by Arleen Macpherson
Published in December 1998
Christmas Past
I love this time of the year for all the treasured memories of Christmases past that come flooding in. I get to enjoy once again the Christmases of my childhood spent in the little Northern Ontario village of Gowganda.
Gowganda was a small mining, lumbering, fishing, hunting, and tourist town with a population of about 250 permanent residents. The population count fluctuated according to the level of the nearby mine and lumber activities and it swelled considerably during the summer tourist season. It grew up around one end of a beautiful and clear northern lake which was the source of recreation, sport, and fish dinners for everyone.
My grandparents, Hector and Delima Lafrance, owned and operated the local hotel, general store, and post office. They sold everything in the store that a person would need for daily living, including blocks of ice taken from the lake in winter and gasoline and oil for the few cars that were around at the time. The hotel not only provided lodging and meals for long-term and short-term guests but was also the family home. Almost every person in town entered that building each and every day, either to buy some necessity, pick up mail or a newspaper, or to simply visit everyone else. This was especially true in winter-time when regulars arrived early to talk as they sat in chairs gathered around the pot-bellied stove in the post office area.
This is where I spent many of my childhood Christmases. We would wake in the morning, have a family breakfast in our own home, open our gifts and head over to the hotel to spend the day, evening, and even the night if you were old enough to look after yourself. On Christmas day, business closed down but the doors were open to everyone. No money ever changed hands on that day, very few gifts were exchanged, but many people were wined and dined. One uncle played the piano throughout the day while others sang carols and other familiar tunes. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and employees and their families made up most of the big gathering but all hotel guests and townspeople without families joined the crowd. It was the place to be. I don’t know of anyone in town who ever spent Christmas day alone.
Christmas Present
It is somewhat comforting to know that at least one dinner is being offered to people who are alone or poor each day throughout the entire holiday season in our community. Numerous individuals or groups will work hard to provide a delicious meal and to create the most hospitable and welcoming atmosphere possible. These are significant and vital expressions of the Christmas spirit of giving. No person should go hungry on Christmas day (or any other day).
On the other hand, this is of very little comfort when one considers the thousands of dollars that will be spent on gifts, parties, and bonuses that many people don’t need. Compare these gifts to the toques, hats, scarves, and gloves that will be distributed at soup kitchens, thrift shops, and shelters to poor people. These are very important for winter protection of the growing numbers who cannot afford to buy even such basic necessities. But wouldn’t it be nicer, more appropriate, a little more just, if for example, people receiving Social Assistance had their paltry December incomes doubled or tripled? What a Christmas gift that would be! Being able to pay off a debt, seek some shelter, or even choose gifts that their children really wanted or needed without having to register to receive gifts given anonymously. This is affordable in a country as wealthy as ours.
Last year, throughout Ontario, we had a chance to hear first-hand accounts of what it’s like to try to live and, in most cases, raise children on subsistence incomes. As one mother of three said: “I don’t think that people realize what living like this does to a person. It’s not just the matter of going without; it’s what it does to a person emotionally, physically, and spiritually. All sense of hope is taken away. You become oppressed and can no longer function. You suffer physically because you are not eating, emotionally because your social contact is lost, spiritually because all hope is gone.” Hers and other stories of Ontarians are published in a book Our Neighbours’ Voices: Will We Listen? by The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition. The Coalition, after meeting many people throughout the provinces, emphasizes two themes: “The misunderstanding among good people of how the less fortunate end up in poverty and in need, and what their lives are like; and the need to repair and reknit the social safety net and rebuild our sense of community.”
It often seems difficult to build a sense of community in larger cities such as Kitchener and Waterloo. Mostly we live in the suburbs and are not intimately aware of what is happening to individuals in poorer parts of town or sometimes even in our own neighbourhoods. Our lives are fast-paced. We travel mostly in cars. We don’t ever get to know the streets well, with their changing nuances and their people, unless we walk along them regularly.
It may well be hard to build community in cities but it is not impossible. There are many examples where this is happening. David Schwartz, writing in Who Cares? Rediscovering Community, describes his observations of life in his own neighbourhood in the state capital. It wasn’t until he took off his professional hat and started hanging out in the neighbourhood coffee shop and other spots that he saw the neighbourly kind of caring that went on. People in that neighbourhood who needed help, for whatever reason, did not always have to turn to professional social service agencies and programs. Their neighbours knew them and understood their needs and each neighbor did what he or she was best at. Schwartz calls these acts “remnants of hospitality.”
Closer to home, another gesture of hospitality will be offered at St. John’s Church on Christmas day. Gretchen Jones and a number of friends who are free on Christmas day will gather in this central place for a buffet supper and celebration between 3:30 and 6:00 P.M. Casseroles, salads and desserts are being solicited from anyone who wishes to contribute in this way. It is expected that about two hundred people will be present to share the good time. No one should go hungry.
Christmas Future
Don McLellan, writing in the September 1998 issue of Catholic New Times, describes a future church. I borrow his ideas and paraphrase his words to describe what caring communities might be in the millenium:
-
The social services of the next millenium will be simpler and humbler. They will be shaped by men and women who have a profound sense of community.
-
It will be a community of inclusion where those already judged enough in their lives will find hospitality and unconditional love.
-
Communities will be messengers of hope to people whose lives are fragmented but who need to believe that there is reason to hope.
-
We will grow as caring communities becaus
e caring is what makes us most human.
And humanity is what that first Christmas was all about, it seems to me. May each of us experience a caring community this Christmas!
