It’s the most wondrous time of the year

My father believed that steadfast faith and the magic of Christmas could bring about transmogrification.

He would tell us how, as a child during the Great Depression, he believed that when clocks struck midnight on Christmas Eve, animals would temporarily be given the power of speech.

The legend is thought to have originated in Europe, stemming from the birth of the Christ child in a Bethlehem manger. The tale suggests that animals are bestowed with this gift as a nod to the role livestock played as witnesses to that first Christmas miracle.

According to a post by Hammerson Peters in January 2023 on the Mysteries of Canada blog, “Although this legend is supposed to have its roots in continental Western Europe, it seems to have made its way across the Atlantic and into the traditions of some of Canada’s First Nations by at least the early 1800s.”

Who doesn’t love a fantastical story? It’s little wonder, then, that it had spread all the way to Gin Cove, N.L., by the time my father was a boy.

One Christmas Eve, dad said, he was determined to hear the animals talk. So he crept out of the house after dark and made his way to the barn where the family’s livestock were kept and hunkered down in the hay, all agog. But like many children up past their bedtime, he fell asleep, missing any illuminating discussion the pigs and cows and sheep might have had. He awoke disappointed and went straight home to bed for fear of ruining Santa Claus’s visit.

That dad believed in the talking-animals myth with its religious overtones, as well as the secular Santa Claus, just shows that he was open to magic wherever it might manifest itself.

In his memoir, I Remember, I Remember… My Gin Cove Boyhood, my father, Reg Frampton, recalls how he not only fervently believed in Christmas magic, but sought out proof of its existence.

“I remember one Christmas morning, after we had opened our presents and had our breakfast, going out into the yard to look for reindeer tracks in the snow. And I really saw the tracks, too, or so I thought. Here was the proof that there really was a Santa Claus after all! I remember my father smiling and looking knowingly at my mother, as I excitedly told him, ‘Dad! Dad! Santa Claus really came! I saw some of his reindeer tracks in the snow!’ It was not too long after that I realized the tracks had been made by our cow.

That heart-sinking realization didn’t keep him down. For the rest of his life, he found magic in Christmas and shared it with us.

How much has changed in the span of just one generation. In my father’s youth there was no electricity, central heating or indoor plumbing, and precious little cash. Any holiday finery was made from what was at hand. There were no monogrammed bouclé Christmas stockings, no hand-blown ornaments curated to match the décor, no inflatable characters outside the house to greet passers-by, no holiday playlist beyond age-old Christmas carols and Newfoundland folk songs. Instead, my father and his eight siblings hung well-worn socks on nails in the kitchen and waited with great anticipation for the simple gifts Santa would bring.

For my father, like many people who love the Christmas season, much of the magic was generated from within. He had the comfort of his religious faith, but also a deep appreciation for Christmas foods, traditions and pastimes — nuts in the shell, oranges in stockings, mummering from house to house, songs and stories, endless days of sliding on toboggan-polished snow.

When I was a child, I felt that magic, too, and still do. Christmas has always been the most wondrous time of the year for me — a heady mixture of anticipation, the joys of giving and receiving and of preparing traditional foods, the comfort of carols, the nostalgic pleasure of Linus’s speech in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

One of my fondest memories of Christmas is from when I was five years old. My siblings and I were too keyed up on Christmas Eve to settle down in our beds, so we hunkered down in one room with sleeping bags on the floor.

Dad added to the excitement when he came to say goodnight, singing:

“Who’s got a beard that’s long and white?

Santa’s got a beard that’s long and white.

Who comes around on a special night?

Santa comes around on a special night.

Special night, beard that’s white.

Must be Santa, must be Santa,

Must be Santa, Santa Claus.”

May the magic of Christmas find you and fill you with wonder and joy.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social