I think I believed in Santa a lot longer than most kids in North America. When I was little, Santa, or Joulu Pukki, came to the house and distributed the gifts. We kids, often, would dance with Santa in a ring around the Christmas tree, our red felt slippers flashing in the light. When I was four or five years old, I can remember the candles on the tree, no electric lights back then. A small candle sat in a holder which clipped to a branch on the tree. Needless to say, the candles were only lit when people were going to remain in the room.
Santa came in person less frequently when we moved to Canada and as I got older, he stopped coming in person altogether. He still came on Christmas Eve, after dinner. All of us kids couldn't sit still through a long dinner in anticipation of what was to come. The personal appearance, now that the world population was in the billions, was relegated to a huge thump on the porch where we would find wrapped presents in a sack amid bikes and sleighs and what-have-you.
My sister's kids in California were still treated to the thump on the porch and one of my enduring memories is little Steve jumping up and down saying, "My wagon, my wagon", when we opened the door. By the time my own kids came along, presents appeared under the Christmas tree. Presents from friends and family far away piled up under the tree right away but Santa still left presents and filled up stockings while everybody was asleep on Christmas morning.
In our house, Christmas was celebrated with the Finnish side of the family on Christmas Eve and some presents were opened after dinner. Then the stockings and the balance of what was under the tree was opened on Christmas day. This way, the excitement was spread out over two days. So was the food. We now enjoyed a feast on Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day. This bi-lingual Christmas was good.
Christmas dinners also changed when we came to Canada. In Finland, the Christmas specialty was lipee kala (lutefisk in Sweden) or a dried cod that had been preserved in wooden barrels of lye. The fish, of course, had to be soaked to remove the lye and the house just smelled dreadful. When the fish was cooked, it became quite transparent and was then covered with a white sauce with chopped hard boiled egg. The first course was usually boiled potatoes with pickled herring. Then the lipee kala with boiled potatoes and often a Christmas salad of finely cubed, cooked beets, potatoes, and carrots topped with whipped cream (coloured purple by beet juice) and yes, herring, and casseroles of cooked turnips or parsnips. The Christmas kitchen was often pungent with fish and turnips cooking. Dessert was often a prune dessert (boiled prunes in a thickened juice) topped again with whipped cream. The rest of the evening was full of open faced rye bread with cucumber or salt salmon or canned salmon salad. After Santa came, a meat pie would be brought out and served with consommé and often with mulled wine. Of course, coffee was served with a variety of breads, cookies and pastries. The Christmas alcohol in our house was a Finnish martini - vodka, red vermouth, and a splash of seven-up. Nowadays, we often substitute cranberry juice for the Vermouth.
The main change in Canada was that we wholeheartedly accepted turkey over the lipee kala. Mom tried once or twice to serve the fish, because it could still be bought from a Scandinavian delicatessen in New Westminster, but it met such stiff resistance that she gave up and the turkey was here to stay. Most of the other foods we kept and they still get served up in my home, even if my sister and I are the only ones to touch the herring.
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