Alberta Christmas Major Events 2011

There are several Christmas events that happen in Alberta. We are focussing on Major Events (greater than 1000 people attendance), we highlight those, which are easily accessible to seniors and peoples with disabilities. For events under 1000 see Other Christmas Events post.  If you want to list an event email info@factsnet.org by August 1st or make a comment to this post. 

West Edmonton

Bethlehem Walk
- West Edmonton Christian Association - 6315 - 199th Street, Edmonton, AB
- Scheduled from December 8-12, 2011
- Special Bookings for Schools see Bethlehem Walk Edmonton Suggestions for Schools
- Seniors Groups and Limited Mobility Groups - Monday, December 12th (9AM-noon)
- Admission is FREE! (Donation to Food Bank, appreciated.)

Questions to Ask Seniors About Christmas

1. What is your first memory of Christmas?
2. Are there any other stories you remember about Christmas from before you went to school?
3. How was Christmas celebrated at school? (Elementary years, junior, high years and high school years)
4. Were there Christmas pageants? 
5.   What role did church play in your Christmas Celebrations? x did you go to for Christmas?
6.  What the best Christmas present you have received?
7.  What else did you get for Christmas?
8.   What did you want for Christmas but didn't get?
9.  How did you celebrate Christmas after High School? (Ie at collage or university or before you were married)
10.  How did you celebrate Christmas when you were first married?

11. How did you celebrate Christmas with your children? (Before they went to school, in elementary school, when your children were in Jr High school, when your children were in high school or teenagers, when your children were out of high school, and when your children first got married)
 12. How do you celebrate Christmas with your grandchildren?
13.  How did you celebrate Christmas after the death of a loved one?
14.  How will you celebrate Christmas this year?
15. What will Christmas look like 10 years from now? 50 years from now? x100?

Halleluiah Chorus from Quinhagak, Alaska

Done like you've never seen before. This video from the small Yupiq Eskimo Village of Quinhagak, Alaska , was a school computer project intended for the other Yupiq villages in the area. Much to the villagers' shock, over a half million people have viewed it.

For your turn to view, Click: HERE Runs approximately 4 minutes

Participate in this blog!

This blog pertains to Christmas stories and facts as it is celebrated in Alberta. Comment on this post and tell us what you would like to see in this blog!
If you want to participate even more, email mailto:info@factsnet.org

K-12 L.A,/S.S. Christmas Projects

K-3 Projects

Read selections from the stories index to the students and have them draw or colour a picture related to a story. If a student produces an exceptional drawing, email a scanned copy of it to facts@gaggle.net and we will post it. Be sure to include your school name and grade and indicate you have permission to post the drawing on the Internet.

4-12 Projects

1. Have students read a story from the index and take notes so they can share with the rest of the class what the stories are about. Once all students have read one story, find out which stories have been read and have each student share one item from their notes on each story read. Then you could assign other stories until all the stories of interest are covered. Then share highlights.
   
2. Have students comment to a post on our blog posts (note some sites need special logins to make a comment) For lower grades or if everyone is making comments, have students make comments to the teacher and the teacher post selected or summary comments to the blog. If students or teachers have an Internet site to recommend they can make a link to their comment (see demo link comment on the Alberta Christmas Posts blog) or links can be made to your own blog, if you need assistance, email facts@gaggle.net
3. Do a local history book project like the St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project)
4. Write Stories on the History of Christmas (click to see suggestions)

Christmas Songs

Christmas With a Capital "C"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAckfn8yiAQ


O Come All Ye Faithful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QiDiytYWC8

Joy to the World Christmas Music concert part 1 and part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KzGSKAElDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBalALM9Rcs

To recommend a song comment to this post and use the name/url to make a link to the song.

Alberta Christmas Dialogue

This dialogue will be ongoing. The links below will be a starting point for the dialogue:

Christmas not just for Christians – Jews, Hindus, Muslims et al Welcome (The 12 Posts of Xmas #6)

Christmas With a Capital "C"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAckfn8yiAQ

Also see Scripture Studies of Jesus and Christmas and Japanese Youth



Your comments to this post will help develop the dialogue.

Sponsors Summer 2009

The following is a list of sponsors for this blog:

1. Canada Summer Jobs
2. FACTS
3. Centralta Tourism Society
4. Collaborative Information Networks

Alberta Christmas Network Development

Make comments to this post on suggestions for this network.  Use the name/url identity to make links to the post.

Christmas Decorations

http://www.kerchners.com/blogs/decorate4.jpg

Christmas Shopping from the Eaton's Catalogue

The Eaton's Catalogue is often mentioned in relationship to Christmas. Below is a quote from Olive Ibsen (nee Woodman)

"One year we had a grand total of one dollar to spend so we got out the catalogue and managed a gift for each of us. I ordered a pretty calendar for Mother costing fifteen cents" See 100 Years of Ibsen Christmas for the complete story.
Using this quote a group of students in the Tri-Heritage Mondays Summer program came up with lists what they could get for $1.00 from the 1909 Eaton's Catalogue for the family of 7 children ages 1 - 11 and two parents.  (see list of items to select from below).
Talia's List

• Hair roses price $.45 see pg 59 
• Baby diaper cost $.35 see pg 82
• Picture Cost $.29 see pg 158
• child tuke cost $.29 see pg 127
• baby shoesCost $.25 see pg 92
• mens shirt cost $ .50 see pg 134
• mens belt cost $ .12 see pg 129

Items without links

• A boys hat cost $.25 see pg 46
• Suspenders cost $.21 see pg 117
• Bracelet cost $.25 see pg 129
• Hair Clips cost $ .10 see pg 91
• Knife cost $.25 see pg 132
• Chou chew Train cost $. 29 see pg 160
• Mens Underwear cost $.50 see pg 122
• Lace Curtains cost $.50 see pg 175

Other items

• Hat Pins $.05 pg 93

Click on this link to see the catalogue in PDF format.

Alberta Christmas - Summer 2008

In preparation for K-12 L.A,/S.S. Christmas Projects for Christmas 2008, scholarships are being provided for participants in either the Tri-Heritage Summer or the Historical Summer programs. Some of the projects you could work on are:

Hills of Hope -Duffield, Keephills, Wabamun & other places in Parkland County
St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project)
Spruce Grove Christmas
Stony Plain Christmas

Students from Morinville, Sturgeon and Legal could work on the Country Christmas Project.

You could also work on the general Alberta Christmas blog or so your own or a sponsor's project

TheAlberta Christmas Project

The Alberta Christmas project of started as a Centennial project of FACTS (Family and Community Twining Society - twining symbolizes working together like strands of baler twine) . The project encourages the writing and publishing of stories on Christmas in Alberta and finding links to stories online like the ones posted in the index or at the right.

Current project links are as follows:

Hill of Hope http://hohchristmas.blogspot.com/ -Duffield, Keephills, Wabamun & other places in Parkland County

St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project)

Spruce Grove Christmas

Stony Plain Christmas

Traditonal Christmas Eve Celebrations

The following links are primarily about Christmas Eve celebrations, which includes church and family traditions.

A Child's Christmas (8 - Christmas Eve)


Christmas Eve at the St. Albert Cathedral was Cele...

Alberta One Room Country School Christmas

"Of prime importance was the Christmas concert, an annual event in which all students participated. No effort was spared to render a well-acclaimed presentation. In front of the traditional spruce,wrapped in ribbons and occasionally lit up, the children proudly demonstrated their talents, singing around the Christmas manger or acting in a play ...all of this filling both parents and teacher with pride. School festivals also required a great deal of preparation... "

Exerpt from page 93 Faith and Tenacity: A History of Morinville can be viewed Online @ http://www.town.morinville.ab.ca/Community/FACTS/index.htm).

See Rose Valley School Christmas Concerts for a more detailed account of country school Christmas concerts.

St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project Instructions)

This is a four phase collaborative project to select, rank and index excerpts, on Christmas, from A Black Robe's Vision : a history of St. Albert & district. Volumes 1 & 2, St. Albert Historical Society, as found on http://www.ourroots.ca/ as follows:

Phase One: Commenting - Finding out what each page says about Christmas (suggested for students in grades 4-12).

1. Each person participating in this project will be assigned a page from A Black Robe's Vision history book (see links below).
2. Click on the link to read the page to find the word "Christmas" using the large image size.
3. Make a comment on what this page says about Christmas and how useful it is to readers and what grades it might be useful for. Some pages just mention the word Christmas but don't say anything about it. For example, "it didn't snow until Christmas". Just quote what is said and if possible put the year that it happened. If it says more than a sentence then summarize what it says.
4. Put a link to the page in the URL part for your name (put the page in the name field it is optional to put you name after the page number ask your teacher what you should do)

Links to pages on to Christmas from A Black Robe's Vision:

Volume 1 Pages: 94 , 107 , 167 , 168 , 176 , 181 , 182 , 187 , 207 , 231 , 236 , 238 , 242 , 288 , 300 , 306 , 360 , 363 , 372 , 378 , 386 , 387 , 405 , 406

Volume 2 Pages: 421 , 422 , 426 , 429 , 432 , 437 , 441 , 443 , 457 , 476 , 494 , 497 , 531 , 547 , 549 , 563 , 568 , 570 , 580 , 594 , 598 , 607 , 611 , 628 , 645 , 663 , 721 , 726 , 729 , 732 , 737 , 738 , 739

Phase Two: Review - Editing comments and ranking stories (suggested for students in grades 7-12).

1. Once 3 or 4 persons have commented on each page - search the post to find the comments for a specific page.
   
2. Based on the comments and your own review, make a title for the post (on http://sachristmas.blogspot.com/) that reflects the content of your selection (see example posts).
3. Next copy the link to the page number and blank outline (see below) into your post.
   
4. If the story has a specific date put that in the brackets if not put an estimated date or time period and put "estimated by reviewer"
5. Use the Usefulness Rating below to rate how useful your selection is to people looking for information on the history of Christmas in St. Albert (put the number in the brackets) and summarize the comments made by others and yourself to support your rating (see example posts):
   CIN (Collaborative Information Networks) Usefulness Rating Scale
   (9) - ESSENTIAL (Everyone interested in St. Albert Christmas should read this)
   (7) - VERY USEFUL (Almost everyone would find it useful)
   (5) - USEFUL (Most people would find it useful)
   (3) - INTERESTING (Of interest to some people but not very useful for others)
   (1) - MARGINAL (Mentions Christmas but not that useful)
   (0) - IRRELEVANT (Does not have any relevance to Christmas even though the word occurs)
   (n) - NOT ACCEPTABLE (Mentions Christmas but uses unacceptable language or mentions something else not acceptable to the general public)
   (2,4,6,8) Even numbers are used for ratings between the odd numbers.
   
6. Put your usefulness rating in brackets before the title (see example posts).
7. Use the Usefulness Rating above to rate how useful your selection for specific grades as follows:
1. Rate only the grades you have been in - leave the others blank.
   
2. For LA consider is this an interesting story for this grade (It may not be easy to read but it is interesting).
   
3. For social keep in mind what they are studying in each of the following grades:
   
• Gr. 1 - How life has changed in our community.
• Gr. 2 - How our community has changed (buildings etc.)
• Gr. 3 - n/a
• Gr. 4 - Alberta History
• Gr. 5 - n/a
• Gr. 6 - n/a
• Gr. 7 - Canadian History
• Gr. 8 - World Views
• Gr. 9 - n/a
• Gr. 10 - Globalization
• Gr. 11 - n/a
• Gr. 12 - n/a
8. Label your post using "show all" to choose one of the following labels: Alberta Christmas, Family Christmas, Church Christmas, School Christmas, Community Christmas, Commercial Christmas, Other Christmas, Not Christmas (Used for selections that only mention the word Christmas but are not about Christmas).
9. Go into "Post Options" and change the month to 01, the day to 30, and the year to 70.
10. Optional crop the part of the page (image) that refers to Christmas and save the image (in your folder or someplace you can find it- if you don't have a image editing program to crop your image, see comment on using MS Word to do this). Upload the image(s) into a your post - see example below).
11. Save your post but do not publish it. Your teacher will edit it and mark you by how much editing is needed.
12. Once a post is published you can comment on the review or add comments about the story.

Blank Outline:

(Link to page in "A Black Robes Vision") Date of story ( ) Usefulness Rating ( )
Grade Ratings:

• Gr. 1 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 2 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 3 - [] LA
• Gr. 4 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 5 - [] LA
• Gr. 6 - [] LA
• Gr. 7 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 8 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 9 - [] LA
• Gr. 10 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 11 - [] LA
• Gr. 12 - [] LA

Phase Three: Editing - (suggested for students in grades 7-12 with good Language Arts skills)

1. Once you have 3 or 4 people have commented about each post, then have a group of 3 or 4 people (editors) look at all the comments and ratings for the post and edit it to reflect the consensus of the commenters and the editors. Keeping the original comments as reference.
   
2. If the post is rated 2 or less then copy the post and comments to one of the following posts.

• Other Events that happened at Christmas
  
• References to Christmas Concerts
  
• Other references to Christmas
• Christmas is mentioned but not relevant to Christmas

1. For all other posts related to a specific page go into "Post Options" and change the year to the year of the story for years earlier than 1971 change the year to 70 (blogger does not allow dates earlier than 1970) and the month and day to reflect the year of the of the story as follows
• 01 -reserved for special purposes
• 02 -Years before 1801
• 03 -1801-1850
• 04 -1851-1880
• 05 -1881-1900
• 06 -1901-1910
• 07 -1911-1920
• 08 -1921-1930
• 09 -1931-1940
• 10 -1941-1950
• 11 -1951-1960
• 12 -1961-1970
• The days of the month and times of day can be used to rank stories or for more specific dates.
2. If the reviewer did not crop the part of the page (image) that refers to Christmas then do so as follows: save the image (in your folder or someplace you can find it- if you don't have a image editing program to crop your image, see comment on using MS Word to do this). Upload the image(s) into the post - see example below).
3. Save your post but do not publish it. Your teacher will edit it and mark you by how much editing is needed.
4. Links to posts about stories that would be "very useful" for all of Alberta could be recommended by making comments with links to Alberta Christmas Network Development post - indicate why you think it is very useful.

Phase Four: Publishing - Final check before a blog is published

1. In a classroom, this is usually done by a teacher. The teacher could use the instructions as a marking rubric with following all instructions and using proper English being 100% and 1% deducted for each minor mistake and 5% for each major mistake.
2. If comments need to sent to the reviewer the post could be copied into a word document and comments made or made on a paper copy.
   
3. Once making and comments are made then the teacher could either edit the post and publish it or have the student edit the post before the teacher publishes it.

*An example of a standard post can be found here.

Phase Five: Enhancing Posts

1. Pictures, links etc. can be added based on research related to a post. see Christmas Eve at the St. Albert Cathedral was Celebrated by Both Protestants and Catholics

St. Albert Christmas pages 82-83 Example

Title: Christmas Eve at the St. Albert Cathedral was Celebrated by Both Protestants and Catholics

82 , 83 (Links to pages) Usefulness Rating (8 ): I would almost consider this essential but other may not.

Writing Stories on the History of Christmas

Once students have read or heard several stories on the history of Christmas see K-12 LA Christmas Projects or St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project) -click to go to these posts), they can use the information to write historically accurate stories about Christmas. To find stories on a particular topic related to Christmas, students may wish to use the labels feature.

FACTS - Family And Community Twining Society: Introduction to FACTS

FACTS - Family And Community Twining Society: Introduction to FACTS This blog is about our society

Alberta Centennial Christmas

The celebration of Christmas in Alberta brings the whole community together like no other event in the year. Almost every school has a concert of some sort, which is usually the best attended event of the year. Church attendance at Christmas is also at its peak. The media features seasonal music and programming. To conclude our Centennial Year Alberta Centennial FACTS is encouraging schools, churches and communities to look at the Celebration of Christmas in the past 100 years. We are looking for old Christmas programs to reenact. Old Christmas Carols to be sung and any other information we can pass on the organizers of Christmas events so we can Celebrate 100 Years of Christmas. You can email david.Ibsen@ualberta.net to get more information or make a contribution.

By David Ibsen

Oldest Post

Post under construction

Alberta Christmas Network Index

The stories are indexed below in order of most interesting for younger grades and ease of understanding. All stories are of interest to most grades.

A Child's Christmas (8 - Christmas Eve)

Rose Valley School Christmas Concerts

100 Years of Christmas in Alberta - The Ibsen Story

Merry Christmas (Glenbow Museum) - There are several stories some are easier to read than others. The third story about Christmas in 1865 at Victoria Mission near present day Smoky Lake by Eliza McDougall is of interest to children. Click link for full An Alberta Christmas 1865

Alberta One Room Country School Christmas - A short summary

Christmas Eve at the St. Albert Cathedral

Christmas Shopping from the Eaton's Catalogue

Also see Christmas and Japanese Youth and  Alberta Christmas Dialogue

This network is under development and does not represent all of  the projects we are working on. For more information email info@factsnet.org.