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Issue 6 • Volume 16
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December 2011
Remembering Christmas Back Home Christmas memories as
told by Maria Linklaker. Transcribed by Armand LaPlante
“I was born and raised in Thunderchild for the first 7 years of my life but then I went to boarding school. But I remember we’d come home for Christmas and new years, and to celebrate, everybody in the community would cook in their homes and then everybody would go visiting. Everyone would feed you. Everyone would give used articles, something that you liked, you’d give it to somebody or you’d make something. You’d make a quilt, or you’d give dry berries or dry fish. You would go give these things to the people that don’t have them. On Christmas you would get to be with your grand parents, your parents, all the relatives. And I remember the people would have a sleigh, a beautiful sleigh, like the sleigh Santa Claus has with a cab with one seat in front and one seat in the back. There would be people in it and there would be bells on the horse; you could hear the horses pulling the sleigh in the nice, crisp sounding snow. And you could hear the horses coming and the bells would be jingling and the people would come and visit you for a while and maybe they’d take you for a ride and bring you back. That’s the way it was, there was a lot of love and lots of visiting. That’s what I remember. Then we’d go back to the residential school and we’d lose contact with our families again. There were two celebrations: Christmas and New Years. On New Years everyone would go around kissing people and we didn’t want to be kissed so we would hide. But my grandmother would tell us that’s not respectful and to allow people to kiss you, because we weren’t used to being kissed by other people. In my family there were eight of us girls, we would get to visit my cousins; there would be lots going on.
Elders Walter and Maria Linklater. Submitted photo
People would be cooking rabbit, moose meat, deer meat; we would have fish and bannock. It would be a nice celebration. I don’t remember too many ceremonies going on, all I remember was midnight mass. Everyone would show up to the church at 11 on Christmas eve and mass would start at midnight. I don’t remember the celebration for New Years, but people would celebrate with cooking and visiting. It was nice, so nice. Life was so beautiful at that time; you would wake up so happy. We didn’t have air pollution like we have today, lots of people were healthy. But at that time too lots of people passed on with old age; there was a lot of old people. Just about every household had an old person living with them and they would look after them. It was never right to put our people in an old folks home, people shared and looked after the person in their home, the whole family would. That’s what I remember. Today Christmas is commercialized. The celebration was for Jesus being born but today that’s almost not [cel-
ebrated as much]. It’s good that they have that, but they should never lose that. Not like how we lost our way; the way we would celebrate our lives. We’re just learning to go back to our way of life using ceremony. It’s good because it brought the family together. But I often wish that a lot of us, like my family especially, would have known our way of life using spirituality and using ceremonies in our lives. I think life would have been a lot better for us. Both my parents are gone now, my mother was always the big force in our Christmas. She was the one to prepare us and tell us ‘it’s going to be a nice celebration’. She would take us visiting and my father would come along But today both of them
are gone; my older sisters are gone. It’s just us now, and the oldest in the family bring everyone together now. We still celebrate now but in a different way. We do it in a feast and have a pipe ceremony or midnight mass. We have a sweat [lodge] for New Year’s eve. A lot of people come to our sweat to celebrate the New Year. I still like celebrating Christmas, I love Christmas because it brings family together and you celebrate life. That’s the way it should be. When I really look back, Christmas is everyday for First Nations people because we give gifts; we give to each other every time we see each other. When we go visit somebody we come home with lots of gifts, so giving was always our way of life. We should
teach our children not to lose that real meaning of Christmas but at the same time teach our children the real meaning of our way of life. Use both of them. That’s the way it is today. That’s all I have to say. Christmas was celebrated with horses. Horses were very important. Everybody looked after the horses: everybody would comb them, groom them, comb their tails. People would even put ribbons on the tails sometimes for ceremonial horses and that’s what they would use. They would fix the sleigh in the summer time to be ready for winter time. Those days are gone now; they will just be in stories.” •
University of Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Students Council page 9
Buffy Sainte-Marie visits FNUniv Saskatoon campus page 10