The following Christmas was celebrated at our new house in Peterborough. We had moved from the old one where my little brother had died. Now I had another little brother and we were starting over. This Christmas my parents were determined would be very merry. Our two favourite relatives, Uncle Philip and Nana were invited.
Christmas dinner was a big deal for the grown-ups. Mother’s best china, the silver, crystal and candles adorned the table. Father’s claim to the spotlight was carving the turkey with flourish, and lighting a tablespoonful of brandy to flame the pudding.
At that time we had a coal furnace that my father used to stoke morning and night. I remember the sound of rumbling thunder on the days that the coal man would deliver the coal to our chute. Our house was always toasty warm.
However, this Christmas, Nana kept complaining of feeling cold. My father trudged down the basement stairs to stoke the furnace once again. Uncle Philip jumped up and grabbed some ice cubes to hold against the thermostat, returning to his seat just as Father rounded the corner scratching his head. Pretty soon, Nana said, “I hate to bother you, but do you think you could stoke the fire again? I seem to be feeling a draft.” As soon as Father was out of sight, Uncle Philip applied the ice.
The summer before, my playmate at the lake had convinced me that Santa Claus was not real. She died of polio in the fall, so I was sure that her last words were prophetic. I searched the house until I found my mother’s stash of shopping bags piled in a dark corner of her closet. Sure enough, there was the walking doll I had asked for.
Christmas Eve I promised myself I would stay awake all night to prove that Santa Claus did not put that walking doll under the tree. Strangely enough, that was the only year that I saw Santa. Yes, I saw him in his sleigh behind the eight reindeer just as they crossed over the full moon en route back to the North Pole. You can imagine how confused I was to see that same walking doll from Mother’s closet under the tree in the morning. How did that get there?
The next Christmas we trekked to Toronto, this time to visit Aunt Dorothy. She had seven children and her husband, Uncle Don, had just died suddenly of a heart attack, so of course we all had to go there. The kids spent most of the holiday in the basement recreation room, under the supervision of the older cousins.
This was my initiation into the art of the Indian rub. Cousin Bill was the expert and, as a lanky teenaged boy, the object of my affection. I sidled up to him repeatedly and he would oblige by wringing my wrist until I squealed in delight and pain. This was the first occasion that I experienced a class difference with my cousins. I was wearing hand-me-downs while each of the other five girls wore a sparkly new party dress.
Then there was the Christmas we celebrated at the lake in July. We were renting a cottage jointly with Aunt Ruth, Uncle Howard, and their two horrible boys. They wouldn’t let me play with them, so I amused myself by stalking. Their game was to escape my clinging presence every day.
The cap on the holiday was supposed to be a turkey dinner, cooked by my aunt and my mother. In all the confusion of two cooks in the kitchen, someone left a tea towel in the turkey cavity, and the bird was a disaster. The conversation unwound for literally years afterwards: well how did that happen?
What I learned is that you don’t have to like your relatives. We never spent another holiday, Christmas or not, with that particular foursome.
We spent five Christmases in Montreal, the suburbs actually. We lived in a burb so new that none of the houses on our street had grass. We walked over the mud on planks from the door to the street for the first six months. In winter, walking home from school, I couldn’t see the house until I reached my own driveway because of the snow mounds left by the plough.
The neighbourhood was very homogeneous, young families whose fathers had been transferred to some head office or other for training. In four years, most of us were gone, transferred out again with promotions to the branches of the companies. In the meantime, my parents formed a cohesive unit with the neighbours and partied together. I babysat up and down the street and thus had the opportunity to look in all the bathroom cabinets and bedroom closets.
What was remarkable about Christmases in Montreal was that it was the only time in my mother’s life that she was recognized as a musician. She played the piano for Saturday night sing-a-longs at parties, and the organ for Sunday morning hymns in our brand new church. She always claimed not to be very good and felt pressure to step up only until someone with proper credentials came along. But I think that was her shining hour.
What was remarkable about Christmas holidays in my later teens was that for New Year’s we were invited to Uncle Philip’s penthouse in Toronto. It was only a two-bedroom affair but located on the top corner of a swanky apartment complex, so we called it The Penthouse.
Uncle Philip made a point of going to the St. Lawrence market every Saturday for fresh bread and vegetables and meat, so when we came for New Year’s there was sure to be a feast second to none. My first taste of vichyssoise was creamy and cheesy and onion-y and unforgettably delicious.
All the cousins played board games and Simon Says; then the youngest boy showed off his card tricks. The day was full of happy noise. After dinner we paraded in High Park with our red scarves around our necks and our woolly hats on our heads for the New Year’s walk. What joy if it snowed in that magical landscape of evergreens and whimsical statues and crooked paths.
There was the Christmas of the prolonged argument about my wedding plans, my father stomping around the living room shouting about tradition, much like Tevia in Fiddler on the Roof.
The year my husband and I lived in Europe, we spent Christmas in St. Anton, a world famous Austrian ski resort. We stayed in a pensione that housed guests over the stable. There were only two sources of heat: the cattle below, and hot water. Before bed, I would wash every part of me that I could fit into the sink, then dive under the eiderdown.
Christmas Eve we went to mass in the village church on the side of the mountain. When we came out after the service someone had lit candles on all the graves and a trumpeter played Silent Night from the church tower as we walked home through the falling snow.
I spent most of the next day crying in a bout of homesickness after a long distance phone call to Canada.
Then, the one and only time in my life, we went to a restaurant for Christmas dinner. Our whole ski class was there, but everyone was discreetly watching three people: our handsome tall blond ski instructor, his lover – the beautiful Gretchen from Munchen, and her business tycoon husband who had just arrived to claim her for the day. The ski instructor got slowly drunk.
One December back in Canada, after we had children, we had planned to stay home. Surprisingly, we couldn’t stand the quiet, so we shoved the golden brown turkey in the freezer and packed the car for Montreal. We had to be with family for Christmas.
The snow was falling thick and heavy. At Cornwall an aggressive driver passed us, dumping a load of the wet stuff on our windshield, temporarily blinding me, the driver. Two hours later a tow truck pulled us out of the ditch and the driver wished us Merry Christmas.
The first Christmas after the divorce with its forced gaiety was a definite low point. When I look back at the photographs, I see the children’s grim faces under their paper hats. I remember the meeting with my ex in a parking lot somewhere at precisely three o’clock to pass the children over for his turn. For seven years, every Christmas we religiously adhered to the three o’clock schedule until the children put a stop to it when they came home from university.
We had a habit of attending Christmas Eve services. The carols, the crowd of friends, the nativity plays enacted by the children all highlighted the event. One year my son played Joseph. When it came time for the baby to be born, with a big smirk on his face he hauled a doll out by its leg and flung it onto Mary’s lap.
On two consecutive Christmas Eves my daughter disappeared during the height of passion in the service. One minute she’d be singing O Holy Night beside me, the next she’d be in a heap, fainted on the floor. We thought she was just overwrought until we found out she had low blood sugar.
The best Christmas was this past year. All the traditions were in place including our quirky tree with its home-made ornament collection of twenty-five years. My son played Christmas carols on guitar and we sang along. I cooked the turkey with all the trimmings so the air in the house was warm and moist with the rich brown flavour. The dining room table was stretched to its full length to accommodate the new in-laws and their offspring. The places were set with my mother’s blue and white Royal Crown Darby china, silver, and crystal. As I snapped photographs of my two-year-old grandson opening the red wrapping around his sleigh, my daughter in my mother’s rocking chair nursing her newborn, my ex-husband and his second wife raising their glasses in a toast, I realized my dream of an authentic Christmas had come true. The spirit of Christmas had come to my home at last.