A push to respect our veterans and delay Christmas displays until after Remembrance Day is gaining momentum in Canada.
More and more people, and even some retailers, are saying Christmas can wait, lest we forget.
While it’s hard to fight retail giants, some have been known to change their tune in the face of social pressure.
I, and many Dutch-Canadians like me in Langley, are especially grateful to the men and women of this country, who fought so valiantly in the Second World War. It was the Canadian soldiers who liberated Holland. Thousands of Canadian soldiers lost their lives battling the Germans there.
The horrors of war were told to us many times and are a constant reminder of what soldiers went through for my family’s freedom.
My Opa on my mother’s side hid in a wall behind his ice box when German soldiers stormed his house, looking for males to work in their camps. He hid behind the ice box so that when they shot at all the walls, the bullets wouldn’t reach him.
My Oma and her family were on the brink of starving to death when her family was liberated in Utrecht. The joyous picture of her with Canadian soldiers piled on top of their army tank is priceless.
Just a month before the liberation, my grandmother’s family was so hungry they decided to walk until they found food. They walked for days, sleeping in abandoned barns, desperate to find a potato or two left in a farmer’s field.
During that trip, a German plane flew overhead and started to shoot at the road they were walking. They hid in a ditch, with the bullets coming so close they left holes in the sacks they were using to gather potatoes.
On my father’s side, my Opa had his bicycle store confiscated without payment by the Germans and he was taken to a work camp in Germany.
My Oma was left to raise my father, a baby at the time, and my uncle. My Opa actually escaped the Germans, jumping off a work train as it slowed down for a tight bend. The train was bombed just after it got through the bend.
My Opa’s death certificate was sent home to my grandmother who had little time to mourn him because he showed up at the door five days later. The Germans assumed he’d died along with the other men on the work train.
My grandparents also helped their neighbours who were hiding a Jewish family. When the family first arrived, the children could only be fed tiny amounts of bread and sips of water because their stomachs had shrunk so much.
The stories my grandparents told me, some of which I have recorded for safe keeping, are astounding — almost unbelievable. The horrors Hitler had planned — should he have gained world domination — are terrifying.
That’s why momentum should grow to delay the onset of the Christmas retail season. Instead it should wait until after Remembrance Day, while we concentrate on honouring veterans for their huge sacrifice.
So maybe next year, why don’t we put the importance of Nov. 11 ahead of the almighty dollar.
