Treasures from the Stacks: Christmases Past
There are over four million items in the Toronto Reference Library, and we can’t fit them all on the Open Shelf. Older, obscure and specialized materials are stored in the Stacks. You can see them–you just have to ask, via computer or staff, to have them brought out. It takes between 15 and 30 minutes.
What can you find there? Here’s a tour of some Christmases Past materials –only at the Toronto Reference Library.
From almost a century ago, a book "Published by Winnipeg Branch, Canadian Womens Press Club to provide Christmas cheer for the Canadian soldiers at the front". The Great War had begun in July, and most "Johnny Canucks" could not imagine the agonizing four years to come. In December 1914, Canadian troops were training on Salisbury Plain in England, and their first battle, at Neuve Chappelle, was still months away. Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele were all to come.
From the genteel and prosperous Edwardian era come stories and carols including Yule in Old Town, In Excelsis Gloria,the Wassailer's Song, and Christmas in India by Rudyard Kipling. Complete with gold leaf and elaborate Art Nouveau title page for that special sophisticated, but sentimental, someone.
Half a century later, Christmas was still a time for nostalgia, but book design and aesthetics were far more streamlined. Canadian nationalism was rearing it's head in 1959, so here find Christmas stories by Nellie McClung, Ernest Buckler,Stephen Leacock, Morley Callaghan and Hugh MacLennan.
The traditions of Christmas are many and varied, but the longing for peace and connection remains a constant. Here is Thyra Ferré Bjorn in 1964 from Once Upon a Christmas Time:
"In today's busy world we don't take time to fill our souls with beauty. I pray that each one who reads these pages will pause long enough to recapture Yules long gone and perhaps to find back there in time the key to happiness and contentment in this restless age."
Ukrainian Christmas Eve Once Upon a Christmas Time
But there's always a place for wild Christmas cheer, (and the serious anthropological study of same.) What's mumming you say?
Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland
Lastly, a greeting from the late nineteenth century, from a corporation and institution that may not survive the twenty-first. From the Post Office, who will soon not be delivering mail to your home, a personal Christmas card to you.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good read.
Comments