While ripping off brittle linoleum to reveal matai floorboards we didn’t expect to find a time capsule!
Literally, we’d rolled up two layers of carpet, an underlay and in the process of removing some very brittle linoleum, we stumbled upon a wonderful find. We expected dust, we expected threadbare carpet but we didn’t expect the amazing find of perfectly preserved 1946 and 1947 newsprint! The newspaper had been layered between the pristine matai floorboards and the lino, we guess to help keep the warmth in. This was not part of the original 1926 bungalow but an extension off the front entrance, yes in 1947 it appears!
We will have many a-happy day reading the long-gone Auckland Star and New Zealand Herald back to back, albeit 71 years later. The news is extremely interesting given WWII had only finished some 18 months earlier. The advertisements will make your smile and cringe simultaneously. The fashion, use of English language and news articles had us raising eyebrows. I’ll certainly include snippets as I find a rainy-day excuse to claw through every page, but for now thought this article was particularly timely.
Here are the things you didn’t know you needed to know about celebrating Christmas around the world, in 1946!
The Auckland Star, Tuesday December 24, 1946
Christmas Observances Vary in Many Lands, by Walter J Letts
Christmas is many things to many people.
In Brazil, since houses don’t have chimneys, the traditional St Nicholas story has been revised for the children, omitting the chimney. And as it is mid-summer in December in Brazil, the attendant Christmas gaiety includes boat rides, picnic parties and outdoor festivals. Brazilians celebrate Christmas Eve with a feast of delicious fluffy pancakes served with codfish cakes and toast. They save their famous mandioca or cheese cake for Christmas proper.
In Sweden, the julbock, or Christmas goat, traditionally takes the place of Santa Claus as gift giver. The julbock is a straw animal given to children and is believed to distribute presents around the room on Christmas Eve. The Swedes arrange their Christmas trees not for the youngsters but for the birds. The Yule log has its beginning in Sweden when at Jul, or Yule, guests originated the custom of bringing a log and carrying it into the house with them when they went to visit. At Christmas, the hospitable Swedes prepare large piles of butter biscuits and a Christmas beer called julol. The main dish at dinner is a dried fish with a pudding of rice and milk, in which a single almond is cooked. The person who finds the almond will be the first to marry in the new year.
All Armenians take Christmas Eve baths; and, as they believe spinach was eaten by t he Virgin Mary, they also eat spinach on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve Armenian swains give their girls trays of cakes, eggs, raisins and sweetmeats. Shredded chicken breast cooked with what, cinnamon and olive oil is a popular Christmas dinner dish. Only the Armenians, of all Eastern people, cling to the ancient custom of celebrating Christmas on January 6 – the day of the Three Wise Kings.
A Danish custom is the breaking of china and crockery on New Year’s Day against the doors of friends’ houses; the family with the largest pile of smashed crockery before its door being the best-loved. For this odd custom, Danes hoard all their broken crockery throughout the year. In Denmark, the Julenissen, or Christmas Elf, is a legend. He rides a goat instead of a reindeer. The Danes leave bowls of rice in their attics on Christmas Eve, it begin a good luck sign if the milk disappears during the night.
As Hawaii has no snow, Hawaiian Christmas trees are painted snow-white. Here, legend says if you keep your door open strangers will enter your home and demand food and drink. As in the southern part of the U.S.A. fireworks are a spectacular feature of Hawaiian Christmas festivities.
Gifts are exchanged mysteriously and anonymously on December 6, St Nicholas Day, the main Christmas holiday, in Holland. The element of surprise accompanies each gift, which is disguised to look like something different; it may be baked in a cake or left in an unlikely spot to be discovered by the recipient. This is the Dutch children’s own day, when they hang up their stockings and await, instead of Santa Claus the bishop and his black servant, named Piet. For St Nicholas Eve, the Dutch serve marzipan, gingerbread, cakes and a special hot punch called bishop’s wine.
Children in Puerto Rico are taught to expect gifts, not from Santa Claus, but from the Three Kings and when they wonder how the Kings are able to get into the house to leave their gifts, they are told the Kings transform themselves into ants to enter easily.
A Bohemian miss tosses her shoe downstairs on Christmas Eve, counting the number of steps it touches on its way down. This number represents the years that will pass before she gets married. The main dish at dinner is a young pig, which brings happiness. Bohemia first adopted the Christmas tree customer from Germany about a half-century ago.
A traveller to Peru can expect to see at Christmas the year’s greatest bull fight, after which comes an elaborate religious procession.
In Spain, where Christmas is observed until the twelfth day, the popular Yuletide entertainment is a lottery in which cards are tossed into a whirling glass bowl. As cards bearing numbers are hurled out, those holding the lucky numbers win presents.
The traditional plum pudding is the main dish of the English Christmas dinner, often being made months in advance. it is brought ceremoniously to the table covered with flaming brandy. In it are often baked such tokens as a thimble, coin, button and ring. to find the ring means you’ll get married; the coin and you’ll get rich; the thimble portends the lot of a spinster; the button, that of a bachelor.
The French has a jolly custom of baking a cake containing a hidden bean. At a Christmas gathering, the man who finds the bean when the cake is eaten, becomes King of the Twelfth Night and chooses his queen from the girls present. The pair rule the party the rest of the evening.
The Chinese know the Christmas festival as Chen Deh Jieh – the Holy Birth Festival. Their Christmas tree is called “Tree of Light”.
Lithuanians cover their Christmas Eve dinner table with layers of straw beneath the table-cloth, to symbolise the manger.
I wonder how many of these traditions are still practiced!
