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By Helvi OOsterman
When I was a kid, we used to get hand-knitted woollen socks for Christmas. Mum was very busy and sometimes she had only enough time to finish one sock, and we had to patiently wait for a whole year for its partner. By the time I was ten, I had received roughly four and half pairs of socks…
Mum was lucky that she did not have to go shopping for the wool; it grew on the backs of our black and white Finn sheep, which was very handy. All she had to do was to send it to the local wool co-op to be processed into a knitting yarn. Some busy people called it LWCO for short, but we had enough time to get the words out, and we used the longer version.
Our Mum was a gentle person, not one of those tough black and white people. She liked nuances and shades better and therefore she also asked the wool to be blended into soft grey. Of course in those days we had never heard of the Aussie Rules that tell you that girls ought to wear pink and that blue is for boys. We were blissfully ignorant of such rulings and were happy just to have warm feet.
Life was good; we did not even know that paedophiles existed in our charmed world. Our parents let us walk to school, so obviously no one had told them either about these bad people. In return we did not tell them of our adventures of swimming in fast flowing rivers and the games we played on breaking up ice floes in springtime…we knew of people who had drowned, but not THAT many…
Now the mums have to buy big black cars and become taxi drivers for their offspring, and by the time the kids turn ten they have sleepless nights before Christmas because they can’t think of anything new they still have to have. They have their laptops, WII’s, IPods, IPads and scooters and trail bikes, and socks and shoes to die for with labels etched into them. Even the pencil cases have to be bought only at some special Smiggle shop; pens and rubbers from K-Mart just don’t cut it…
On Christmas Eve Dad and Big Brother used to go to our own forest and came back with a proper Christmas tree, a spruce with sturdy branches, branches so strong you could hang edible red apples on them, and of course home-made gingerbread biscuits and real candles firmly sitting in their holders…no, we never managed to start a fire…We made sure all the edibles were eaten before the 6th of January, the Finnish Independence Day, and also the customary date for taking the Christmas tree down and out.
Little Max saw a black plastic Christmas tree the other day at some shopping mall and thankfully thought it was horrid, so would have my Mum, if we would have talked about it too loudly on her well-kept grave.
They don’t make Childhoods or Christmases like they used to. I just hope that it is still politically correct to wish you all a very good Christmas…!
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Is that you Helvi, flying about as usual.?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubeVUnGQOIk
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ytaba36, ah Venice, I’m reading and dreaming about the place…one day I’ll be there…
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Some years ago, It was mentioned before, to much hilarity, I remember, my mum used to hand knit our underpants. You can imagine the itchiness. After wearing them a couple of days, ( that was the norm then) they would stretch and this would result in the widening of the legs. Being skinny, my pielemuis would inevitably creep out and I had my hands full continuously tucking it back in its itchy woolen pouch.
It was always a relief to get freshly boiled underpants. The legs were nice and tight and everything was snug and religiously within its bounderies and totally acceptable.
I think it was a relief for my family to have reached a level of some financial freedom to finally afford cotton underpants. The occasional tucking in still happens, but not too often.
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Thjank you H (accidental “J” just seemed right). MY Mom was a super knitter too. I used to have lovely hand-knit jumpers and envied the wealthier kids their machine-made hard-wearing, harsh cardboard-like numbers. Anything to be one of the pack. I still have some jumpers she knitted me for when I left home – which was bloody 1973 ! I’m down to about three. One I used to wear under my sailing jacket. It got wet many times but I always washed it carefully, threaded some old pantyhose up one sleeve and down the other and hung them crucifiction-style in the shad to dry. I was a domestically well-trained young man – useful when you don’t have a lot of cash.
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Merry Christmas to the Oosterfolk. I remember feeling poor because I wore hand-knitted jumpers to school, like about a third of the boys. The more affluent wore machine knitted garments, that probably would have cost half a day’s pay. Theonly kid who was worse off was the Dutch kid, who’s Dad built timber fences, and had a small timber-yard. he was often late as he had to help unload timber trucks before school, and his Dad refused to give him a late note. He used to show the teacher the splinters in his hands.
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Oh, BigM, the Dutch ALWAYS cry poor, they like to save something for the rainy day, it rains a lot in Holland, so they are really saving for every day…they spend a little bit like when they buy Aldi wine, the one that comes in boxes of six and costs $11.99 a box….
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Are they like the Scots helvi, they can be a bit tight with the morning issue I here.
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Happy Dionysia Gerard! And a Merry Apocalypse!
🙂
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It’s Helvi who wrote the story not me. She sends you her Merry Christmas and I send you Frohliche Weihnachten ,Asty.
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‘Froliche’ I think I understsand; sounds a lot like the English, ‘frolic’ and is probably semantically similar… ‘Weihnachten’ however, I don’t know at all… Hazarding a guess, I’d say something like ‘White Night’ when translated…? It sounds to me in any case, like it’s a reference to the much older, gaelic/celtic/viking traditions and if so ‘White Night’ may not be a bad guess at the night which originally was supposed to represent the deepest night of winter; the longest, and ‘whitest’ night of the year…
But please don’t allow my speculation to get the better of me, Gerard; if you know different, and can enlighten me as to its true meanings, I shall be grateful for the correction.
🙂
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Oops! Very sorry Helvi! But you know I’ve always had trouble telling you apart! (Well… your posts anyway! … Well… sometimes anyway!)
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asty, forgiven as long as you still can tell our gravatars apart…also I better be nce because it’s Christmas Eve.
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‘Attagirl Helvi… Sure I can tell your gravatars apart; I’m not quite that blind! Yours is the pretty one!
Froliche Weihnachten! (Whatever it means!)
🙂
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“…we had enough time to get the words out”
Such a beautiful story, helvityni. Such a pleasure to read this and especially poignant to enter the world of little helvi.
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It’s funny how you always have plenty of time living in the country, but you are never bored as a kid…
You are too kind ,shoe.
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What a lovely story Helvi. My mum made clothes for us when we were younger. even down to certain things
Mrs A and I had a conversation recently about our growing up and how different ours was generally to our kids. Not that they are that materialistic as to where some things need to be bought from. The youngest volunteers at vinnies, which is almost like a shopping trip for her. Nearly always get a txt asking can she “borrow” few dollars to buy whatever she’s found. Thats the artist in her I suppose.
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Yes ,Alge, we artistic types love rummaging in charity stores, they are our treasure chests :)The young Algerina sounds like a lovely young woman.
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My son volunteers for vinnes (in Queensland). He is an artist although I think he doesn’t remember it for the moment, And he made beautiful jewellery when he was a teenage boy, I can’t understand why he doesn’t see how beaitufl his art work is. Yes, artistic types love charity stores for a good rummaging which is a good reason for the prices of the incidentals like scraps of fabric to stay well low for that access to resources I am reflecting. (Prices are getting a bit out of hand at my local,)
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And a Happy Christmas to you and yours too, Gerard. I enjoyed the delightful reminiscences. Josephine.
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Thanks Josephine, and a Happy Christmas to you and yours too.
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Good work. urbanwallart.
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I believe in recycling 🙂
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About time we had a Helvi piece. Lovely. Do you still have those socks?
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You must be kidding, Viv; the next one down in size inherited them. I was wearing Big Sister’s darned ones. When the the darning overtook the original knitting , Mum finally put them in the doghouse to keep our ‘husky’ warm…finally buried in the husky hair..
PS. It was Suomalainen Pystykorva= Finnish Spitz, not Husky
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Hahaha – half kidding though. Might have kept as a sourvenir or recycled into sock puppets ! You were lucky in some ways. My mean mother never bought me anything warm for my feet, very ordinary cotton socks and my grandmother did darn them which made them very uncomfortable as the darning wool was better than the sock. Too mean to buy me regular warm winter slacks and so got me johdpurs which lasted and lasted. The only kid in the street wearing horseriding pants when not at school. Anyway at least she got her biannual overseas trip in. We were not poor either.
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Viv, I dreamt of jodhpurs, I saw all those uppity English kids wearing them in my cousin’s Finnish Woman’s Weekly ( a little fib, we did not even have Woman’s Weekly), they had horses to ride on,my dad had two work horses, not fair.
Now I live in a place where most women and girls have jodhpurs and they go horse riding all the time…I still have not got a pair…maybe I get them this Christmas.
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I didn’t have a horse or ride horses. They were made of tough long lasting material.
Still our Christmas lunches were very good. Roast stuffed chicken, pork, vegies and home made pudding (my grandmother’s) with brandy sauce. Some sparkling wine and plenty of beer. I was about 14 before I was allowed a little wine and a shandy.
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Still reads so nicely. Tears in my eyes. Happy Christmas .I’ll sleep with my socks on to-night and think of Finland.
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