((Stuart Braga shared this account of Christmas Day, 1941:))
This description of Christmas Day 1941 was written some months later by my uncle, Paul Braga in a letter to his brother, the Rev. James Braga, in Chicago.
“These days of defeat and fear left Father [J.P. Braga] a broken man both physically and mentally ... We all admired him for his wonderful patience and the way he 'took it' without any complaints. He often and often spoke of his devotion to each of us and repented at his aloofness in past years.”
Yet he rallied for Christmas Day. Paul told the story of an unforgettable Christmas Day spent at his house on Braga Circuit:
“He got Audrey [Paul’s wife, all the servants having fled] to cook a special ‘Xmas tiffin for the whole family, what was to be our last real feed. After being starved for the past fortnight we all agreed that it tasted better than any meal before. Two of our chickens were killed and tinned food (corn etc.) made up for the rest. Then there was a real ‘Xmas pudding which was made from ingredients Aud bought a few weeks previous. There was even a box of crackers!! And the room was decorated with ‘Xmas banners saved from previous years ... It was the first time we had showed real indifference to the blazing of artillery fire from Jap guns in the several vacant lots of the site – some of them so close to our house that the plates jumped on our tables from the concussion in the air. Nor did we leave our seats during the return shelling from British forts in Hongkong which brought direct hits on some of the Jap guns. (Most of these shells missed their targets, one hit Hughie’s house and wrecked it completely. [‘Hillview”, 18 Braga Circuit. The house was unoccupied, as Hugh’s family, my mother Nora and her children Sheila and Stuart were in Australia].
“It was the happiest and yet the gloomiest tiffin we ever had. During the fire and cross-fire we all sat still, but you could never imagine more laughter and talk from a ‘Xmas party when the guns were silent. At the end of the meal, Father gave a speech in which he told us how he really loved his family always and wanted us all to stick together through the trouble, and to have more patience with each other. When he spoke of Maude and the children [Maude was not there, her whereabouts uncertain. The children, four of them, were there in the house, facing a perilous future], he broke down in tears and it was some time before he was able to resume.”
As darkness fell on that strangest of Christmas Days, the sound of gunfire on Hong Kong Island ceased and there was silence. “We knew what that meant”, said Noel’s wife Marjory fifty years later. "Hong Kong had surrendered".