Christmas memories at Loreto: small moments that stay with us
Christmas memories often live in small, ordinary moments – the ones that return easily, even decades later. At Loreto Home of Compassion, residents Letitia and Marg, along with Marg’s husband Hans, shared their recollections of Christmases past, offering a glimpse into traditions shaped by family, neighbourhood and togetherness.
For Letitia, Christmas is inseparable from the street she grew up on.
“When I was little and we lived in Erskineville, and everybody in the street used to get together,” she recalls. “There was a biscuit factory at the end of the street, and they used to give us all tins of biscuits for Christmas.”
Her family celebrations were simple and close-knit.
“It was just my mother and the three of us – my brother, my sister and myself,” Letitia says.
What she remembers most isn’t gifts, but the rituals. “I used to look forward to mum putting up the Christmas tree,” she says. “We decorated it together.”
And like many families, food carried its own traditions. “My mother would put sixpence and threepence in the Christmas pudding.”
Marg’s memories also begin in childhood, with the excitement of Christmas morning.
“I remember getting up at Christmas time and the parents might still be in bed, and we’d go and see what had come,” she says.
She and her brother would open gifts under the tree before settling into a family meal.
“Oh yes, we always had a meal together,” Marg says. “Chicken and things like that… and definitely Christmas pudding.”
A tradition started by her grandmother stayed with the family for years.
“My grandmother started putting a penny in the pudding, and that tradition went right through for quite a long time.”
Hans’ memories stretch back to a snowy European childhood.
“I was born in Vienna,” he says. “We went to our grandparents’ place, and it was snowy… we were watching out the window, and we saw Santa coming in the snow.”
The memory still moves him.
“It was so real,” Hans says. “I probably believed in Santa longer than most.”
After moving to Australia, he carried that sense of magic forward.
“I had friends with young kids, so I took up that tradition,” he says. “We didn’t have the snow, but I’d come walking from a distance so the kids could see.”
And when asked to compare Christmases across continents, Hans doesn’t hesitate.
“The difference is Europe’s bloody cold and here it’s bloody hot.”
Different places, different traditions but the same thread runs through each story: connection, familiarity and shared moments. At Loreto, those memories remain part of daily life, quietly shaping how Christmas is felt, remembered and celebrated.