Often holiday time gives people a chance to slow down and focus on spending time with friends and loved ones, making lasting memories for years to come.
The holidays have changed a lot through the generations, and we wanted to have a look back to a time when the holidays were perhaps much simpler, but still created warm memories a person can carry with them.
We spoke with a few seniors at Williams Lake Seniors Village who volunteered to share some snapshots of Christmas holidays from a time when the glow of the holidays may have come from candlelight, kerosene lamps or a campfire.
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Donald Griffin recalls a very special holiday for him and his wife Vyonne. The couple were married on May 7, 1954 in what was then the little community of Kelowna. The very next week, Donald was on the boat to a new job in Kitimat. There was no road to Kitimat at the time and his new bride stayed in Westbank, while the town of Kitimat and the associated aluminum smelter were still being built.
On Dec. 31, 1954, Donald was at the dock when Vyonne arrived in Kitimat to finally join him. There was two feet of snow on the dock, quite a shock to his bride.
The pair had only been able to see one another once since their May wedding, when Donald was briefly shipped out of Kitimat to recover from an injury.
It was a reunion he still recalls fondly, with the couple spending 37 years in the company town.
"It was a wonderful town to raise a family," he said, recalling a record snowfall of 36 feet one winter and times when it snowed so hard workers had to remember where they parked because vehicles would be so buried they were hard to recognize after a single shift.
The couple moved to Nimpo Lake when Donald retired in January of 1990, where they then spent 28 years in a log home they built.
This year, the couple has been married 70 years.
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Amie Murray recalls her younger years in White Rock, where they would go up behind their home to select a Christmas tree - usually a prickly spruce tree.
The family would put up the tree, which she said was usually fairly small, sometimes in a small greenhouse at the one end of the house.
She remembers how the frost and the snow made the tree sparkle - their version of Christmas lights, which they did not have then. They would stand back and throw the tinsel onto the tree. The family home only had kerosene lamps and the lamplight would reflect off of the snow and the tinsel.
Her older sister would come up from the United States and another sibling would come back from school and another aunt and uncle would join them from Vancouver. She recalls a house full of family and eating one of their chickens for Christmas dinner.
Murray called it "more or less an old-fashioned Christmas."
"It was nice."
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Quindel King remembers many Christmases he and his wife Marilyn spent in Alexis Creek, with their four children.
Quindel said Quindel Jr., Charis, Melanie and Pamala would host their own version of a Christmas program for the family, performing for their parents to make holiday memories.
Another highlight of the holidays for the King family was getting a Christmas tree, but not for the reasons one might think. Over many years of family missions to harvest their own tree, Quindel Sr. became known for getting stuck during their expeditions for the annual yule tree selection.
One time, leaving the valley where they lived to find the perfect tree, the family found their tree and were loaded up to head home when their GMC Suburban got stuck turning around.
The entire family had to walk back down into the valley, many miles. Quindel Sr. returned with his son in his son's truck to get the truck -and of course the tree.
Even after his children had left home for school, each year they would caution him "don't get the Christmas tree until we get home" and tease him he would get stuck if no one was there to help him.
Other memorable Christmas moments include "winter picnics" where the family would head out with food and build a fire, do some sledding or snowshoeing and enjoy the outdoors. Sadly, Quentin lost his wife in September and this will be his first holiday without her since they married.
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Dorothy Chappelle can still recall one very special Christmas which took place when she was a little girl in 1948.
"It's one thing I'll remember until I'm gone," she said.
Chappelle grew up in Bralorne, a tiny gold mining town in the south Cariboo, west of Ashcroft in the South Chilcotin Mountains. The remote community was accessed either by air or by putting a vehicle on a rail car, disembarking the vehicle and then driving an access road into the mountain town.
In the winter of 1948-49, when it started snowing in November and barely let up until January, access to the community became very limited. Chappelle said supplies for the community's citizens, mine and hospital were all being brought in by helicopter three times a week.
"We were basically snowed in," she said. In order for the helicopters to land, mine workers would stand in a circle on the ball field, using their mining headlamps to help the pilots see where to land.
With such limited access to the outside world, the children of the town all thought Santa would not be able to come on Dec. 24.
But on Christmas Eve, the community held a celebration at the community hall, and all of the women and children were gathered at the hall.
Chappelle's father, however, brought her and her brother along as helicopters once again came in with a delivery for the town.
All the men stood in the circle with their mining headlamps lighting the way and adorned with green and red lights, a helicopter arrived overhead and then landed. The men unloaded the machine into pickups, the normal process for deliveries.
Then, out of the helicopter climbed Santa himself, and the men loaded him into a sleigh they had ready to receive him. Santa and his sleigh were then pulled down to the community hall where Santa explained it had been too windy to fly in with his reindeer.
Chappelle remembers everyone then gathering in the hall for roast, ham and dessert, which they ate very fast in anticipation of presents. After dinner, Santa called all the names and handed out all the gifts, tables were pushed aside and a band played. The community danced and played games before the night was over.
The next day, the entire town got up and went to church.
"Bralorne was a small town and everyone stuck together and helped everyone," said Chappelle.
