A mischievous elf has returned to St. Albert’s public library this week to help kids learn about Christmas around the world.
About 600 students are visiting the St. Albert Public Library from Dec. 5 to 20 to take part in the 37th annual Christmas Around the World program. The long-running program has taught thousands of children about local and international Christmas traditions since 1985.
The program sees library staff sing and read to children to teach them about Christmas traditions in other nations, said library children’s services co-ordinator Ashley King. These include Germany’s Christmas Spider, the golden webs of which supposedly inspired the tradition of putting tinsel on trees; Italy’s La Befana, the Good Witch of Christmas who puts gifts in stockings on Jan. 5 to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany; and Sweden’s Yule Tomte, the mischievous elf who wraps gifts in strange shapes. Students also get to decorate and eat a Christmas cookie.
Each session ends with the staff member telling the kids about the “sneaky elf” at the library who keeps hiding gifts in people’s shoes, King said. When the kids go to get their coats, they are delighted to see that the elf (a parent volunteer) has stuck tiny candy canes into their boots.
“They’re all really excited,” King said of the students, some of whom believe the elf to be the elf-on-a-shelf they have in their homes.
Long history
Retired St. Albert Public Library children’s librarian Arlene Kissau said library staff have taught students about Christmas around the world since at least 1981. There was no room in the old library building for programs (the library was where the Provincial Building is today), so back then librarians had to tote their books, props, and piñatas to area schools and read to students in class.
Kissau said the current Christmas Around the World program started in 1985, one year after St. Albert Place opened.
“The first year, we decided we would do gingerbread houses, but we would make them out of graham crackers,” she recalled — a mistake, since no one had enough time to finish them.
Kissau said staffers in those early years often dressed up as elves while reading to the kids, which led to the “sneaky elf” tradition of putting candy in the children’s boots. She said you always knew when the program wrapped up for the day, as you could hear the shouts of joy from the kids as they went to the coatroom and found the candies.
King said the program hasn’t changed much over the years, with many of the same props and stories still used today. One recent change is a shift to decorating cookies instead of building graham-cracker houses — the houses became too laborious for volunteers to manage given the number of students in the program.
Lois E. Hole Elementary teacher Sally Archdeacon said she has been bringing her students to Christmas Around the World for 21 years, as it's a good way to introduce them to the library.
“It opens their minds to other cultures and other ways of looking at Christmas,” she said, and gives parents a chance to help out.
King said the Christmas Around the World program is currently reserved for students, but some of its stories are available on the library’s YouTube page.
“It’s a tradition!” she said of the program.
“We’d like to keep doing it as much as possible.”
