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1940
We didn’t have running water in the house; we had no bathroom or flush. All we had was an outhouse. The winter was pretty cold on the bum at times.

We all enjoyed trapping rabbits, but we never sold any because we were keeping them for us to eat. We used to make stew, it is a very good meal. We always cooked rabbit meat pie the day before Christmas. It was very delicious, all the family liked meat pie. At Christmas time if we didn’t have meat pie, it was not Christmas because we were Acadians and that was an old tradition.

We had to go to midnight mass; we had to leave early enough to get there on time by sled. We could only sit six people in the sled at a time; sometimes we would squeeze a lot more in. When we got there we had to put the horse in a little barn, but we didn’t take the harness off during mass.

The ceremony was very nice. What we were doing was celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, that’s why it was so nice and we all enjoyed that very much. Once the mass was finished around 1 or 1:30 in the morning, all we had to do is hook the horse to the sled and go back home. We would arrive home around 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning and then we would have a big lunch with meat pie and some poutine rape. By that time Santa Claus had already come so we had to see what Santa Claus had brought.

Sometime we would get a pencil or a scribbler maybe an orange and some barley candy that was quite popular in those days. Another one that was popular was ribbon candy, but in those days Santa was very poor so we never expected too much. We always enjoyed Christmas and would sometimes go to sleep about 4 o’clock in the morning.

One Christmas my brother made me a pair of bobsled, they were about two feet long, and he carved me a wooden horse, he had the horse all harnessed. I was some excited about that, I could not believe Santa Claus was that talented. That was the best Christmas I ever had.

Christmas day for the Catholic people is a very important cerebration. Everybody in the community would go to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ .The Church would be full of people. The people that couldn’t go to the cerebration at midnight would go the next morning and everybody in the community would go.

Now they celebrate Santa Claus instead of the birth of Christ. I feel bad to see the birth of Jesus Christ being celebrated that way.

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