This column originally appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Dec. 16, 1939.
Never have I seen more ideas floating around for Christmas gifts, showing that the war with its consuming anxieties has not dried up the creative imagination of our women. Now I have heard of more things to do for Christmas, than five women could achieve, in the time that is left.
One woman has organized a six-woman plan for a reading club. Each of the six women has written down six books she wants to read, and from these six lists, the authentic list is compiled. The books will arrive in time for Christmas, and each woman pays her share, which will be two dollars. Then the books go out, with two weeks reading time on them.
The circle will meet every two weeks, and will discuss one book, and in this way each woman has the reading of six books for the price of one, and a book of her own at the end of the period.
The list selected contained three books by Canadians, and all the books are of a high order. The Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter by Laura G. Salverson, Waste Heritage by Irene Baird and The Secret Journal of Dr. Hudson by Lloyd Douglas. The Nazarene, by Scholem Asch, appears, too.
The objection was raised that this sort of buying is not exactly a Christmas gift, but that was ruled out of order. The answer being, of course, that the social aspect of such an agreement, with its interchange of ideas was in harmony with the spirit of Christmas.
Another woman contributed an idea which may help to stimulate letter-writing. She is giving her three most intimate friends this year, supplies for their desks. They are all rather backward in the matter of letter-writing she says. So she has made up a box for each of them.
They contain a box of stationery, with airmail envelopes, too, gummed paper, paper clips, rubber bands, key tags, fruit labels, shipping tags, stamps and air labels, and an address book, which contains her own address, as a reminder. The box is covered with white paper on which is printed: “Now Will You Write?” and then wrapped in coloured cellophane.
Another friend of mine has been cutting from papers and magazines the best pictures and jokes of the year which she has neatly mounted on cardboard, and will send them out in dozen lots to her friends. I can see that these will be passed on and on, for a good laugh is a precious thing at any time, but especially now.
One of the pictures is a drawing by Eric Godal, of a family scene, the father, mother and daughter at the breakfast table. The parents have risen in their wrath, and are glaring at each other. The mother strikes the table to give emphasis to her words. Her other hand is placed protectingly on her daughter’s thin shoulder. The daughter is a young edition of her mother, the same nose and forehead. The difference between them is a mater of perhaps a hundred pounds. The mother has just pronounced her ultimatum in these words:
“If she wants to marry Robert Taylor, that’s her business!”
On the back of this is the story of the German child who has been taught to close her prayers with “God bless Adolf Hitler,” but now, since the attempt on his life she is wondering what she should close her prayers with if the Führer should die. She asks her mother, who tells her in that case she need only say “Thank God!”
She has pretty pictures as well, with newspaper verse on the back; a lovely coloured one of Lake Louise with the yellow poppies against the green of the lawns, and the horses in single file silhouetted against the blue water, and on the other side, that lovely poem that begins:
Be near me, beauty, for the day is dying,
My dog and I have grown too old for roaming.
From a magazine she has cut a beautifully coloured dining-room scene, with a table full of people. I think it was an advertisement for pumpkin pies made with somebody’s superfine shortening, but she brings it to a higher level of thinking by pasting on the other side, a Thanksgiving poem by a writer, new to me, whose book of poems has just been published, Miss H. Isabel Graham of Seaforth, Ont. The last verse reads:
We thank Thee for a love that lives
When all else fades and dies
That bids our faltering faith look up
To yonder starry skies;
That tells us why the daisy blooms
And where God’s sunlight lies.
There is a great variety in her selections, children’s pictures, animal pictures, and one of a country church, set in a wide prairie, where a little group of women have gathered to decorate it for Christmas. They are carrying evergreens, and Christmas wreaths, evidently of their own making, tissue paper balls, and garlands and with this goes Edna Jaques’ poem call The Faithful Few, whose brave words would have comforted many:
Keeping the Sunday School from despair
Playing the organ and leading in prayer
Finding the money for books and cards
Planting trees in the parsonage yards,
Always you’ll find them at church affairs,
Bringing in water, and extra chairs
Washing the dishes with tucked-up sleeves,
The first to come and the last to leave.
For as long as we’ve churches and pews to fill
God will find servants to do his will.
A dozen of these cards, packed in a Christmas box with holly on the cover, will not be the sort of Christmas card that will ever be discarded. So, let us give a thought at Christmas!
