Gooey tarts, cookies, squares and sweaty palms

For some reason today, I am thinking about Christmas concerts as a child.  I suppose it is probably because on Sunday we are going to a Christmas concert downtown with my parents. But today I am thinking of those simplier ones we use to do, with friends from class or Sunday school, all knees and elbows and piping voices, sweaty palms getting on stages and grins with gaps where teeth should be.

When I was small I remember going to Sunday school every Sunday.  In what perhaps was a foreshadowing of my crazy need to be on time, I remember getting perfect attendance at Sunday school for five years running!  Imagine what I was like as a child!  I remember the worn linoleum floors of the Sunday school hall, the rubbed metal of the tracks which ran around the ceiling and from which hung faded rose coloured curtains which could be pulled to create separate “classrooms” for teaching.  I remember a great friend Carolyn in my class, led by Mrs Dorington.  Carolyn was learning to play the accordion. Can you imagine how marvelous that was and is, particularly now looking back, that this slight, little girl with bangs and braces was learning to play an accordion almost half the size she was.  I remember being fascinated by it and even then not seeing anything peculiar or laugh-inducing in the fact that she was learning it.  Only that she could manipulate bellows and keys and pegs all at the same time with her little stubby fingers.  I remember the endless rehearsals for the Christmas concert and then performance night, families coming in from the snow, sitting in rows steaming with coats and gloves and mittens strung by a string through the sleeves of your coat from one side to the other.  And the singing, loud, clear, off key likely, looking out at the church, warmed by the kid next to you, itchy in new wool pants, thinking about the desserts to be served downstairs afterward.

I still marvel that all those women provided so much food for so many occasions.  I am not sure if you ever experienced a church supper or a church social but if nothing else it was always served up, the entire even, on long folding tables, covered in paper tablecloths, tapped underneath with masking tape.  To this day I associate particular foods with church suppers, salmon sandwiches cut in triangles, jellied moulds, coffee served in enormous silver cylinders with spouts at the end like a pool with a drain, pickles in glass trays, devilled eggs with slashes of paprika strewn across the tops.  At church suppers, the women would have prepared vast mounds of roast turkey on platters, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, coleslaw made by the vat, pickles and pickled beets.  And each woman would have baked a pie of varying fruits and styles.  They would all be cut up, placed on mismatched crockery plates, loaded as an assortment on large plastic trays and then delivered to the tables so you could select your own piece de resistance to end the meal.  Sticky mints, occasionally covered in lint, in glass bowls, bowls of clementines and trays of sugar cookies with coloured sprinkles, homemade butter tarts, and squares of every kind.  It really was food in abundance, food for celebrating and rejoicing.  Hmm, makes me think it is time to get baking for Christmas!