Laughter is what springs to mind when Louis Thomas thinks about winter, the solstice and the time of year when Christmas and Santa are prevalent.
“I can still remember a lot of it. My grandfather used to come and get me. It seems always that there was laughter in the evenings all the time. I imagine that’s the way it was in the winter homes. Sit around the fire and talk about what went on in the days. Always full of laughter – they never laughed at anybody, they always laughed with each other. That’s the way it should be. I think we lost that along the way.”
Thomas, though, definitely hasn’t lost his ability to laugh.
When first asked about memories of this time of year, he said, chuckling, “We would sit around and wait for Santa to come down the ladder in the winter house with a bag of toys and put it under the tree.”
Thomas is a member of the Neskonlith Indian Band and the Secwepemc Nation. While he has plenty of memories of his own, he also remembers hearing from elders what winters were like for the generations before his.
“I think our people celebrated Christmas all winter long,” he remarks. “Christmas is a Christian thing and our people believed in the Creator. I think our people were always givers, always willing to share. You don’t see that much anymore, we all isolate ourselves in our homes, and don’t go out and visit like we used to. That was the way of our people, it was like Christmas all year round.”
Along with infectious laughter, he remembers the importance of story-telling.
“You could sit there for hours and listen. Our people were always a happy people – there was always that laughter – but that is disappearing.”
In the old days, professional storytellers, who would go around and gather stories, would sometimes come to visit.
“It was a real treat when they would come into your winter house,” he explains. “I still remember my grandmother’s sister. She could tell stories, but I’d never thought of recording it. She’d keep us laughing for hours.”
She was blind, he says, but seemed to see more than people with sight.
“She would say, ‘So I’m blind – I’m blind.”
Thomas’ grandmother would sometimes come into the room and tell her sister to keep it down and go to bed.
“She said, ‘Why should I go to bed, I’m older than you?’” he laughs.
She lived to 103.
“She told some coyote stories. I think that’s the way young people learned. Like Aesop’s Fables, it always had a moral to it. It was such an enjoyable time. Laughter, I think that’s what Christmas is all about – giving, and sharing the good times of the past.”
After the tragedy that was the residential school system, formal religion was not appealing to many.
“There is some movement now of rediscovering our religion. A lot of other native religions are coming in. This is what our people are looking for – because it was taken away from us. I’m always wondering what our people believed in. I think you have to believe in something. I’ve been praying to the Creator every morning,” he says, explaining the sweat house is central for him.
“I go up and do the sweat, and smudge my house out every so often. I kind of feel that’s what it was. A lot of the religion is centred around the sweat house. I have a sense of contentment when I get out of there.”
Thomas said he might enter the sweat angry, jaw clenched, but will come out feeling peaceful.
“That’s what they said – it’s mother earth’s womb, you’re reborn.”
Birds and deer come close by, not seeing him as a threat. And there’s a bear who walks through every now and then, sometimes wrecking his sweat house, which can make him feel like beating it up.
But, “according to my old people, if you go swim where a bear does, it’s good. You gain the strength from the bear. I’m glad I shared with him.”
After harvesting and hunting throughout the other seasons, he said, caches would be hidden for the winter.
“Always smoked salmon, dried meat and fruit – they knew exactly where it was and dug it up when they were ready.”
Switzmalph, as in the Switzmalph Cultural Centre, means “berry bush,” he says, because every part of the valley had a name. The sopalali berry, which is a key ingredient in ‘Indian ice cream,’ grows on the sopalali bush, which flourished in this area in those days.
Along with story telling, there was drumming and dancing throughout the winter.
“And they’d visit each other in the winter months. A lot of boredom would set in if you were confined in an underground house.”
And in the evenings, the laughter.
“Even during the day, you could hear it outside, laughing, they always found something to laugh about. Always. Sometimes in my sweat house, I could hear it,” he says, referring to the echoes of his ancestors.
“To me, laughter is always key. When you talk to the natives, they’ll always find something to laugh about. Even young people, with a bad thing that happened, they try to turn it into something comical to ease the pain of the suffering.”
