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1940 A Glimpse of Christmas Past


William Ezekiel Gooderham and May out for a Sleigh Ride 1940

William Ezekiel Gooderham's family always had roast goose for Christmas dinner and he remembers the huge plum pudding his mother (Catherine) made - lots of suet and big raisins boiled in a cloth in a big iron pot. Mr. Gooderham and his brother hung their stockings behind the wood burning stove in the dining-room on Christmas Eve. They got up before dawn and took the filled stockings upstairs and ate the contents in bed in the dark - nuts, raisins, candy and an orange. One Christmas, they got fur caps for presents and Mr. Gooderham's cap fell off the hook and the new puppy chewed a hole in it.

After Christmas dinner everyone went skating on the pond. There was always a shinny match between Churchville and Meadowvale. The boys skated down the river from Churchville. They made the shinny sticks out of little maple trees, the root of the saplings shaped the end of the stick. At night, they set fires to big pine stumps on the pond. Skates were wooden and were fastened to the boots with a screw in the heel and with straps.

During Christmas week, cousins used to drive down from Terra Cotta in a horse drawn sleigh. New Year's Eve, the Meadowvale Band went around the village playing the old Year out and the new Year in.

Interview with Mr. W. Gooderham, 1958. From "A Glimpse of Christmas Past: by Doris McPherson

1940 A Glimpse of Christmas Past

Helen Younder, our Ezekiel administrator, shares this month's featured story and photo to give us a taste of a Gooderham Christmas. Her grandfather, William Ezekiel Gooderham, told this story in 1958 to Doris McPherson, author of A Glimpse of Christmas Past. He and wife May (Mary Jane) are captured in a charming photo while out for a sleigh ride.


Linked toWilliam Ezekiel Gooderham

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