Since my family didn’t begin attending the United Missionary Church until I was 11, my earliest memory of a Christmas church celebration is from the United Church of Canada. If the United Churches my family attended held Christmas pageants or choir cantatas, I have no memory of them, though one sister, three years older, does.¹ She remembers a Trinity United (Hannon, ON) Christmas program (ca 1959-1961): a big Christmas tree and Sunday School presents but no Santa. I think I have never been a shepherd, a wise man, or an angel bringing tidings of great joy (the girls always got to do that anyway), not even a lamb. But I might be wrong. Instead, I have one recollection of a rehearsal for a school Christmas program (though not the program itself), because I remember the exasperation of the teachers who abandoned the round or square dance we grade twos were practicing but not getting right.

On a Christmas Day in 1963 or 1964, at Emmanuel United, North Bay, ON, the auditorium was full. Children who had never been in church before were wandering around the aisles, and parents were getting stressed keeping them in check. The minister, Mr Wilson, relieved the tension by telling everyone it was OK, let the children move around. Christmas was a day when the world welcomed a newborn into the world, after all. I thought he was very good to say so.

But later in the 1960s, in the United Missionary Church, we had choirs and manger scenes, definitely, enough that the memories blend into one another. I sang in the choirs. That’s how I learned “There a Song in the Air,” and maybe “Do You See What I See?” We had Mr McQuoid or Mr Atwood or some other of the congregation dressed up as Santa Claus breaking into the final minutes of the Sunday School program with some Ho Ho Hos, and a few oranges and candies spread around. It was fun, but not very serious. I think a few thousand churches did something like this every year, with cantatas and pageants, and we enjoyed it.

When I got old enough to go to the young people’s meetings in the UMC/ Missionary Church, we used to go around in cars singing carols to the “shut ins,” the older members who couldn’t often get out to church. Someone had prepared fruit baskets for them. I like carols so I was a bit annoyed that we only sang a verse or two before we finished with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas (3x)…and a Happy New Year,” and the leaders whisked us off to the next home. It was cold in North Bay in late December, so I suppose they were keeping to a schedule and keeping us warm. One year some of us took along our school band instruments. You have to keep a trombone mouthpiece warm or you have real difficulties. One year we drove out of town to see Mr Gosselin, who was dying of cancer. It was sad, but I am glad for the memory, as David G was one of my good church friends, and Mr Gosselin, his father, had become a dedicated believer through our church.

I used the young people’s Christmas singing each year to invite M, a high school friend I liked, and she kindly came. She was an Anglican, so I felt very daring to ask her, in my limited understanding of Christian witness. And then I went away to university and the Christmas programs were usually over by the time I returned home from Toronto by bus, so I don’t know what they did. For three or four years I went to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s International Christmas at Pioneer Camp, Mary Lake, so I missed whatever was going on in North Bay again.

The end of Christmas Day in Church? At some period many EMCC churches stopped having Christmas Day worship services. Apparently this was part of a trend of many churches switching their big gathering to Christmas Eve.² I didn’t notice how the change came, though I noticed some Christian Reformed churches³ and Anglicans still had a Christmas Day service.⁴ The new perspective stressed the family over the church: “Spend the time at home with your family on Christmas Day.” In Nigeria’s United Missionary Church of Africa churches, Christmas Day is a Big Church Day and they are not alone in treating it so. Special Church service, choirs, plays by the Women’s Fellowship, cooking for guests, new clothing, visiting church people, it is all there. Our early missionaries in Nigeria tried to emphasize the spiritual side, and were disgusted by the introduction of European drunkenness and revelry, so maybe they had some success eventually.⁵

Gospel Banner recognition. Or maybe, the early EMCC never had Christmas Day services, as a non-liturgical church? Did we oppose celebrating Christmas at one time as some Mennonites opposed it?⁶ It was certainly mentioned in a minimal way at first in the church magazine. Jacob Y Shantz, from Berlin (Kitchener), ON, was the only writer to mention Christmas just before Christmas 1887, to promote a salvation message: “Is it Christmas to you when you think of the Judgement day?”⁷ In a December 1893 issue Gospel Banner the only recognition of Christmas still was a letter from a lady whose husband was not a believer. She praised people she knew who cooked big pots of food for needy families and children in her community as their Christmas celebration.⁸ Later, for many years the Gospel Banner had a special Christmas edition partly meant to be widely distributed as a promotion. One year, it said “Holiday Edition” in big letters on the cover above a picture of Joseph, Mary, Jesus and a sheep. It featured poems, a fictional story and editorial comments on cultural Christmas traditions (the editor didn’t like Yule logs, Christmas trees or Santa Claus).⁹ Under a later editor, the magazine was back to only a cover with a Christmas greeting and one editorial column on Christmas with more attention to revivals and holiness conventions.¹⁰ Nevertheless, a later editor, Everek Storms, published Christmas programs for church use.¹¹

Every year you will hear of someone complaining that Christmas is a survival of the Roman pagan Saturnalia, that Jesus was not born on December 25^th, and that the Bible never tells us to celebrate the day of his birth and so on and so on (though angels did celebrate). I have read in Sam Goudie’s diaries, though, that he went to the MBiC West End Toronto Mission on the Christmas Days (1903-1905). He was an MBiC pastor and in 1905 was elected a Presiding Elder. And he noted in 1903, “A Beautiful Xmas indeed. But quite cold. We spent the day at home/ no one here but C C Gooda [a lodger]. Santa sent us some mail. I preached in the evening to a small turnout.”¹² The next year, he “[bought] a Xmas tree on Christmas Eve.” (No complaint about the “X.” Everyone knew it stood for Xristos.) That Christmas Day was a Sunday, so the mission continued as before: “Weather very cold. I attended all the services & preached twice. Bro Bolwell led the P.M. meeting. The attendance was small so many were away/ will be glad when our people come home again…”¹³ In 1905: “A beautiful Xmas. J[osiah] R Goods were here today and Abram [Goudie]’s spent evening with us. Had a very nice time. Santa came our way, too.”¹⁴ So a Santa Claus tradition had in place at least in his Mennonite Brethren in Christ home.

One year in the brief life of the Sudbury Missionary Church (English), maybe 1983, we staged the Nativity story with kids of our small Sunday School outside in the snow in the daytime, taking photos on slide film. On the Sunday before Christmas we showed the slides with someone narrating. Not very grand, but the story was told and it was fun. Soon forgotten. I have the slides in our old photo collection somewhere, never seen but once in over 40 years. Birthdays are really meant to be celebrated freshly anyway.

Welcome to your creation, Lord Jesus, there is room in your Church for you.

Banner: Nigerian Nativity wood carvings. Photo by C Fuller December 2024

1Dr Lois K Dow.

2Liz Montiero, “Flocking to church Christmas Eve,” Waterloo Region Record (Saturday, December 24, 2011) p D7.

3I have a 1985 Christmas Day church bulletin from Bloomfield, ON, to prove it.

4Several years I have worshipped at a nearby Anglican Church Christmas Day.

5Cornelia Pannabecker, “Diaries,” December 25 190X, Chester-Hunking Family Collection, MCHT.

6Harold S Bender and Dennis D. Martin. “Christian Calendar.” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1990. Web. 16 Dec 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Christian_Calendar&oldid=133866.

7Jacob Y Shantz, “Letter,” Gospel Banner (December 15 1887) p 9. Editor: Jacob B Detwiler.

8Mrs Sarah Figel, “Christmas,” Gospel Banner (December 15 1893) p 3. Editor: Henry S Hallman.

9The editor was Charles H Brunner; Gospel Banner (December 23 1909) p 1-6.

10This editor was Jasper A Huffman; Gospel Banner (December 1921).

11Everek R Storms, Trinity Christmas Helper No 1 and No 2 (Kitchener, Trinity Press, 1948 and 1958).

12Sam Goudie, “Diary,” December 25 1903, in Toronto. Diaries courtesy Eleanor (Goudie) Bunker Family Collection.

13Sam Goudie, “Diary,” December 25 1904.

14Sam Goudie, “Diary,” December 25 1905.