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There has always been something uniquely special about the approach of Christmas for kids in school, and it isn’t just the winter break from classes and homework.
Of course, elementary school children have their own world of Christmas magic and fun. But it’s a bit different for high school students, in transition as they are between childhood and adulthood. They have outgrown the classroom parties they used to have in elementary school on the last day before the break. A look into some old copies of GCVI’s yearbook, Acta Nostra (Our Record) gives us a peek at how Guelph high school students of past generations celebrated the Christmas season – and for some readers might even stir a few fond memories.
John F. Ross was GCVI’s principal in 1931. That was a difficult year for just about everybody. The Great Depression was sinking its claws into the world and the future appeared grim no matter which way you looked. A student named Irene Fraser won the prize for junior short story with an optimistic Christmas fairy tale that was published in Acta Nostra.
In Irene’s story, Little Brownie Elf is separated from his companions in a Christmas Eve snowstorm and enters a humble cottage to get warm. There he finds a poor family that is going to have a bleak Christmas because they have no money. The father goes out to see if he can earn a few pennies shovelling snow, but has no luck. Brownie Elf uses his magical powers to decorate the cottage for Christmas, fills the children’s stockings with presents and nuts, and replaces everybody’s rags with new clothes. Brownie Elf can do all this because he is actually one of Santa’s helpers. It is a simple, happy-ending story at a time in which hope for the future was scarce.
Among the Guelph businesses advertising in Acta Nostra that year were The Peacock Candy Shop, Biltmore Hats and the Kloepfer Coal Company.
It was a different world when Christmas came along in 1945, although J.F. Ross was still GCVI’s principal. The people of Guelph had been through the Great Depression and the Second World War. Many former GCVI students had served in the armed forces, and some of the students in the school had a parent or other family member who had gone away to fight and never returned.
The yearbook published two Christmas short stories that year. One, by Gerald Toner, was titled “Christmas 1943.” It is about a Canadian fighter pilot who has been shot down over Burma and has thoughts of Christmas in Ontario in his head as he is about to be killed by enemy soldiers.
There is a much more optimistic tone to “Christmas 2043,” by Marjorie Pond. The narrator in a futuristic world travels by air car to a Christmas party called Saturnalia which the people of Mars are holding on the planet Saturn. It’s a seasonal festival that has been going on since the year 2000. Christmas dinner is simply pills served on silver dishes. Everything about the celebration seems impersonal and joyless. Then the narrator is suddenly awakened by her little sister telling her to come downstairs to see what Santa has brought.
That year’s advertisers included S.S. Kresge Co. Ltd., Acker Furniture Co. Ltd. and the King Edward Restaurant.
School dances have long been part of GCVI’s activities. In days gone by there were tea dances, a cultural offshoot of the British traditions of afternoon tea and garden parties; and Sadie Hawkins dances, inspired by the popular comic strip “L’il Abner,” in which the girls “dragged” the boys to the dance and everybody dressed like hillbillies. Of course, there was the annual Christmas dance.
In 1953, when F.A. Hamilton was principal, Acta Nostra had an entry about the 1952 Christmas Formal. It was, said the yearbook, “a night to be remembered … The ‘Winter Wonderland’ was truly like a page from a fairy tale. The soft blue lighting cast a mystical spell over the enchanted scene … the girls, beautiful in frothy formal gowns, and handsome smiling escorts, gliding to the strains of the orchestra on this magical night.”
There was also that year’s Christmas Assembly, at which chairman Bob Blair spoke about the meaning of Christmas, and Freddie Mills played “Winter Wonderland” on the trumpet. The event closed with the entire assembly singing Christmas carols.
Among the advertisers in that year’s edition were the Treanon Restaurant, Budd’s Stores and the Royal Dairy.
In Acta Nostra’s 1955 edition (F.A. Hamilton was still principal), Anne Ritchie contributed an essay titled “My Christmas Disappointment.” She had been involved in the production of a play about the first Christmas which was to be presented at the Christmas Assembly. Her fellow students had done a lot of work preparing costumes and scenery. She had rehearsed her lines over and over, making sure she had them memorized. She hoped that everyone in the audience would appreciate all the effort that had gone into staging a show that would ensure “everyone will feel a bit more of the Christmas spirit.”
When Anne got to school, she was still going over her lines in her head. Then she heard the disappointing news. The assembly was cancelled because the school’s furnace wasn’t working. One of her lines, “Fear not, for I bring unto you tidings of great joy,” came to her mind. Everything had been ruined by “that monstrosity in the furnace room, that expensive, huge, oil burner that balked on that morning of all mornings.”
Happily, the Christmas dance was a success. “Frosty blue and white streamers enclose the dance floor and drift from the ceiling to form a canopy,” wrote Evelyn Rivaz in Acta Nostra. “In the centre stands a huge Christmas tree, glistening and shimmering in shades of white and silver, while a blue light illuminates it. The stage is a miniature forest of silvery evergreens. Everywhere are seen handsome young men, resplendent in evening clothes and sweet maidens in their swirling frothy gowns. The smell of roses and gardenias fills the air.”
Perhaps Anne was there in her frothy gown, her Christmas disappointment forgotten in the magic of the evening.
Merry Christmas to all.
