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Whtby Free Press. Woc*esday. Decomber 22,19M3, Page 7 The concerts This being Christmnas, and most readers being too busy to read newspaper columns, let me indulge myself and share memories of Christmases from my boyhood. First, the Christmas trees. Mainly cedar, chopped down by boys wandering ini primeval forest. One I cut down after hours of tramping through the bush with my brother, Jirn. I arn eleven, he seven. And the tree stands like a sentinel in a clearing, the only spruce in a cedar bog. It neyer dawns on us that the tree belongs to someone else. The spruce stili stands forever in my mernory tali and proud in the clearing. The saw bites into the trunk, the fresh wood bites back against the dull saw blade. It is a Saturday, it is a week before Christmas. A light snow falîs in the forest, darkness drifting down with it. Finally the tree topples. The mile-long struggle home must have been a heavy burden for half a man and a cbild. But tree remains only in that natural\clearing, and the smell of spruce boughs wbile cutting, the snow, the falling darkness, and the child's face of my brother. And the Christmas concerts. In, of course, the church, where each year the pulpit is removed and thick planks becomne a makeshift stage. On this clanking platform beside a fifteen-foot Christmnas tree we strut out lunes'every year, and Santa comes down the aisie and gives out gifts. First grade: I arn a make-believe doctor, trying te help a make-believe inother (Gail) who bas a make- believe baby (a doîl) who in the make-believe play won't stop crying. Finally, the doctor turns baby over, extracts a diaper pin from its bottom and holding it up utters one mernorable line: "Aha! A-pin-de-seat- us!" Second grade: shepherd. Third grade: goat. Fourth grade: each year in Mrs. Kennedy's room we paint a picture te give te Mother at the Christmas concert. A winter scene in watercolors, a strearn trickling down the centre, snow laden trees hanging frorn both sides. The watercolor is taped with black tape te a five by seven piece of glass, the tape also niaking a delightful frame. Fifth grade: I play the part of an old man. The man BAPIST SUNDAY SCHOOL CLAffS, C. 1903/04 and bis wife (Virginia) recail the Christmases of the This clase was taught by Charles Albert Goodfeilow, seated in the centre of the picture. In past: the back row are: unknown, Ruttan, Allan Worfolk, David Mowat, Eugne Nicholson and unknown. In the centre row: unkow, Charles A. Goodfellow and Jack Mdowat. In the front "D o eebrMrrow: unknown and Smith Wilkinson. pht How many years agot stage near the choir loft wbere the directer doubled as the council chanibe on Dec. 24.J).2 dSwtesabihnto prompter, feeds my lines in a wbisper that can be* A public meeting will be held at the Town hall onDe.2todsustestbih ntf heard even in the dusty balcony wbere no one is a sanitary oBwOT system inmWhitby. allowed te sit. My mother says that with practice the * 'Pe Methodist Tabernacle Sundlay School wiil present a cantata, "Pie Sound of Peace,'at play would have been really good. But then, she said thé Town hall on Dec. 23. Adulta, 25 cents; children, 15 cents. she liked that watercolour painting in the fourth grade, too. _________________________________