AN EARLY NEW ZEALAND CHRISTMAS

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 303, 23 December 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN EARLY NEW ZEALAND CHRISTMAS

Grandma Hawkins was a picturesque old lady. She was old, so old that she reminded one of a gnarled tree of the forest, strong, yet bowed by the storms of the years. Her skin was wrinkled and lier step faltering, yet her cheeks still had the faint blush of health and her eves wore as bright as of yore. Everyone called her Grandma, from sedate old men who addressed her with the old world courtesy of the pioneers, to little children who called her fira'ma, their stumbling baby tongues making soft music of the syllables.

By Peggy Ruane

It was a cold, dreary Christmas day and Grandma Hawkins sat in her favourite armchair in front of a blazing log Arc. Christmas presents were piled beside her, mysterious packages wrapped in crisp brown paper and tied with the gay ornamental strings of Christmastidc.. But somehow Grandma Hawkins didn't seem to be .interested in them. She was fondling a doll, a very ntyideseript sort of a doll. Its face was crudely carved from rimu, a painted face like that of any other doll with ruby-red lips and staring blue eyes, and ♦wo yellow woollen plaits tied with bright blue bows. Her dress was an outlandish creation of striped bine silk in the fashion of many years ago. Grandma Hawkins* thoughts were of another Christmas, long years ago, a Christmas when New Zealand was young and she, too, had been young— the first Christmas she had spent in the new land.

Her mind went back through the years, long yearn sanctified by toil .and hardship, sanctified by the pride of building. She had helped to build so many things. Log cabins, homesteads, and rough pioneer roads and, more than all that, she had helped to build the minds and characters of the children,the first generation of born New Zealanders, to make them worthy sons and daughters of the pioneers. And her thoughts and remembrances went back still further to that day, over ninety years ago, when a full-rigged sailing vessel had sailed into a New Zealand harbour. Old Grandma Hawkins was a child once more, eagerly helping to pack trunks in preparation for landing. On board ship everything was excitement. Most of the luggage had been packed hours ago when the first dim i smear of land had been sighted through the morning haze. The rails were crowded with old and young, eager and alert to catch the first glimpse of their new home. Maori canoes rounded the headland, filled with wild, brown-skinned natives. Grandma Hawkins still remembered the scene, although she had only been a child of six. The strange, fierce natives with their tattooed faces and queer greenstone weapons had sent a shiver of fright through them all, and it still persisted even when they realised that they were friendly and their weird chant was but a Maori of welcome. Few indeed were the settlers there to greet them, for there were as yet only a few scattered homesteads. In answer to their eager inquiries the colonists showed them where their land lay, a short distance away, concealed behind a low hill. The sinking rays of the sun cast lengthening shadows over the land as they breasted the brow of the hill. Their laughter ceased and a strange silence fell upon them. Before them stretched the land they had so often dreamed about; their land, upon which they were to build their homes. But it was wild, so incredibly wild. Forested acres of bushland, with intervening plains of scrub and fern. Something of ttfe utter desolation seemed to affect even little Rosie Hawkins, for she clung timidly to her mother's skirts. Then suddenly the silence was broken. From far away in the bushland there chimed upon their ears for the first time the soft, liquid notes of. the bellbird. It was as if the spirit of this wild and lovely land had spoken to them, bidding them to take heart. That night, when the children had gone to sleep, they sat around the fire, talking and planning, not only for the weeks to come, but most of all for the next morning,* because it would be Christmas Day, with all its hopes and' They forgot their own* frwearriness; their children^a.t least shoxßQi 2>e hajßpy on the Gl&stmas mocskv fßy tfie flickering fire tfrjgj *»eaefced their- trwrifcs

and lengths of material from which to fashion presents. While the men carved toys and dolls from the soft wood, the tired fingers of the women stitched the dolls' clothes and pretty bits of finery. They were learning the first lesson of the settler, utter forget fulness of self, and even as they worked invisible hands were weaving upon their hearts the badge of the pioneer. They awakened early next day and watched the dawn creep slowly over the land. It was a dawn such as they had never seen before. The rising sun silhouetted with its early glare, not the smoking chimneys of the factory world, but the sweeping outlines of the hills and the trees. The bush came to life in all its myriad glories, and in its strange wildness they found things to love. There were none of the sweet, austere flowers of the dear England they had left, but there were in their

place the crimson profusion of the pohutukawa and the soft pale koromiko. The children awoke with joy in their hearts and with the spontaneous gaiety and forgetfulness of childhood they commenced to explore the bushland. Suddenly they stopped, and their eyes ,went wide with surprise and delight, iln the clearing.there was a sight which «is bomid up with the earliest rememihranees.>ofJJ<3rij2ffoad— a Christinas taree, tiharrS IwJen wifk parrels in coloured

wrappers. With shouts of joy they ran forward, and in the wild distribution of presents that followed little Rosie Hawkins received the present she wanted most —a wooden doll in a striped blue silk dress. Their Christmas dinner that day was a strange one, yet the very flavour of its strangeness made it appetising. Wild roast pig, and crisp baked kumara and sweet fern roots cooked in Maori fashion in hot ovens in the ground; so different from their last Christmas, with its typically English turkey and plum pudding. The stars shone bright that night in the peaceful serenity of the stars, and a wandering breeze seemed to whisper

soft carolß as it stirred among the trees and the grasses. Belinda, the "maid of all work," opened the door crossly. There was the old lady, mooning before the fire. And look at that doll. She must be in her second childhood. But Grandma Hawkins domd betas* the btozing Y*ie flpe and her thoughts ta-ere 'wePmrnqg, of the hoy and drerror* of xhc early pioaeen.