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Christmases Past

Raise your hand if Christmas, as an event or even a concept, brings up “mixed” feelings for you?

Yeah, I thought so. Me too.

Growing up as the youngest in a farm family, out in rural S/W Ontario, Christmas was a magical time. The promise of a Big Exciting Day, with “new” stuff (rather than hand-me-downs), lights, decorations, wonderful food smells wafting from the kitchen. I was indulged in as much music as my largely non-musical family could tolerate. Aunts, uncles and cousins arriving with more presents. Special TV shows that we would plan to watch. School Christmas concerts. So much activity.

My uncles, male cousins and brothers were always keen on anything that had a small combustion engine on it, so snowmobiles were certainly popular out our way. I remember one year my Uncle Jack got the bright idea of attaching a wooden toboggan to the back of a snowmobile, bundling me up and putting me on the toboggan, and heading out over freshly fallen snow on, as it turned out, freshly plowed fields. At night, under a full moon. This had the expected result of bouncing me off the toboggan repeatedly. I think I was maybe six years old, all bundled up in a snowsuit so I was physically fine but suffered from that terrifying sense of child-like abandonment each time he carried on without noticing that I’d been left behind. Of course, he always circled back, and I always climbed back on for another go. The terror of being left behind subsided and I have a clear memory of being plopped off the toboggan again and sitting upright in the snow, waiting for Uncle Jack to notice I was no longer cargo. He got quite far away, it seemed, and I remember the full moon hanging in the sky, obliterating stars around it, and making the undisturbed fresh snow glisten like diamonds. Even now, a whiff of two-stroke snowmobile exhaust can send me right back to that moment, with snow balling up on my woolly mittens, my wrists getting raw from the wet chaffing of the snowsuit elastic, that rising twinge of panic that I won’t be seen in time, and the beautiful moon hanging over my head.

My Mom seemed to love Christmas – she had all her people around her and could feed and enjoy them. My father, on the other hand, called Christmas ever so much “tomfoolery” and he (barely) put up with everyone taking a day away from their responsibilities. He would put on what was clearly, even to me as a child, an “act” of receiving his gifts with WAY too much overt enthusiasm. When not receiving presents, he would retreat back into sullen silence, sipping his port and reading the newspaper. Usually he was well-absorbed by the horse racing schedules and results. Given that our house was heated by a coal furnace, it would have been easy enough to just give him a lump of coal and be done with it.

Dad’s favourite part of Christmas, the only time he seemed to rouse genuine pleasure, was when he got to set his dessert on fire. Mom made Christmas pudding with hard sauce each year, and Dad made a big show of dousing his serving in Canadian Club and setting it ablaze.

My half-sister Carolynne and her husband Keith would visit at some point each Christmas season, trundling along from the Big City in their little white VW Bug. I loved it when she would come to visit, and so did everyone else. My Mom adored Carolynne, but wasn’t so thrilled about her cat, Franz, who would make it his business to explore the kitchen cupboards. I think there *may* have been mice in there and Franz was pretty keen on rooting them out of our farmhouse cupboards. I don’t think he had much chance to be Franz the Hunter in the Big City. Nonetheless, as a child, I was totally convinced that Carolynne was coming to visit ME. It only dawned on me much later, as an adult, that she was probably coming out to visit her Dad who, truth be told, was not much of a “sit and visit” kinda guy.  As I recall, he barely took time away from barn chores to give the visitors the time of day. But my memory could be faulty there.

Very mixed feelings about Christmas indeed.

I remember much fuss being made about Christmas, lots of bustling around. I remember being the centre of much fuss, being the youngest and all. Of course, I liked that. As I grew older, I remember starting to be very particular about solidifying certain elements. Specific decorations needing to be up in specific places. Being the one to put the antique glass bird in its special spot on the tree. Pulling the string on the musical bell to make it play “Jingle Bells” (over and over). Decorating the windows with fake snow stencils and paint. Baking cookies. These things HAD to happen, or it just wasn’t Christmas.

Later on, caroling with friends was added into the mix. This got easier when we moved into town the year I turned 18. Going out with a group of about 15 moderately skilled singers, traipsing through neighbourhoods in our small town, trying to harmonize, rather than vocally collide, with all the old standards. It is possible that someone had a flask of something to keep us warm and our spirits up. We seemed to always wind up at sweetly crazy Mr. Gibson’s house, an English teacher in the high school, who would be ready with mulled apple cider, hot chocolate and homemade goodies.

Since leaving home for university in 1982, each Christmas has felt fragmented to me. It is as though there are elements of magic, and often quite sweet magical times, but the cohesive sense of personal and family tradition, family connection and just “belonging” has been missing for me, all this time.  It seems, at Christmas more than most times, being happily coupled is especially sweet, and being single, or unhappily coupled, is often heart-wrenching. How does one create a sense of “belonging”, of “tradition”, as an unpartnered person? Each year, I try to ratchet down my expectations and “needs”. Each year, I am bowled over by the beauty of the season, the music, the generosity and warmth of the people around me, and yet still yearn for some lost element that seems out of my grasp.

I’ve been honoured to spend Christmas in some unlikely places and engaged in some unlikely activities. In 2000, my partner and I spent Christmas in Bradenton, FL with our friends who ran a horse farm there. I spent Christmas morning cleaning water troughs, mucking out stalls and patting beautiful creatures. One of my favourite Christmas memories ever. :)  A few years later, 2002 I think, I was thrilled to spend Christmas in the UK with my newly discovered British cousins and that was such a treat. Spending time with them on any occasion is a treat, in fact, but learning the British way of celebrating this holiday was wonderful. Talk about tradition, and the way things Must Be Done. I’ve spent Christmas with extended chosen family in Ottawa, and with Carolynne and her boisterous, growing blended family in Calgary. Of late, I’ve had the pleasure of spending Christmas with close friends here in Toronto and with those same friends, last year, in Mexico. Great memories, especially the tequila carol singing with total strangers in the back of a jeep hurtling down the highway …

As Christmas 2008 approached, I waited for the familiar mixed sense of anticipation, joy and dread. The anticipation and joy appeared. The dread, possibly for the first time ever, has not arrived. I can’t quite pinpoint why as this Christmas, more than perhaps any other, has the outward appearance of being fragmented. Yet it has felt quietly calm, very happy, active and oddly settled. I’ll leave the specifics for my next post.  There are cedar boughs over my door and on my fireplace. The antique glass bird, the same one from my childhood, has survived and has a new spot on one of the boughs over the fireplace. The Christmas bell, the one that hangs in a doorway and plays Jingle Bells … sadly, there is no spot for it here so it rests quietly in a box, waiting for a year that it can return to annoy us all again. Cookies were baked. Family was greeted. Friends gathered. Merry was made. Songs were sung. It felt very good indeed.

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2 comments to “Christmases Past”

  1. So nice to be reading your writings again….I’ve missed them!
    This was fun to read especially about your childhood Chirstmases. Holidays always leave us with the strongest memories it seems…

  2. I was very touched by this blog entry. Sometimes, reading from a computer screen doesn’t do it for me. This was one of those times. As I read what you wrote, I wished I was curled up in a chair, in front of my fireplace, wrapped in the wool throw my mother knitted for me, and reading, not your blog, but your book. I wanted it to go on and on. I wanted more stories, more memories of farm and family and winter and Christmas. I wanted more of you and your incredible talent for writing. Thank you for giving of yourself.

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