WRITING THE CHRISTMAS LETTER: 2019

“If you use the bad parts to get to the good parts you’ve done something good.” Elton John In the last week before Christmas I agonized over the production of a Christmas letter, the kind you add a personal sentence to, and send out to everybody who writes to you, and everybody you expect to get something from, even some people you don’t get anything from and haven’t for years. Back in November, when I carefully contemplated what to write in such a letter, I had decided not to write at all. That plan held up very well until a week before Christmas when people began writing to me. David and I used to co-produce a Christmas letter back in the days when it could be signed with both our names. I’d make a start some time in November, asking David what he thought we ought to write. He’d mention a few things. I would keep at it, adding and deleting, until I deemed it ready for proof-reading. David would correct the typing and add a thought or two. “That’s fine,” he’d say. “It’s ready to send.” Without David in the physical world, I believed the writing of my 2019 Christmas letter would be a solitary pursuit. But then, things got complicated. It seemed I was dealing with two versions of myself. There was the me who had decided to write a Christmas letter, and a reluctant woman sitting at my computer, refusing to press the keys. “How hard can it be to write a Christmas letter?” I said to the reluctant woman. “All you have to do is tell people what you did this year. Start at the beginning. Here. I’ll show you.” Pushing her aside, I wrote a paragraph. “David died on January 10,” I wrote. “His last few days were difficult because we often couldn’t understand what he wanted to say. But he was determined to be understood. He insisted that I immediately put money for 2019 into his tax free savings account.” He didn’t say, “You will have the money after I die if you put it in while I’m still alive.” But we both knew what he meant. He meant: “Go do it right now.” I showed my paragraph to the reluctant woman. She was outraged. “You can’t start a Christmas letter that way,” she scolded. So I pushed Delete and started over. “We were all saddened by David’s death at the beginning of the year,” I wrote. The reluctant woman stayed my hand. “That’s not entirely true,” she said. The truth is, you weren’t that sad because you thought it was time. You’re a lot sadder now than you were then. One of your favourite memories happened right after he died. Remember how you sat with him, marvelling at how his twisted tortured body had suddenly relaxed, how you lingered with him, holding his hand in absolute peace. That doesn’t sound very sad to me.” “Should I take it out then?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said. “Should I add the part about being peaceful at the end?” The reluctant woman was—well—reluctant. “Maybe you should skip David altogether and do what other people do. Try describing your grandchildren.” I pressed Delete and started over. “All five grandchildren make a project of delighting their Granny. Carys is a gymnast with a fondness for unicorns and Lewis can charm you while climbing on top of a table at lightning speed. Ben has learned to read in two languages, Evan builds something with Lego every morning before he goes to school, and Clara spent most of last week pretending to be a baby lion.” After that, I couldn’t think of another thing to say. So I wandered around the house, pouring cups of coffee, setting them down on various tables and losing track of them before I’d finished. “Come back here and finish this letter,” nagged the woman who had previously been sitting at my computer. “And don’t push the Delete key. This stuff about your grandchildren has potential. It just needs a little fluffing up. Take a break from that topic and tell them about your travels.” Feeling a little bit encouraged I wrote that I’d made four trips to Guelph, one to spirit River, one to Jasper and one to Vancouver. I spiced it up with some stories of cruising in French Polynesia. I was conscientious about naming people who had been there for me during my travels. Then I got up, searched the house, and used the microwave to warm the coffee from some of the abandoned cups. “Be happy,” I said to myself. When I sat down again I deliberately wrote about happy things. I wrote that I was happy to be living in my apartment, happy to be walking in my neighbourhood, to be playing bridge and going to exercise classes and writing for fun with new friends at the Joy of Writing Club. I wrote that I had joined two choirs. I mentioned that I still facilitated hope groups, having not quite completely retired from my work in hope studies. All of this was true, and my confidence grew—until it didn’t. In its place there came a tsunami of grief that sent me running to my bed where I howled in abject misery. “What now?” I cried out to the reluctant woman. “Do I have to quit, after all the work I’ve done?” “I don’t know,” she said. “But don’t push the delete button.” Instead of continuing the letter, I went back to the computer and read an on-line article in Psychology Today. “You can’t outrun grief,” the author boldly declared. The reluctant woman considered this. “You are the living proof of that,” she said to me. “Perhaps you should grieve a while. Maybe you’ll be able to finish the letter tomorrow.” In our forty-five years of marriage David and I read hundreds of Christmas letters. Some were funny. One relative always drew her year in cartoons. Another used the language of a medieval castle. Some were informative—births, marriages and such. Others were boring. Enough said about that. But there was one letter that chilled us so thoroughly to the bone that we had to turn to each other for comfort. It was a devastating life summary, sent by Cousin Lila. It was cloaked in sadness and despair. Her husband and all his siblings had Alzheimer disease. She wrote details about each of them. She ended the litany by wishing all of us a Merry Christmas. “Lila is depressed,” I said to David. He said, “Everything in this letter is probably true, but I wouldn’t send it at Christmas time.” With this in mind, I turned back to the reluctant woman. “I’m not Cousin Lila,” I said, “and I’m not Susie Sunshine either. I want to write a Christmas letter. Who am I?” anyway?” “You’re a grumpy, weepy, unpredictable griever living a basically happy life,” she said. And so it was that I found myself back at the computer the following morning, cleaning up my writing and developing an opening paragraph something I hoped would tell a truth that could reasonably be followed by Merry Christmas wishes. “It will be a different sort of Christmas this year. No doubt each of us will miss David in our own way, though it has been some time since we had a Christmas that wasn’t influenced by the need to accommodate illness. I would say that grief in my case is less a gradual process of healing over time and more a situation where kamikaze attacks occur when you are doing well in the big picture. I’ve been concentrating on learning new things, having fun and paying it forward as a tribute to the small army of people who have been lighting up my life over the past few years.” The reluctant woman and I checked it over with a critical eye. It was a longish letter, a little too perky, a little too busy. But the time had come to add personal greetings and send it anyway. Out went the copies, one by one. After so much dilly-dallying, I had expected to be pleased. Instead, I found myself turning apologetically to the memory of David. “I’m sorry that letter seems so cheerful,” I said to him. “I failed to mention how broken-hearted I am. They should be told that every fiber of my being still wishes you were here. I wanted to tell them how utterly bereft I get when I think that all my future Christmas letters will be written without you. How could I have edited it all out?” But the memory of David was remarkably unperturbed. “We couldn’t have sent such a letter,” was his response. “It’s not in our nature. If we couldn’t have said something good, we wouldn’t have said anything at all. But I do think you could have mentioned the tax-free savings money we put in my name back in January. You’ve had that money in savings for a whole year now. That’s $5,500 plus interest you won’t have to pay taxes on. It is an accomplishment worth celebrating.” “Too late for this Christmas letter,” I said. “That story will have to be written elsewhere.”

THE MUSIC OF CHRISTMAS (Nursing Home Life, part 14)

“Mostly Christmas makes me feel” –Linnea Good Earlier on the blog I made a short list of songs I love to wallow by. But now that Christmas is coming, there are so many more songs. And what better time can there be for wallowing in sadness, nostalgia, joy and completely inexplicable reactions? It’s a musical bonanza, two of my best Christmas weeping songs presented consecutively on a single album, Winter Song by Sarah McLachlan. How magically transforming it is to lubricate the tear ducts with Sarah’s version of Joni Mitchell’s River, in preparation for the heart-breaking torrent of McLachlan’s own Winter Song! I could be tapping my toes to Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. In fact, I do tap my toes when it comes on the radio, but when I want to play Christmas music, I Hear myself asking Siri to play Winter Song. It’s not nostalgia that draws me in, it’s the connection to feelings of sadness and loss, the self-indulgent tug toward a moment of melancholy against a backdrop of comfort and joy. . If, like me, you are a closet whiner,sad songs are the perfect outlet for expression. Fortunately, Christmas offers a wide selection of choices with something to meet every emotional need. For example, there’s Silent Night, the song that still holds the record as my biggest crying song. The whole thing started some time in my thirties. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But every Christmas, I’d be at a concert or a church service and we’d start singing Silent Night. Before we got to sleeping in heavenly peace the beauty of the thing would overwhelm me. The rest of the singers would have to finish singing without me. I’d be sniffling, wiping tears, my throat stretched tighter than a drum. No more singing from me. No particular sadness in it. Here was nostalgia at its most pervasive. Each year that song would start, and I’d remember how I cried last year. The memory would set my glands to drizzling. The first cure for the problem came to me quite accidentally the year I volunteered to play the piano at the late church service on Christmas Eve. The stage was set for the worst of my crying. Near the end of the service the congregation would begin to sing Silent Night. They would pick up the tall candles they had been given when they entered the church. The lights would go down and the first candle would be lit. Then each person would light their candle from the candle of the person next to them. The beauty of the thing would overwhelm me. Normally I’d be a wet rag by the time all the candles were lit and the third verse was sung. But this time I was the musician and everyone was counting on me. The burden of responsibility calmed my nerves. It was a Christmas miracle! All the beauty and no tears from me. I played in heavenly peace. It worked, and I had high hopes for singing that song in the future. But it only worked when I played the piano for other singers. If I didn’t play, I still cried. Then came the second cure. It was the year when another pianist volunteered to play the late service. Members of my family were visiting that night. I packed my purse with Kleenex and invited them to join David and me. Each of us picked up a candle as we entered the church. Then, near the end of the service, Carla played the first notes of Silent Night. As the peaceful music began, my father, summoning the louder voice of a man who has forgotten his hearing aid, turned his candle toward my sister. “Where is your candle?” he boomed. “I don’t know,” she whispered. All was still calm at that point. “Where’s your candle?” he boomed more loudly, thinking perhaps she had not heard him. “I don’t know,’ she shouted back. We’d made it to Holy infant so tender and mild. Then began a scurrying search of the floor for the missing candle. By now we were at the second Silent night, Holy night. Quick as a flash, while shepherds quaked at the sight, I handed my candle to my father to give to my sister. “This is an extra one,” I shouted, hoping only to have to say it once, particularly because it was a lie. I wanted—no, needed—him to be quiet. At that point, all thoughts of crying had left me. I felt like a teen-ager, the way you do when you want to pretend that these people are weird strangers who just happened to cross your path. But my father is a conscientious man. That evening he was bent on making sure that everyone was included. “Where’s your candle?” he asked, glancing at my now empty hand. We had made it to the third Silent Night. At this point, my thoughts turned from utter embarrassment to sympathy for my poor David, the long-suffering man who had, in all innocence, married into this family. His only possible escape could come with a messy expensive divorce, and I just didn’t think he was up to it. I started breathing deeply, lest I should develop a penchant for fainting. I shook my head vehemently at David, who was offering to hand me his candle. “You keep it,” I whispered as loudly as I could. I didn’t trust myself to hold a fire in my trembling hand. Things settled down a bit then. My father stopped worrying about my candle. All was calm, until we got to the end of the song. We blew out our candles and then sat down. There was a snap! There was a soft cry of surprise. There was no point trying to pretend the noise wasn’t caused by my family. It was my sister, jumping up to retrieve the two halves of an unburned candle upon which she had just sat. Apparently it had been on her chair all along. Mercifully the service promised to end. The piano struck the first chords of Joy To The World. Beside me stood David, whom I now noticed, was taking deep breaths in a vain attempt to suppress fits of laughter. Of course the laughing attack spread to me, and then to others nearby, the way a wildfire might spread if you weren’t careful with a candle. Since then I have become philosophical and more than a little curious about the strange relationship between emotions and songs. Christmases come and Christmases go. Each holiday season brings its songs and its feelings. This year I’m choosing Sarah McLachlan for the melancholy effect. That said, I expect to hear Joy To The World, which will likely cause me to break out in a broad smile. And when I’m asked to sing Silent Night, I’ll do my best not to laugh. But I might not succeed in that.

NIGHT LIFE AT LAURIER HOUSE (Nursing home life, part 13)

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I sleep in blissful peace. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear David coughing. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the snow plough cleans the parking lot outside my window. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wonder why I am so often too hot, or too cold. Is it my hormones? Sometimes, in the middle of the night, a night nurse bursts into song. “Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?” Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the lady down the hall screams: “Help me! Help me! Is it more effective than ringing the bell, especially in the middle of the night?” Sometimes, in the middle of the night, David calls my name from his bedroom and sometimes I hear his call. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I remember what the doctor said when I asked him to prescribe a sleep aid. He said: “What is it that disturbs your sleep?” Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I read an entire book. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I listen to the CBC morning show from Halifax. It ends at 5:30, Mountain Time. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I am lulled by poetry and song on CKUA radio. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I fight the temptation to get out of bed, get down on my knees, reach under the bed, and pull out the packages recently delivered by strangers. My daughter has sent them. Some of them are for me. I could just open them and see which ones are for me. Couldn’t I? Some time, in the middle of the night, I might just do that. After all, there are still 12 more nights to go before Christmas!

EATING IN THE BEDROOM (Nursing Home Life, part 10)

There were a few absolutes when it came to my mother. There was, for example, ‘don’t bite the bottom off of an ice cream cone.” It was a warning, not a response. So I tried it once at a community picnic on the steps of Cambridge school. The results were—unpleasant! Sticky ice cream dribbled down my legs and settled on the steps. Neighbours began to shout for help. Mother appeared. “I told you not to do that,” she scolded. I believe this was my first true public humiliation. A second absolute proved to be just as wise, and not quite so publicly embarrassing. “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth,” she warned. I didn’t get breakfast the morning after I tried that. Mother used the time to cut the gum out of my hair. I still had time to catch the school bus. When people said, “You got a haircut,” I simply nodded. I tested both these absolutes in early childhood. It took me longer to test another. “Never eat in bed,’ said my mother. It would have been difficult for me to eat in my bed even if I’d wanted to. Somehow I would have had to get food without her knowing, sneak it past her and carry it all the way upstairs. I believe this absolute remained untested until the winter of 1973, when I paid a spring-break visit to my boyfriend David who was studying at Acadia University in Wolfville NS. On that brief vacation, the act of eating in bed seemed insignificant compared with other rules that were falling by the wayside. For example: “No girls allowed in the boys’ residence” and “Never sleep with a man until after your wedding.” In the heady confusion of all this disobedience, can you blame me for forgetting my mother’s long-ago given advice about eating in bed? At that time downtown Wolfville was served by an IGA grocery store. It was impossible to enter that store without succumbing to the fragrant seduction of the cinnamon sugar doughnuts rolling hot and fresh off the conveyer belt. Can you blame us for failing to consider what the consequences might be if we ate them in David’s bed? When advising my children, I was more specific than my mother had been. I said: “Never bite the bottom off an ice cream cone because the ice cream will pour out and you will be made to clean up the ness.” To my children I said: “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth because if you do, it will tangle in your hair and I will have to give you a haircut.” To my children I said: “Never take cinnamon sugar doughnuts to bed. The sugar granules are most uncomfortable to lie on.” By that time, the practice of sharing a bed before marriage was so widely accepted that it hardly bore mentioning, and I hesitated to launch a detailed conversation about the experience of rolling around on a bed of sugar granules. All of this came back to my mind when I read the message my iPhone delivered from my good friend Rob on the second day of December in 2018. “David and Wendy: Thank you for a really nice evening together. I think we should always have bedroom meals. Much more comfortable than formal dining rooms.” Oh, what would my mother have said? Perhaps I ought to say a word or two about the evening that prompted the note, though it seems a shame to muddy the truth of a story by presenting the facts. Rob Jennifer and I had spent the evening sitting around a card table at the foot of David’s bed, drinking two kinds of wine while eating brie and tortiere with mango chutney. David had already dined on a plate of pureed something-or-other from the Laurier House dining room and a glass of thickened water. We weren’t quite as insensitive as it seems. Even when David was able to sit at formal tables with the rest of us, he never cared for any meat wrapped in pastry, and he has declined all offers of thickened wine since the first time he tried a little of it on a teaspoon. In addition to the other provisions, Rob and Jennifer had also brought a carton of his favourite Christmas ice cream. All four of us enjoyed a bowl of that and delighted in an evening of love and laughter. Neither sugar granules nor any other traces of food were left in David’s bed. It is possible that a future archaeologist, unearthing an iPhone might misunderstand the simple message from rob. So I wanted to clear up any remaining ambiguity here. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

I got down the Christmas dishes this morning, put them on the lower shelves where they can be easily reached, put the every-day dishes up on the high shelves you can’t reach without a ladder. Yesterday I played a new Christmas CD. The day before I practiced some of the Christmas songs that never become listenable unless I practice them for several weeks—the songs I didn’t practice at all last year. Christmas, in my world it seems, is arriving early. Last year I didn’t prepare for Christmas. Well, I suppose I prepared, in the way a sleep-walker or a robot might prepare. I didn’t anticipate. I didn’t feel Christmas. Christmas came last year. It came without my help though I did whatever it was that I had to do. One day, very close to Christmas, I got a ladder and brought the dishes down. One day, I think it was boxing Day, I played a few Christmas CD’s. Baby Ben made his grand entry into the world on new Year’s eve and, as he pulled us forward into the future, I observed with relief that the whole business of holidays was finally over. I hated last November. Last November we were closing down my beloved programs at Hope foundation. I was saying good-bye to clients. I was mourning the loss of my colleagues. We were making adjustments to accommodate david’s changing health. We were paying daily hospital visits to our frail and cherished Gramma. Last November was a lousy month. December was just as bad. Last November I didn’t want to do the things I like to do. If something came up that might be fun, I did it reluctantly. I caught myself hoping I wouldn’t get any Christmas presents. It was a very strange time. But I guess I learned something a long the way, something practical and useful. A good thing it is too, for this November finds me doing painful work--hope work with groups of people who have recently lost a colleague to suicide. “what do we do,” they ask, “after we accept that it is normal to feel guilt and anger?” The answer to this question is not clear to me. I suppose there really are no rules to govern it. But I have, with the memory of last November fixed firmly in mind, approached these workshops with the conviction that there is no moral reason why we can’t consider the possibility of seeking out positive emotions like joy, awe, interest, inspiration, amusement, contentment, pride, gratitude, love and hope. There is no moral reason not to pursue things that delight us, things that fascinate us, things that refresh us, work that really matters. Circumstances may rob us of the desire for these things, but there is no moral reason why we must deny them to ourselves. Perhaps this conviction is helpful to others as well. My email contains a thank-you note: “Thank you so much for your wisdom, encouragement and hope on Friday. They meant a lot to us and to me personally. I had not realized that I had started to give up some of the things that I love to do until you brought it to my attention. I now know that I need to once again do the things that refresh and delight me.” When I read that note, it occurred to me that I had already started looking forward to Christmas this year. But it was the note that woke me to the realization that I hadn’t noticed the change.

CHRISTMAS 2011

In the hour before dawn on Christmas morning
With the air as soft as a downy pillow
And the traffic so light you could play on Rowland Road
As the toddlers’ parents ponder a post-present nap
And the teen-agers parents wonder when they will be able to open,
We are walking the streets with Pirate
In the face of a looming crisis.

In our pockets there is no bag
To capture the inevitable.
Bags abundant still at home
Useless on the closet shelf.
David in the throws of worry
Me above it all.

“Ridiculous!” I scoff
“To be so utterly concerned.
2,000 walks, 2,000 bags
Who can boast of such a record?
A perfect pick up history.”

“I have a Kleenex,” David says.
“Neurotic,” echoes my reply.
Self-proclaiming Pirate chooses,
“Here’s the place where I shall go!”

Then from the shadows rings a voice
A front-porch-sitting Christmas smoker,
“Merry Christmas,” cheery call.
“Leaving us a present are you?”

There proudly sporting the smuggest smile
That ever graced the pure of heart stands
I, awaiting Dearest David
As he calmly demonstrates
the infinite worth of prior planning
And the pick-up power of the lowly Kleenex.

READY YOU ASK!

“Are you ready for Christmas?” they always ask. It’s a strange question, don’t you think? What would it take to be so ready that a person would answer with an unqualified “Yes!”?
I, though I’ve never found the language to admit it openly, am always ready for Christmas, so long as you don’t measure readiness by the completedness of shopping, or the evidence of baking, or the perfection of carols practised beyond the genuine probability of error. What I do notice though is how, every year, despite the calendar, and the counting down, and the planning, and the scheduling, never cease to be surprise when Christmas arrives. “It’s here already,” I remark—though not too loudly. Would I want anyone to think I hadn’t been expecting it?

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

And as I played the familiar carols
Getting them ready for special occasions,
Feeling the ancient rhythms,
Absorbing the timeless beauty

I wondered at so very much complaining
about Christmas music played too soon in stores
And so very little
About the rush to early shopping.

GIFTS THAT KEEP ON GIVING

Shall I pause to celebrate
The timeless gifts that keep on giving?

The accordion that came when I was 11
Accordions build lifelong character.

The china on the festive table.
China builds family memories.

Much-loved music playing on the stereo,
The clothes that bring the compliments.

And the very best of all,
Delivered 38 years ago today
With a promise and a ring,
A husband.

A CHRISTMAS INVITATION

Me: We got an invitation today. We were invited to do something.
Myself: Really? We’ve had a lot of invitations lately, but I don’t recall getting any today. What have we been invited to?
Me: We’ve been invited to give up a grudge, one we’ve been holding a long time.
Myself: I don’t recall being invited to give up a grudge, unless, maybe, you mean that letter we got that said nice things about us.
Me: That’s the letter all right. So are we going to?
Myself: Are we going to what?
Me: Give up the grudge.
Myself: You mean today? You want an answer right now? What’s the rush?
Me: There’s hardly a rush. We’ve been carrying this grudge for decades. But I’m finding it a bit of a burden, and I’m just wondering when we’ll be giving it up.
Myself: Well I don’t really know when. The grudge, as you call it, is perfectly justified. We were wronged, you might recall, treated rather badly. I would say we’re owed an apology. I hardly see how a pleasant letter can stand in for that.
Me: What about several nice letters? There have been a few of them over the years, you know.
Myself: Well, I hardly think several nice letters spread over a long period equals an apology. Apoligy is the standard form of invitation when it comes to giving up grudges.
Me: Standard, maybe, but maybe not the only form. What about a few invitations added to a few nice letters? There have been a few invitations to events, as I recall, and never a word of hostility. Surely that counts for something.
Myself: Maybe. But you never really know where words of hostility could be hiding. Maybe they’re written between the lines.
Me: I’ve got that covered. I’ve been looking between the lines of every letter. There’s nothing there except white space. But, look, I’m not hard to deal with. Maybe today is too soon to part with something so familiar as this grudge. Maybe we won’t be able to part with this grudge until tomorrow. What do you think?
Myself: Tomorrow? Well we’ll see what tomorrow brings. I’m not making any promises. This will take some time to consider, and I’m pretty busy, what with Christmas coming and all.
Me: So just tell me one thing, will you? What is your biggest fear about giving up this grudge.
Myself: Fear? What do you mean, fear. I have nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a grudge, after all. What’s so scary about a grudge?
Me: Plenty, I’d say. Most of the world’s wars—maybe all of the world’s wars—are fueled by grudges. I’d call that scary. And here’s another thing. Only half the world’s apologies are generated by genuine remorse. The rest are matters of convenience. Try as I might, I can’t really think how it was convenient to write these nice letters. Now here’s another idea. Could you give it as a gift?
Myself: Give a grudge as a gift?
Me: No, dummy. Could we give up the grudge as a gift? Give the gift of forgiveness?
Myself: Well, there’s a new Christmas idea, the gift of forgiveness. But then, you’ve got to be careful with these new ideas? One year it’s a new idea, the next year it’s a trend. You know how these things get going. One year it’s Cabbage Patch Dolls. Another year it’s I-phones. Pretty soon the whole world is changing, and everybody’s talking about the new trend. Can you imagine what might happen if everybody started giving the gift of forgiveness for Christmas?

WE MIGHT

We might get an artificial tree next year. That’s what we’re saying now, listening to the words we are saying, trying to figure out whether we mean them.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. In the corner of our living room stands a tree so fragrant that Mark and Tracey can smell it through the crack under the door to their upstairs apartment. It’s a tree with character, wide, embracing, flattish on top, shaved at bottom. Skinny branches extend their curving needle fingers to clutch at the bounty of treasures accumulated over the decades. Last night’s dinner guests said: “what a lovely tree, so full, not a single bare spot.”
The 2011 tree is everything an artificial tree will never be—difficult to handle, original, quirky. David acquired it at a Food Bank fund-raising event on Churchill Square. He asked them for a tall one, not realizing that he was making the choice to take home a tree that required the carrying strength of Hercules with a trunk that only a logger could love. He might have asked for a different tree, had it been a Thursday evening, or a Saturday afternoon. But that is not how it was. He had got it in the true Christmas spirit, in a sleepy haze at 5:30 AM on a Friday morning at the end of a week of working long hours of day and evening due to the commitment required during City Budget time. He had gone to get it at the earliest possible moment so that he’d be home in time to help Lawrence get his car into the repair shop before work.
All day, bottom in a pail of water, the tree languished stiffly in the garage, limbs imprisoned in string, silently wondering how we’d find a stand to hold it. “We might get an artificial tree next year,” we said, locking the doors behind us, hoping time would bring wisdom.
It takes a family to manage such a tree. Friday evening became an impromptu guys’ night out for Lawrence and David. After a period of experimentation resulting in the sacrifice of a dozen branches and approximately 10 billion long needles, they went shopping, came home with an electric reciprocating saw, and wrestled the trunk into submission.
Mark and Tracey loaned us their tree stand. It’s a bit more secure than ours for such a heavy tree. And we thought maybe we shouldn’t bother to get a new tree stand for ourselves, just in case we meant it when we said we might get an artificial tree next year.

BEAUTIFUL SONG

Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming
Arranged in 1609, written some time before that
Sung this week as in years past
In languages of many peoples
By lucky choristers like me
Moving parts in choirs large and small

Who says beautiful things can’t last forever?

Lo How A Rose

MIRACLE IN THE FAMILY ROOM

If I’ve said it once in my adult Decembers I’ve said it a hundred times: “I’d like to see Miracle On 34th Street, the old version I watched as a kid.” And every year the TV would show umpteen versions of the Christmas Carol, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeers, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Home Alone—you get my drift. Every year somebody would say: “Oh yes, that movie comes on every Christmas.,” and one time I started to watch it, but it wasn’t the old version I remembered so I wandered off to write a letter.
Yesterday I popped in to say something to Mark and Tracey. Tracey was decorating the tree and watching White Christmas. “Oh,” I cried, “White Christmas!”
“How do you know that?” Mark asked, turning from the computer where he was playing a game of some sort.
“Because I see it every Christmas when I’m looking for Miracle On 34th Street.”
“I have Miracle on 34th Street,” said Tracey. “I watch it every year.” Now here is something. How could I have missed this last year? This was Tracey’s second Christmas with Mark. Did she have my movie in this house last year? Yes, she did.
And so it came to pass that last night, after we got home from the Christmas story concert, I went to the family room, pushed back the recliner, and settled down with David to watch Miracle on 34th Street, the old version with colour added, only I can’t tell colour TV from black and white, so the modernization effect did not trouble me. And there they were the scenes I remembered from—how many decades has it been? The child whose practical mother taught her not to believe, the handsome hero who loved her mother, the Santa Claus who revolutionized department store Santa business, the trial for mental incompetence, and finally, oh finally, the new house for Christmas when all signs pointed to the fact that there would be no new house, hence no reason to truly believe. And there, in the new house, as David pointed out, was the cane that the old Santa carried.
Bless David. The evening was wearing on, but he had managed to stay awake to tell me the ending. It’s a terrible frustration for blind movie-watchers, this stuff on the screen that only sighted people get. You can faithfully watch a whole movie alone and then not know how it ends.
I’d forgotten the end of this movie, though I didn’t remember I’d forgotten until we got there. I had known the ending because my mother told it to me. She told it in wonder, the way David told it, the way Doris and Fred experienced it in the movie. We were sitting at the kitchen table still piled high with dinner dishes—dinner on the farm was eaten at midday. Soup remains grew dry on the bowls, the crackers lay in their wrapping. Mom had reached over to cover the cheese. The kitchen table was strategically placed for a clear view into the living room. We could watch TV from the table. This was the afternoon movie. We must have accidentally got interested. We would never have planned to watch it together. We didn’t watch movies together. We always did the dishes after dinner in those days. But this was Christmas. Even though we were busy, there was extra time.
In this memory my mother, the kitchen and the movie are all perfectly focused, every detail as I knew it then has replaced our family room.
As David and I watch this old movie my own children, now adults, move around the house. Every so often a head pops in, sees that we are watching, and pops back out to pursue its own pursuits. These are my children, living the days of early adulthood when the memories of childhood go into hiding, stored away for future surprise. And I wonder, in a few decades, what small happenings, small as the cane at the end of their movie, will take them back with absolute clarity to a treasured time spent with us that they didn’t even know they were noticing.

CHRISTMAS LETTER

I asked Lawrence what I should say about him in the Christmas letter. I truly was looking for advice. Yesterday I’d sat down to write, and finding that I couldn’t, I’d looked back at the 2010 edition of THE HOPE LADY Blog. Reading between the lines of what was recorded there I could pretty much piece the year together. A lot had been written about the wedding that consumed so much of our attention. There were some health references, some holiday references, some seeds of stories I’d told on stages, some small musings about hope. “That ought to be enough to get me started,” I said to myself. But it wasn’t. I wrote half a page and deleted it.
Wondering what to write in the Christmas letter is an annual event for me. It happens every year at the same time—a few days after mid-November. I always begin in the same place—begin by trying to envision the reading audience. The way I figure it, the recipients of our Christmas letter fall into two categories: people who keep up with our news and don’t learn anything new from it, and people who are so distant from our daily lives that they have no idea what goes on with us in any given year. There are people on that list who last saw us before the birth of our kids, readers who might not even recognize us if we met on the street. To write something that meets the needs of this combination is an impossible thing. Every year I give serious consideration to cancelling the letter, and then I remember how much I like getting Christmas letters. I recall that I even like getting them from people whose news I already know, and from others whose news I care little about. I went through this process yesterday, and decided to write a letter after all. It’s a decision I reach every year.
“What shall I write about you in our Christmas letter?” I said to Lawrence. Even as I said it, I was expecting to be rebuffed, and rightly so. I really ought to be able to write a Christmas letter without writing about my children. After all, they are grown, and if they want things said about them, they can very well speak for themselves. Surely, at this point, David and I have a life to write about. But then I remembered the letters I wrote when we first got married. In those days I would put down some things about us, and then some things about our parents. I don’t usually write about the parents now. Sometimes I try, but it makes the letters too long, once the info about the kids has been included. I guess I’ve never been able to write a Christmas letter without making reference to the important people in my life. Why start now?
I had especially been wondering what to write about Lawrence. He’s had a nasty little year—what with being under-employed, and getting cancer and having his car destroyed by a drunk driver. It’s always hard to figure out how to handle nastiness in a Christmas letter. I have read some very sad Christmas letters from some very sad people. I don’t begrudge them their sadness, and I definitely think that if they want to write about that, the least I can do is read their writing and feel the sadness they feel. That said, it’s not my way to write sadly about sad things. I know that many people find a lot of comfort in writing their sadness and anger, but writing mine never seems to help me much. I like my Christmas letter to be a letter I’d want to read.
Yesterday, when I had faced the fact that I wasn’t writing the Christmas letter, I went on line to look up an article about one of my heroes, Stuart McLean. McLean writes for the spoken word in a style that would characterize my Christmas letter if I were a better writer. He writes family stories with happy endings. When he reads his work aloud, his listeners laugh, and sometimes they cry. McLean is accused of being sentimental and cheesy. I love him because of it.
This particular profile by Jeet Heer is called Mr. Nice Guy. Heer writes:
“When McLean was a boy in Montreal, he had the unusual habit of pretending to be a preacher, delivering ad hoc sermons to his parents’ friends. In a way, he remains a frockless clergyman, a parson in the guise of a popular entertainer. He is a deeply religious writer, but not in any narrow, sectarian sense.
Rather, he articulates an unshorn natural piety that even unbelievers can accept. At the heart of all religion lies a feeling of gratitude for the simple and mysterious fact that we exist, that for reasons unknown to us we’ve been brought into this world and allowed to enjoy fellowship and earthly pleasures.
It is perhaps no accident that his show airs on weekends, traditional days of rest and meditation. A century ago, many Canadians listened to homilies in church on Sundays, a practice some still follow. But now we can stay at home and hear secular sermons on CBC.”
Heer doesn’t tell us whether McLean is happy with the idea that his stories are being compared to sermons. I know I definitely don’t want my Christmas letter to be a sermon. I have to accept that it may, or may not be entertaining to everyone who reads it. But I do want it to record and organize our experience in a manner that leaves me with some hope that I can take into the new year. Maybe that’s why I’ve asked Lawrence what I ought to write. Maybe I’m giving him the chance to give me the hope, why I’m willing to risk taking the chance that he won’t.
He says, “Tell them that people who beat cancer get a gold car.”
“Okay,” I say.
Sitting at the computer I jot: Lawrence got a new car this year. His old Malibu has been replaced by a gold Sebring with only 50,000 KM. His Malibu was written off aftr it was hit by a drunk driver who careened down our street just after midnight on a warm June Saturday. Fortunately Lawrence wasn’t in the car when it was struck. He was at home, recovering after cancer surgery. He heard the crash and called to his brother. Three neighbours heard it also. All of them ran outside. The driver tried to escape, but the four healthy men cornered him and held him until the police arrived.
And here, I think, are the seeds of something you might find in a sermon. There’s suffering and there’s injustice. To balance all of this, there’s family loyalty and neighbours helping one another. There’s a sense of getting through bad times and moving on. There’s hope to take into a new year. Maybe there’s even something I’d like to read in a Christmas letter.

SIX BARELY BEGUN CHRISTMAS STORIES

Derek the researcher: “What were some of your best Christmas memories?”
Me: “Oh, I don’t know.”
Inside me there flares the spark of a tiny conflict. The storyteller can feel the start of the best stories. And this would be good. Isn’t that what researchers are looking for—stories I mean?
Well, it would be good, except that the best stories, of course, gain their power from tension, from crises resolved, laying the bad against the good. So up pops the other me, the me that’s having a pleasant dinner, not wanting to take all the attention, not wanting Christmas to seem like one crisis after another.
The other me wins this epic struggle. Thus, we enjoy a pleasant dinner. But the storyteller never gives up. Once you get her going, she’s hard to stop. She wants to start 12 stories, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas. But compromises have to be made. She started half of them. Here are their beginnings.

1. On Christmas morning when I was 9, or possibly 10—I don’t think I can say for certain—I found a little suitcase waiting for me under the tree. Inside that case were two things. The first was a small gray second-hand accordion. The second was an identity crisis. The accordion was temporary—gone a year later. The identity crisis—not so much.

2. Marriage is the blending of many things—not the least of which is Christmas traditions. Both of us had grown up cherishing Christmas traditions of one sort or another, so perhaps it is not too surprising that we should have tried, in 1976, to combine all our Christmas dreams into one short day. The idea had was a thing to anticipate. The reality has often been summed up by me in five little words: I’ll never do that again!

3. One of the things I always loved about Christmas was the annual concert a mile-and-a-half down the road at Cambridge School. I loved the hiss of the gas lamps, the chuckling at the teen-age plays, the perfect recitations given by my sister, the visit from Santa, the candy bags we got, the aroma of coffee boiling on the stove, the puff of heat from the wood fire. And then there was the year that things got too hot for everybody.

4. My mother was an independent sort. There were certain things she always did without much help from others—decorating cakes, sewing beautiful dresses, running organizations, and making gravy. And though she did all these things in great quantity during the first fifty years of my life, I think it’s safe to say that I never once helped with any of them. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that I rarely run organizations, never decorate cakes or sew beautiful dresses, and continue to experience a certain amount of stress when it comes to making gravy.

5. I never had much patience with parents who spend Christmas morning playing with the toys while the children look on sadly, waiting for a turn. I never was one of those parents. I always thought that putting together the prized model, or assembling the toy, was a job that should wait until the child was ready to ask for it to be done. Then came the year that changed everything, the year Ruth asked for a keyboard.

6. Out of the mouths of babes come the pronouncements that shape our future. It was Laurie who gave us the name that stuck, she who, coming upon us chatting in the living room after Christmas dinner, sighed and said: “Oh, three baggy sisters!”

NOT TO MISS A MOMENT

Yesterday, when we were playing games after eating, discussing how many layers we would need to wear when taking Pirate for a walk, Margaret said she hated to go to bed because sleeping would end the Christmas holidays more quickly. Others might have thought this strange. I understood it completely. Christmas holidays are a friend of mine.
My love affair with Christmas holidays started long ago, perhaps when I started school, maybe even before that. And throughout my working career it has been my great privilege to be allowed time off around Christmas and New Year’s. My deepest sympathies extend to people who cannot choose to have time off. For them I would gladly permit the closure of stores, and I’d wish for wellness to cut the demands on hospital staff, and I’d wish for strong water and power lines to give utility workers the pleasures I’ve known.
Not everyone loves Christmas holidays the way I do. Others who have the choice say it’s good to work around Christmas and New Year’s. You can get a lot done, they say, with so few people in the office and the phone not driving you crazy. You can get more value for your days, they say, because the powers that be are apt to close the place down early. The logical side of me understands these principles completely. Still there’s nothing logical about my love for Christmas holidays. The experience is unabashedly emotional. So emotional is it that, even though I love working, I start looking forward to Christmas holidays—well, some time in October at the latest.
It’s the mornings I look forward to, dark mornings when the outside lights come on at 6:00 with the automatic timer, brightening our bedroom, and I hear Pirate barking at the newspaper delivery, then turn over to pretend it isn’t really morning yet.
It’s the afternoons I look forward to, walking Pirate in the sunshine. Can it really be –30? Feels like –28, or maybe even –25. It’s the evenings I look forward to, night after night of socializing with family and friends until I think I just cannot stand one more dinner, and then there is yet another dinner. There’s the presents on Christmas morning, and whatever happens New Year’s Eve, and the Boxing Day leftovers. I love it all.
Don’t misunderstand me. Christmas holidays are not perfect, in fact they are far from it. But this is the season when, despite the war and tragedy that annually occupies the newscasts, things seem somehow fixable. There is family tension, always family tension, but there is also good will to mitigate the worst of it. There’s over-eating, so much over-eating, and there are good intentions for weight losing in the new year. There is game-playing, all kinds of games, with a lot of game-losing to help build character. There is cold weather, usually cold weather anyway, and doesn’t that promise to stop the pine beetle from reproducing?
Oh I love Christmas holidays! I’ve tried to explain how much I love them, but Margaret said it better than I ever have. Is it any wonder that Margaret and I just want to stay up, to savour every last hour, even though we really like to work?

WHEN I RETIRE

When I retire
My life will be
Much like it is
In the Christmas holidays.

Except that..
There won’t be a mountain of chocolate in the cupboard
Or turkey and trifle in the fridge
Or company coming every second day,
And dinners with others on other days,
Or New Year’s eve to consider,
Or a pile of new clothes to try on
And new records to listen to every day.

Yes, when I retire
My life will be
Just like it is
In the Christmas holidays.

GRANNY'S TRIFLE

Today we are eating leftover trifle. We didn’t really need to make trifle at all, given the large number of sweet things that were already here. But Christmas is the only time when we ever have trifle. So I made it anyway. Trifle is layered, like my life. It is something I make with my heart.
It is impossible for me to make trifle without remembering Granny Cookson. So far as I can recollect, my trifle is fairly similar to hers. Granny always made trifle at Christmas. In those days I ate it happily without stopping to consider its ingredients. In fact, I thought all trifle was Granny’s trifle until I met David and heard that his idea of trifle was a layered dessert containing Jell-O.
“Jell-O!” exclaimed my mother, when I told her what I had discovered. “Granny’s trifle doesn’t have Jell-O in it.” And that was only the beginning of my trifle education. One year I proudly carried a trifle to the Mill Woods United Church Choir Christmas potluck party. My trifle was Granny’s trifle. I was the first to arrive. There followed in my footsteps six other choir members bearing six bowls of trifle. Each of them was different from all the others. Each of them was made with layers of cake and other things, but none of them was granny’s trifle.
To eat a dish of Granny’s trifle is to taste all my childhood Christmases, to be once again warmed in the holiday good nature of my father’s family. Christmas was at granny’s house. We ate the meal and washed the dishes. We played board games and snickered at the men snoring in the living room. We played hide-and-seek in Granny’s closets, and listened to the Queen’s Christmas address. Then we ate a late-night snack and I cried because we had to go home. Christmas was the day that should have lasted forever.
Mom’s family did not gather at Christmas. So even though Granny was not my mom’s mother, it seemed natural that Mom should take up the cause of recreating Granny’s trifle when Granny stopped hosting large Christmas dinners. David and I would arrive at Mom’s a day early to help prepare the feast. The trifle would already be in progress. Mom would have the cake made and the raspberries thawing. We would make the custard, toast the nuts and whip the cream. To make a bowl of Granny’s trifle is to stand in Mom’s kitchen, stirring the custard and talking to Mom. "Don't leave yet," she'd say on Boxing day. "We haven't finished the trifle."
Nowadays, the job of trifle making has fallen to David and me. David’s family was never much committed to the Jell-O layered dessert, so Granny’s trifle it is. No matter that its assembly creates a pile of dishes. The process begins in warmest August. First we eat the ripening raspberries hot off the bushes, then we bring them in for breakfast. Finally, when there are too many for breakfast, we freeze the first bag. “That’s the trifle,” I say. After that I forget all about Christmas and go back to appreciating summer.
A few days before Christmas is the time to think about the cake. Will it be half an Angel Food, or a yellow cake mix, or a recipe for jellyroll? Usually it’s the recipe for jellyroll. I bake it, tear it into little pieces and place a layer in the bottom of the straight-sided berry bowl I got as a wedding gift. (It came with six little bowls, but they didn’t fit well in the dishwasher, so the ones that have survived now serve the dog his daily meal.)
On Christmas Eve morning it’s time to thaw the raspberries. Two cups of berries go nicely atop the cake in the berry bowl. Then, if you are only making one bowl, which is something we rarely have the good sense to do, you make one recipe of custard using the directions on the can of Byrd’s Custard Powder. The hardest part of the operation is waiting for the custard to cool before you pour it over the berries. I don’t know precisely why you have to wait for it to cool. Mom said so and she’s gone, so I can’t ask her. I suspect that if you poured it hot it might cook the berries and soak right into the cake instead of hovering above the berries in a tasteful layer. While you wait you can pass some time toasting a few slivered almonds to sprinkle after you pour the custard.
Some people might add a layer of whipped cream, but we don’t. Instead, we always whip the cream during a very chaotic time on Christmas morning and keep it in a separate bowl. I don’t know why we do it this way. That’s how Mom did it. Some day we might serve trifle to somebody who doesn’t want to eat it with sweetened whipped cream and that person will definitely be grateful.
While we clear the turkey from the table we start begging people to eat the trifle. “Please eat it so we won’t have so much left over!” Then we force them to work up a new appetite playing games before serving trifle again. Eventually we have to let them go home, leaving us with the leftover trifle. Then we try to appreciate it for as many days as it takes to finish. After all, we won’t make it again for at least another year.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHRISTMAS MEMORY

From A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, (1914-1953) first read publicly in 1952, published posthumously in 1955

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes
hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days
and twelve nights when I was six.”


From the Cookson/Martin/Edey Christmas at our house yesterday

“Okay, we need to finish up this food so we’ll have room on the table for the plum pudding, caramel sauce, trifle, whipped cream, and seven trays of Christmas baking. Now, will you have turkey (basted by david with melted butter and red wine like they suggested on CBC)? Cranberry sauce? Potatoes and gravy? Turnips (We made them for Andrew.) Andrew—any turnips? Corn festively mixed with green and red pepper? Brown or white bun? How about Donna’s fruit salad? Layered salad with peas? Oh, and here’s the pickle tray and the olives! Now Donna, we need you to eat more. What will you have, donna?”
“Oh, more stuffing please.”
“Okay, I’ll get you some. Now where is it? Pass the stuffing please. Donna wants more stuffing. Hey down there, could you pass the stuffing up here? Where is the stuffing anyway?”
“Are you sure we had stuffing?”
“Well, yes, I think we had stuffing. We did have stuffing didn’t we?”
“Sure we had stuffing.”
“Yes, we had stuffing.”
“Where can it have gone?”
“Maybe it’s still in the oven.”
“Can’t be. We already had it and I only made one big bowl.”
“Maybe somebody should check the oven.”
“Oh, here it is, in the oven. Untouched. Now let’s have the stuffing course before we get to dessert!”

Summary: On Christmas Day 2008 only half the diners remembered having stuffing. People are even more forgetful than they used to be.

SOCIABLE CHRISTMAS IDEAS FOR LONELY PEOPLE

There would be more hope if lonely people had somewhere to turn for ideas about how to spend a sociable Christmas Day. In a good world people wouldn’t have to be lonely. One of my hope projects this year is to make a list of sociable things lonely people can do on Christmas Day. I am thinking of any and all people, but I am not thinking of dating services, which is what you get when you search the Internet for ideas. . I am thinking of suggestions that would be helpful to people who need people, people who are not expecting anyone to reach out with a Christmas Day invitation. I began the project by looking for ideas for the Edmonton area, but will welcome other ideas as well.

Send ideas to wendy.edey@gmail.com and look for future postings on this topic.
Here are the first three ideas I have received.

1. Call the International Student Centre at the university and offer to host a student who has no Christmas plans.

2. Contact a travel agent to ask about short Christmas trips.

3. The Victory Christian Center in Edmonton puts on a huge Christmas Day dinner at the Shaw centre. Attend the dinner or volunteer to work at it.