AN OLD-WORLD CHRISTMAS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21990, 22 December 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

AN OLD-WORLD CHRISTMAS

Here in New Zealand, where Christmas falls in mid-summer, we are inclined to forget that in countries of the old world children gather round a great fire, and wait eagerly for Santa to give them their presents from the Christmas tree. Our Christmas trees are not tiny firs, but spreading pohutukawas which. bloom in the sunshine by the seashore. They have their gifts of deep red flowers, and we await them as impatiently as English children await their tinselled firs. On the borders of Hampshire and Surrey there is one of the biggest Christmas tree plantations in England. There, there are hundreds of thousands of tho little spruce firs that are specially grown for Yuletide. Experienced men work hard marking such trees as are fit to be taken up and sent away to the market. One of the curious features of the Christmas tree industry is that every year a proportion of the trees must be removed from the plantations whether these can be sold or not. If this thin-ning-out were not done, the trees would become so overcrowded that they would be spoiled in shape, and the lower branches drop their foliage. During the Great War, when trade was bad, many thousands of Christmas trees were uprooted and stacked into heaps and then set on fire. It takes five years to grow even a small Christmas tree, and the bigger ones may be fifteen or twenty years old. A large quantity of mistletoe goea to England from Northern France, but there is an increasing amount produced in the former country. Mistletoe is now extensively grown in the apple orchards of the west of England. The old idea that mistletoe did harm to the fruit trees is now known to be quite wrong, so farmers have taken to planting mistletoe on their trees by pressing a few of the berries on the bark of the branches. ' i"

3 especially the one with the glow-woms, which was worth coining all the ifay to see.

Wellington is a very steep city, with houses dotted closely over the hillsides. It is where the Governor and his lady spend the greater part of the year, as it is the capital city of New Zealand.

Once again we boarded the Susses for the South Island. We found th« climate cooler, it seemed more like English country, especially Christchurcb and the Canterbury Plains.

Now we are in Dunedin, and preparing for our homeward journey. How pleased I shall be to see my dear people again! Although I have had a wonderful holiday, and every care taken of me, I feel overjoyed to b* returning home to you all. —Betty Dromgool, 23 Springcombe Road, St. Heliers Bay, Auckland, El; age 11 years 7 months.