A Special Christmas

A special Christmas Service

By

Raymond Paltoo

I slowly moved from the realms of sleep to the reality of my soft, warm blankets. The old alarm clock at my bedside was still ringing, and I quickly placed one hand over it to shut off the ringer lest the noise awaken my two roommates. We were college students sharing a basement apartment, the smallest and most distant bedroom from the entrance being mine. Through the haze of a too-early rising, I realized that it was Christmas morning, and there was a reason that I had set the alarm. I had planned to attend the Christmas service at the local Presbyterian Church on Prince Arthur Street, which was a short distance down the street from me. The church building was a mere five to ten-minute walk from my apartment in the student ghetto at McGill University in Montreal.

The morning light struggled to illuminate my basement room as the weak, wintry rays of sunlight made their way through my slush-covered window pane, which opened out onto the back alley of the building. With my obsessive neatness, I tidied the bed after turning on the light and then went to the cupboard where I had meticulously hung up my church clothing for the day. Like all Presbyterians, I was taught to wear my Sunday Best for Church Services. Then, in my pajamas, I sneaked silently to the shared bathroom for a shower and shaved. Following the morning ablutions, I dressed carefully, donning the spotless, freshly laundered, white shirt I had retrieved from the laundry the prior evening while the kettle boiled the water for my instant coffee.

As for most of my student life, my breakfast consisted of a cigarette and a cup of coffee. I disliked going to the kitchen at this time in the morning because I knew what I would find. My roommates were both Muslims and had stayed up late studying with friends and classmates who had come over to do their accounting projects. Unlike science studies, which demanded a disciplined approach, this was usually a team effort involving lots of coffee and cigarettes. The smell of stale cigarette smoke was the norm in those days as almost everyone smoked in our College years. However, as I looked into the stained and cracked porcelain kitchen sink, I could see the half-dissolved cigarette butts mixed with old coffee dregs at the bottoms of the cups. As much as I tried, I could never get my fellow students to use an ashtray. I had vowed that after exams, I would look for a place of my own. I called Hope, my “date” for the morning church service, and told her I would meet her in the front lobby of the apartment building as it was impossible to invite her to this filthy place, even for a cup of coffee.

Hope was a girl from Jamaica. She was almost white, a descendant of the English colonial planters with what we in the Caribbean used to call having “a touch of the tar” in the old days. This term would undoubtedly be called racist today, but back then, folk accepted it for what it was. Everyone acknowledged that she was of a mixed racial identity. Her ancestors, at one time or another, had interacted with an enslaved Black person. I never asked whether it had been a black female or male ancestor. We did not ask these questions in the Caribbean as it was quite a commonplace experience. It was a given that the racial composition of the countries was a complete admixture of several genetic ancestors from Europe and Africa with the occasional Native American Indian input. The latter was a dying breed. They did not possess the toughness to resist many of the diseases brought by the white man from Europe and the Blacks from Africa.

Hope’s skin was very white, and she could and did pass for white except for some fullness in the lips and a slight tight curl in her hair emblematic of her mixed-race heritage. She was in Montreal as an immigrant. She was not one of our fellow students but hung out with us because we were integral parts of the tiny West Indian community. She and her two Jamaican girlfriends roomed in an apartment much too expensive for us to consider. She worked as a secretary at a big corporate office and earned a good income. She was the girlfriend of one of my friends, but since he was a Muslim, she had asked if she could attend service with me. Being a fourth-generation Scottish Presbyterian, religion had been an essential part of my life as my father and a few of his brothers had been elders in the church in Trinidad.

I was not particularly religious, but I went sedulously to church on three days of the year, as I would relate to the Reverends and Pastors in later life. I made it a point to attend services on the three most important days in the Christian Calendar: Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, each symbolizing the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In my country village, we would walk two miles to our little church in Cunaripo on Christmas Day to attend the morning service.

I walked out from the basement, up the stairs, and waited for her on the landing inside the doors. It was a magical day! The snow had begun falling gently with big, soft flakes that stayed on the ground, turning the grimy city streets into a white wonderland. It provided the denuded Maple trees along the avenue with a silver coating. It was just cold enough to prevent the snowflakes from melting. The whole looked like something out of a traditional Christmas postcard. As predicted, the weather report said to expect four to six inches of snow, and it was coming down now! It was Christmas of 1965, and  Canada had not yet instituted the metric system.

Soon, emerging through the curtain of falling snow was Hope, all smartly dressed in a red coat and scarf, bundled up against the cold. She joined me, and we began to walk to the church after a hearty Merry Christmas greeting with warm hugs.

Being young, we hardly felt the cold and made good progress. We arrived at the church in less than ten minutes, only to find it closed! I read the signs posted and realized that the Christmas Service had occurred the previous evening. We were at a loss as to what to do! Turning around, we started retracing our steps to my apartment when we heard singing from across the street. It was the sound of a Christmas Carol! We looked at one another, and as one, we mouthed silently, “Let’s go!” We walked across the street and opened the door of a massive brownstone church-like edifice. The singing was beautiful, and the usher waved us in. We found seats and joined in the singing, only to realize that the words were in German. It was a German Lutheran Church! All the hymns and carols were in German, but the sermon or homily was in English since most people there were Canadians of German origin. We enjoyed the service very much. The people were extremely friendly. They came up to greet us at the end, surrounded us, and wished us a merry Christmas even though we were strangers. Of course, they were all white. Oddly, I remember one song ever after: Tanenbaum or our Christmas tree song, which we both knew and joined in heartily.

Following the service, we walked back, and Hope said, “Let’s not wake up the boys. I’ll take you for coffee.” That was one of the many good things about Hope. She knew that most of the students were broke. I concurred heartily, so we slipped and slid to the McGill greasy spoon on Milton Street, where she bought me coffee and toast. We laughed about it for months afterward, our German Christmas.

 I learned from that Christmas experience that people are the same worldwide if you take the time to know them and adapt to their ways, even for an hour. I am sure they talked about the two Caribbean people who wandered into their church that morning, just wanting to share that feeling of camaraderie we had in Christ’s Church, where we are all supposed to be one. Perhaps both factions learned a lesson that snowy morning in Montreal, different cultures and races sharing in a universal bond of Christian love.