Christmas Concerts in a One-Room Schoolhouse
(From from an article written by Coral Lindsay, former teacher, and archivist for the Rideau Township Historical Society. (The article is in the collection of the Rideau Archives in North Gower.)
During the Nineteenth Century as rural settlements and school sections were established, so the social life in the community evolved, keeping the festival traditions in the appropriate manner. There were no great theatres in the Rideau Valley for the Christmas pantomimes or great houses for the children's puppet plays or magic lantern shows, but there were church halls and school houses for Christmas concerts.
The wiser teacher would start brief practices in early November, although the pupils rarely suffered any trepidation that far in advance. It was much too soon for stage fright. Mothers were contacted about costumes, which were usually very simple and even made of cheese cloth. The teacher, and the itinerant music teacher if there was one, would spend some time each week practising the songs which were often new lyrics to old favourite melodies like My Darling Nellie Gray, Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party or My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.
Drills such as "Ten Little Christmas Bells" (to martial music) and acrostics such as "M is for Merry" were an integral part of the program so that even the most reluctant and shy child could participate in a somewhat less agonizing manner, while the roles in the plays were reserved for the more vocal and self-confident children. At least one older student would memorize and recite a monologue in the vein of "Uncle Abner's Dreadful Mistake" or "Listening in on the Party Line" A four-line verse was more than enough for a first year boy or girl.
By mid-December the raised platform for the teacher's desk was cleared for more frequent rehearsals and it was time to locate and re-hang the factory-cotton stage curtains on the clothes line wire across the front of the room, safely below the string of stove pipes. My father was chairman of the School Board for several years and it seemed to be his responsibility to go the bush, cut, deliver and install a balsam or spruce for the Christmas tree. My mother checked the dish cupboard to ensure that there was enough tea on hand. Green or Black?
The entire student body was expected to line up in rows on the stage as a choir to sing some Christmas carols and a medley of songs including Up on the Housetop, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas and Jingle Bells. The music teacher would also attempt one or two less familiar pieces which must be thoroughly memorized and sung by the entire Grade One to Grade Eight choir.
Friday afternoon art classes in December were devoted to creating decorations for the Christmas tree, windows, window sills and the wall above the blackboard. Door wreaths were not popular because they were considered to be funereal. Drawing names for the gift exchange was a tense moment and heaven help the girl who drew the name of a potential beau for both had to endure merciless teasing from their peers.
When the night of the concert finally arrived, without epidemics requiring family quarantine or blizzards and blocked roads or a key player coming down with laryngitis, the teacher would be grateful but knew that it was still too soon for the sigh of relief. Teams and sleighs would discharge parents and children, scrubbed and eager. The oil lamps and lanterns would cast unfamiliar shadows around the room. Some women would make preliminary arrangements for the refreshments, while others would help the teacher with the costumes and the men would cluster in small groups around the one and only exit. If the schoolhouse was not alredy too warm, some well-intentioned father would stoke the box stove and send the temperature a little higher. Some parents would fit into the double desks while others leaned against the walls, all hoping that their offsprings would perform without too much embarrassment.
At the end of the show, Santa would arrive wearing a raccoon coat, never a red and white suit, and would distribute the gifts from the tree. One grandmother in S.S.#1, North Gower, always brought a bag of oranges, ordered from Lindsay and McCaffrey, so that each child received at least one orange that winter.
Refreshments for the evening included sandwiches with homemade bread, home butter, sliced pork or beef or chopped egg and erhaps some tinned salmon. The dessert was homemade cake, cookies and doughnuts with hot cocoa for the children and plenty of tea for the grownups.
Then into coats, hats, mitts, boots and robes, rides home in the sleighs and cutters and finally the teacher could heave a sigh of relief. Only twelve months left until the next Christmas concert.
