(25) 'The Lesson of the Christmas Cascade'

[Ken]

When I was a child I loved it when our family sang Christmas carols.  On Christmas day we would all gather in what we called the front room, the seldom seen room that was used only on special occasions.  My brother Wally would have 'The Snow House' ready, full of small gifts for everyone, but that was for later, after the carol singing.  Mum would have a blazing fire roaring in the hearth and I would be in my element, safe and warm in the company of those I loved, the family Tuffs.  We Tuffs' have always loved the singing of Christmas carols, and we all had our favourites.  My Father loved to sing 'Good King Wencelas', and he would sing the words of the King enquiring about the yonder peasant gathering winter fuel.  I, as the youngest member of the Tuffs' flock, would voice the parts of the page, and in my eager nervousness I would sing, "Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain, right against the forest fence, by St Agnes' fountain."  The rest of the family would join in and sing with great gusto the other parts of the song but Dad and I were the stars. Well, we were in the mind of the young me, in those safe, long ago years of the early 1950's.

Many years later, when I had children of my own, it was quite possible that strangers would point and wonder what another, 'yonder peasant,' was doing in a far away field beside the river Teify in the country of Wales.  The answer was, 'gathering winter fuel,' and I was that peasant.  This event often occurred in the latter half of the 1980's in the village I now call home, for I had discovered a field that had once belonged to an ancient sawmill.  I was informed by  an old man that every time the river flooded the field, wood of all shapes and sizes would come to the surface.  Wood that, a very hard up me decided would make perfect winter fuel to keep my young family warm during the long, cold and damp welsh winters. Day after day I would load a couple of big sacks full of the right size pieces and lug them home.  At weekends I would make an adventure of it, my wife Jenny, my two children and I could be seen gathering up the wood as our faithful dog, 'Winston', enjoyed chasing the pieces we threw for him to fetch. It was fun and the whole family played their part in the 'timber picking' that gave us for nothing that gift essential for life, warmth!  We would tell the kids that every penny we saved on fuel costs was an extra penny in the Christmas box, and so it was.  As we filled those timber sacks I would speak of Santa's sack, and we would sing Christmas songs and carols.  'Good King Wencelas,' was sung most of all.

'The Snow House,' that my brother Wally filled full of surprises when I was a child, always delighted me. I can remember opening one gift to find a small slab of chocolate.  "Only it isn't a bar of chocolate," Wally whispered, "it's really a trick water pistol."  Out to the kitchen he took me to show me how to fill it with water and I was away.   That Christmas night, I was probably the biggest nuisance in the history of the Tuffs' family as, one by one, my elder siblings were offered to take a bite of my chocolate bar, only to receive instead, a face full of cold water.  I must have been truly annoying, Just like my granddaughter can be today, with her constant use of the 'whoopy cushion,' Like her, I was convinced I was fooling everyone.

In those cold and hard up winters of the 1980's I created my own version of my brother Wally's snow house excitement, I called it our Christmas Cascade. It was a simple idea and I pinned a dozen long boot laces across our French windows, each of them about 6 inches below the other and each lace was wrapped in brightly coloured tinsel.  During an early December evening when the children were in bed, Jenny and I, warmed by the free wood fire and a bottle of home made wine, would put on some Christmas music and dress the cascade.  We would hang exotic sweets up and chocolate bars of every type imaginable, all of them bought with money we'd saved all year.  Assorted flavoured crisps in huge abundance would also be there, unusual brands collected especially for the kids Christmas cascade.  There would be luxury biscuits, licorice sticks and barley sugar canes, all of these items were the treats and prizes for the coming festive season.  The cascade would be glowing with multi coloured fairy lights and there would be a selection of mystery gifts hanging amongst the enormous range of Christmas goodies.    It looked superb, a six foot high and four foot wide fairy land of Christmas adventure. The excitement when the children saw that first ever Christmas Cascade is a moment I will never forget.  We thanked them for all their money saving efforts and told them that because of these, we could for a few weeks live in the land of plenty. That was what we had saved all year for and that's why we had collected sack loads of ancient washed up wood for our winter warmth.  That's the message our children were taught to understand, and they did!

I am proud of the way we coped during those financially challenging years and my children learned a lot from them.  Recently I heard my daughter explaining to our granddaughter why Mummy had to work at an unexpected time.  I heard little Emma say, "Is it for my bunks?" and at first this puzzled me.  I then realised that Emma was talking about her new bunk beds, and I saw that her parents had taught her that sometimes nothing happened without working for it.  If mummy did some extra work, the bunk beds could be bought a little earlier. Just as I had explained, decades earlier, that by all of us collecting sack loads of old logs we would ensure a special Christmas. My beloved granddaughter realised that even when she didn't want her mother to go to work, there was a reason why she sometimes had to.  That's what she was taught to understand, just like we had once taught our children with, 'The Lesson of the Christmas Cascade!'      

[Ken]

This memory is another of my favourites and one that captures to perfection some magical Christmas days.  It tells of gathering fuel for the fire and of carol singing and the delight of giving and receiving small gifts.     But most of all it tells of sharing and understanding the value of money!