakfast of Weetbix and creamy milk from our own cows, and toast browned over the coal embers in the coal range. Homemade butter and plum jam was thickly spread over the toast.

All hands were then called upon to peel the potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and of course there was the annual argument over who was to shell the peas. This job was always in demand and to stop the incessant munching we were told to "keep whistling" until this chore was completed. Mutton or pork was placed in dripping in a camp oven then surrounded with potatoes, kumara and pumpkin to cook and brown in the oven. The only time we had chicken in our household was on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Any hen that went off laying, lost its head. Us younger ones always had the job of plucking and gutting the chooks.

Mother always mixed the Christmas pudding, placed it in a piece of old sheet and boiled it in a large pot on the coal range. This could be made a week before Christmas and re-heated on Christmas Day. Traditionally sixpences and threepenny pieces were saved during the year to be placed in the pudding - a practice discontinued in 1947 due to a change in the contents of the coins when silver was exchanged for nickel.

In later years, when older members of our family married and had children of their own, Christmas really became a major event with up to twenty-five mouths to feed. A tent on the lawn was the most practical way to cope with the overflow.

Percy Allison
December 1995