In 1983, Kevin Stevenson wrote a piece for The Bermudian on Mr. L. N. “Dickie” Tucker’s childhood Christmas memories. At the time, Tucker was 81 years old. His memories of Christmas in old Bermuda are likely typical of the early 1900s. We thought we’d share part of his account of the days before commercialism:

“Christmas started early when we dug up the root for cassava pie. We had to scrape the root and then cut it down the middle to remove the green vein, which was supposed to be poisonous. We never proved the theory, but we received a lot of grazed knuckles from grating the cassava root.

"Then came the tremendous task of decorating our home—Mission House in St. David’s Island. We would go over to the mainland and bicycle up to Holly Hill opposite Gibbet Island where we cut holly. It wasn’t English holly with prickles, but it had red berries.

“We also went and cut down our Christmas tree. I shudder to think about it now, but if we didn’t like the cedar tree we cut first, we’d go out and cut another down. And then we would haul it home and put it in the drawing room with all the heavy furniture. We used small candles with clips for tree lights, and I still know don’t know why we didn’t set ourselves on fire.

"The Christmas turkey was purchased live and was in the backyard for two days prior to Christmas before it met its maker. Then there were the vegetables and all the other food we had to prepare from scratch: there was no such thing as frozen food in those days. Everything was fresh, except, perhaps, the plumb pudding that had been made two months before. It was taken out and given a good shot of brandy.

"For Christmas presents, we were given pocket money according to age—the eldest received one pound but I was lucky to get five shillings. We would go over to the mainland and see what the money could buy, and we also made presents to give each other.”