Christmas:

The most important memories of Christmas come from our childhood. The fact I was born into the poverty of the Great Depression made little difference.

We still had Santa Claus, but there was no guarantee of mountains of toys. Those really were days when we tried to be good on the chance that we might actually get something nice on Christmas morning.

And it happened. There were no toy trains or neat pedal cars we saw in the mail order catalogues. We were delighted to find such rare treats as oranges, apples, mixed nuts and maybe even a book, a set of color pencils or a paint box.

Our Prairie farm homes had no hydro nor running water. They were lighted with coal oil lamps. Illumination was the equivalent of a 7-watt electric night light. Yet, we managed to play cards and even read comic magazines at night.

The subdued light was an advantage on a bright moonlit night in December. We could look out through a window and see large white snowshoe hares feeding on left-over cabbage stems in the garden. Great snowy owls watched them from the tops of nearby fence posts, but made no move to try to add them to their diet. The hares were too large, but small barnyard cats, who also hunted at night, had to watch out.

Sleigh bells were especially significant in the winter when the roads were impassable to wheeled traffic and the farmers were obliged to harness their horses. The sleigh bells in my father's horse barn were actually part of a special harness. They were hollow spheres cast in bronze in several notes with loose marble clappers inside. They rang musically with every step when the horses were in a trotting mode.

Stepping outdoors on a quiet, frosty moonlit night was a memorable experience when one could hear the rhythmic snowy crunch of the horses' hooves over the distance. We knew someone was coming when they were still more than a mile away.

The jingle of sleigh bells was an auditory treat that I can still hear when I think of Christmas all these years later.

And those are the things that reel through my mind at the sound of the carols and the more memorable music of Christmas.

Best of all, it was still possible to enjoy such songs as White Christmas without provoking a politically correct reaction from anyone.

The China Trip:

So Justin Trudeau was going to lecture the Chinese on Human Rights, Canadian Style, right after wheeling and dealing on Free Trade.

Wow!! 

Let's see now. What can we teach this society of 1.5 Billion who are currently in the process of evolving away from the chaos of the Chairman Mao era and apparently doing so successfully?

The Chinese appear to be trying to ease their way out of a cumbersome communist system while we Canadians are blindly descending into one by allowing left-wingers and immature academics to lead us away from our personal freedoms to think and act for ourselves. It will not be long before we will be unable to do that without being dragged through those human rights tribunals and law courts.  

Nor, as far as we can tell from here, is China busily paving the way for blurring distinctions between the sexes by allowing aggressive special interest mafias to bully weak-kneed politicians into endorsing their every demand.

Xi Jinping did not exactly seem impressed with our PM. Nor did he seem anxious to wheel and deal on free trade. Could be they sensed Trudeau was on the rebound from not too favourable negotiations on free trade with the Americans and was looking to gain some political leverage elsewhere.

The whole expedition must have been a crushing disappointment to our political tour group which arrived all primed for epic media photo opportunities ready to dazzle the more gullible members of our domestic electorate.