In a world where rural life is seemingly ignored, Christmas is one time of the year when rural living becomes the centre of the celebration.

Most of our Christmas traditions date back to when the majority of people lived on farms and rural communities. Even Christmas decorations, like the Christmas tree and Christmas wreaths come from  when people lived a rural life.

When I think back to my years growing up on the farm, we travelled to my uncle’s farm on the next concession and walked to the back of the farm to where he had a plantation of spruce, to cut a tree and drag it back to the car to bring home. My best friend’s family cut a cedar tree from their bush. 

When I first got married I remember going to fellow columnist Arnold Mather’s home farm near Wingham where he sold trees from his plantation. Later, we got trees closer to home near Blyth or in Londesborough. In recent years, we settled on an artificial tree. (We don’t host Christmas as we get older and decorating isn’t as important.)

Of course, Christmas itself has a rural theme. The story goes that Joseph and Mary were travelling to Bethlehem to be registered for taxes in the era when Israel was ruled by the Roman Empire. They couldn’t find a place to stay so stayed overnight in the stable of the inn, where Jesus was born. We don’t really know what animals shared the stable with them but usually we imagine cattle, sheep and donkeys in the nativity scene.

Meanwhile, the angel visited shepherds in the field, watching their flocks of sheep. The angel tells them of Christ’s birth and they go to the stable to worship him.

Even in urban areas these rural traditions are celebrated with the manger scene being recreated. I’m not sure that city dwellers realize that farms have changed a lot since then.

Indeed, it’s hard in this era of specialized farms, for young farmers to imagine different types of livestock sharing the same barn. It wasn’t so hard when I was a boy and we had cattle, pigs and the last teams of horses in the barn.

Despite the fact that the Christmas story has roots in rural life, it’s been adopted by urbanites for today. And that adoption changes the Christmas celebration in so many ways.

We had so little money when I was growing up on the farm. The Christmas catalogues of Eaton’s or Simpson-Sears would arrive each fall and we kids would fall on them, sifting through the toy section, dreaming of playing with this or that toy. Our parents would pick up on our desires and buy one toy to put under the Christmas tree from Santa.

How things have changed. I remember relatives coming when we still hosted Christmas and having so many presents for kids that we’d sit around, waiting as they opened gifts. Each toy competed for attention with the one before.

Modern Christmas is such a break from the Christmases of the past. I think of the tales of Charles Dickens, like A Christmas Carol. I think of what Christmas must have been like for the people who came to Ontario’s densely-wooded farmland from Europe and slowly chopped enough trees to create (eventually) the farms we have today. What must Christmas have been like for them in their first log houses or lean-tos and so little money for gifts?.

In fact, every day in our lives today would have seemed like an immense  gift to the people who came before us – something they could only dream of.

We are so fortunate today. Our homes are filled with comforts our grandparents couldn’t imagine. Yet not all of us are so fortunate. With housing and food prices so high, let’s not forget that many have a hard time putting a good Christmas dinner on the table. ◊