Where I’ve lived as an adult is not where I lived as a child, it’s not where my mom lives now. A tradition that stopped: my husband’s brother is a pilot. And when he was– he became a pilot very young, when he was 16, and he started something called a Candy Drop. He had a plane, and at first, it was just for his family. He’d fly over his parents’ house on Christmas Day and he’d drop candies and they called it the Candy Drop. But then it got really popular in the village, and it became a community-wide event where it would be sponsored by businesses and stuff who’d buy presents and candy. The whole community would gather on Christmas Day at this point in town, just a bit out of town, and he would have someone with him dressed up as Santa Claus in the plane. They would drop– he would do many, many passes, and everybody would gather there. What was great was on Christmas Day, everybody would gather there right after lunch, the whole town would be there with their kids, everybody, and everybody would be greeting one another. You might not have seen someone for months and then everyone is hugging and shaking hands and saying Merry Christmas. And then Johnny would do his pass. 

But of course, nowadays, that doesn’t respect regulations, doing passes over a bunch of people, the whole town, but NAV Canada gave him an exception, and they let him do it for many, many years. Then about 5 years ago, he turned 75, he’s 80 now. So they kept giving him a special pass to continue doing it, and then, of himself, he says, “okay, I’m gonna stop now.” Because he knew he was gonna be asked to stop, you know, they were letting him do it. So he did this for about 50-55 years every Christmas Day.  

It’s pretty hard to replace that.  It was replaced where the town has teams of pickup trucks that are loaded with boxes of candy, and people sit in the back dressed up like Santa, and they sit in the bed of their pickup truck, and they go up and down the streets, and people wait by the side of the street and they throw candy out. But it’s not the same, because it’s not everybody in one spot. It’s sort of outside your house. So you see, they’ve adapted, but you can’t ever replace that tradition.