"Can we see your tree?": Why kids used to knock on doors to see Christmas trees in St. John's

"Missus, can we see your tree?"

For St. John's residents of a certain generation, that phrase is bound to ring a bell.

Throughout the '50s and '60s in St. John's — and, quite possibly, many years before that — kids would knock on their neighbours' doors, recite the request to see the Christmas tree, and get ushered inside to have a good look. 

Then, after gazing at the tree for a few minutes — and singing the praises of the tree in question — the kids would get treats and be sent on their way. 

Ruth Green, who grew up on Southside Road in St. John's, remembers the tradition well.

"You'd take off your gators, go into the front room, admire the tree and tell them how beautiful the tree was," Green said in an interview with CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show. "And then you'd be given some dark fruitcake and Purity syrup."

Green remembers making the rounds before supper, just as evening was settling in.

"You would do this when it was dark, and so the tree lights would be on. And you'd go in and sit down in the front room and, you know, just have your treat," she said.

Ruth's husband, Gary Green, didn't visit Christmas trees himself. His family moved to St. John's from the Northern Peninsula in 1950, and his parents weren't used to the tradition.

But he does recall his parents hosting "waves of kids" over the Christmas holidays, at their house on Carson Avenue.

"The knock would come on the door … and the kids would come in as far as the porch. They didn't have to take off their gators in our house," Green said.

"And they'd say all kinds of wonderful things about the tree and perhaps the presents they saw under the tree. And mother would always keep boxes of chocolates and things like that."

The Greens have friends who did this all over St. John's, including in the East End and along Gower Street.

Laura Tuck, whose parents moved to St. John's from western New York in 1967, says kids knocked to see her mother's tree on Mount Scio Road.