by Harold Burch

Once winter arrived, my twin sister and I started thinking of Christmas and Santa Claus. We wondered whether he would come to our house in the country. Father assured us that he would.

About this time, my father and my older brother used to take the horses and sleigh to the wood-lot to cut logs for firewood. At times when we were not in school, my sister and I were able to go along. One day, in a clearing we saw this beautiful spruce tree. It was agreed that it would be great for a Christmas Tree. My father said, "It's too early yet. The needles will all fall out and there won't be any Christmas Tree." Finally the day came when he said, "Now you can cut your Christmas tree." We proceeded to the tree and loaded it on top of the wood logs and brought it home. When we got it home, we cut it to size, put it in a bucket of sand and set it up in the living room. The tree looked great and was ready for decorating. We put on all the decorations we had, including some ornaments, tinsel, icicles and it was ready for Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve finally came but we had to go to bed early or Santa would not come. The next morning we were up early, came downstairs, and sure enough Santa had been here. There were small presents for everyone. There was a large present which my sister and I were to share. We opened it and it was a beautiful wooden hand sleigh for sliding on the hill behind our house. Later on, we got dressed and went out to try our new hand sleigh. It worked fine, and we had a lot of fun with it. We looked for signs that Santa had been there but did not find any.

At dinner time we had Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. My father always got a goose from neighbours, which made it special.

I will always remember that Christmas on the farm.