MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas!!!!! Is there anything better?

The year is 2024, and yes, Christmas is exciting. I remember my own personal great excitement in 1975 when a certain dark haired young man shyly presented me with a beautiful diamond ring. And we've had lots of exciting Christmases since.

But for some odd reason, this time of year has a way of bringing the past to light. Those memories of Christmas as a child seem to be so vivid. They say the long term memory is the last thing to go, and even now I catch myself repeating a story more than once. I am sixty-seven you know.

The theory is that when something happens yesterday, we have had only one day to remember it. But when something happens in our life early on, we have had every day of our whole lives to think of it or remember it, so we retain those memories longer.

Make sense?

Or did I make that up......

I might have one more Christmas story in me, but it's storming so bear with me, and please come along.

The picture I have posted is not me as a child, but one of my children. Does anyone else remember those "Viewfinders?" With the little deck of discs to slip in? Hours of terrific entertainment.

I clearly remember loving mine. My father had built a large bedroom on to the little old house before I was born, so I can place this particular memory fairly accurately. The room was built on but hadn't been insulated and in fact the gyprock hadn't been put on yet. And I know this because I used to crawl along the top of the stack of sheets as they leaned up against the studs.

I must have been a holy terror to look after.

So that would put me at about three years old, as he died when I was four and a half.

And my god that bedroom was cold.

I remember laying on the bed breathing clouds of icy vapor as I spent hours with that Viewfinder and the Walt Disney cartoons slides that came with it. So I made sure one was under the tree when my kids were the right age. And just to disclose a truth......I think I got more enjoyment out of it than they did. It just brought me back.

A little later on in years Momma would give me a catalogue to cut out pictures of people and furniture and I would occupy myself for hours. I played house all day with that, ever mindful to be careful with her scissors, as they were priceless and it was a miracle she let me have them at all. But apparently I was in no harm, as I still have all my fingers and both eyes.

But then that was back in the day when Christmas meant maybe a sled or tobbogan because of course in late December there was always snow, and we could be outside playing all day with no worries. No bottled water, no snacks, no supervision either, just good clean tiring fun.

I remember once she sent Butch and me outside with a dish of those black grapes with the thick slimy skins. Do they even still grow those? They were gross, so what did we do? Well, invented our own game of course. We found an old tire rim, put it at the bottom of the steps and sat at the top. Then we'd load one of those grapes in our mouth, squeeze down on it, and somehow learned to swallow the grape and spit out the skin at the same time, and see who could spit it into the rim first.

Home grown fun. And yes, I suppose one of us could have choked, but we were quiet so.........there was that.

Today it is December 21, the winter solstice, and as people lined up today at Stonehenge, here in Atlantic Canada we braced for a storm. Will we have a white Christmas? Unlikely. But cold weather is healthy, and in fact without it, the planet is too warm. And I'm sure my strict efforts to recycle and compost and live healthy aren't having too much effect on it.

I hope that all the households with little ones will have as much fun as I did as a kid. Just to think back on the first Christmas concert in Rollo Bay School after we moved in to the shiny new brick building still makes a lump in my throat.

I was nine years old and we had an art teacher and a music teacher, who ever heard of such a thing? There were whole classes set aside to make ornaments and decorations out of paper and pastels and crayons to decorate the biggest, tallest Christmas tree that these little eyes had ever seen. We even had glitter and glue, what a revelation!

It must have taken five men to drag that tree in there and set it up in the corner by the stage in the gym, and it reached the ceiling, which to this little shorty, seemed impossibly high!

I don't remember if it had lights or not, it seemed to glitter anyway. It was covered in our home made ornaments, and each branch was drenched in tinsel. There was a tin foil star on top, and of course there was always movement in the gym, whether from busy bodies or drafts from the windows, so it took on a life of it's own.

And I remember distinctly the afternoon that I raised my hand timidly to ask permission to go the the washroom, and got the okay. But instead of using the girl's room on the main corridor, I slipped past the Staff room and Principal's office and crept downstairs to the lower bathroom adjacent to the gym. The Grinch had nothing on me, I fairly poured myself stealthily down the stairs.

I just stood in front of the tree, all alone there in the gym. My neck was getting stiff from looking up, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. And to think that within days, there would be our first concert with an actual visit from Santa and then our Christmas break. I loved school so much I didn't even want all that time off.

And do you remember, or was it just me........

Back at home, laying on our backs and scootching under the lower boughs of our little Christmas tree to look up at the lights from that view? I can see it yet, it doesn't take much to trigger that wonderful memory, in the days of those large Charlie Brown style colored lights, before the advent of these shitty LED lights. I just can't stand them. Then in the next few years, my own children did the same thing, all four of them, spread out like the spokes of a wheel, then our grandkids.

Simple magic.

So on this stormy Christmassy afternoon, take a break from the baking and cleaning. What is your memory of a long ago Christmas? I think we all have some, much the same. No one thought of themselves as poor, it was just a fact of life. Everyone was in pretty much the same boat. But that boat had some barley candy, maybe some mitts or socks, even a nightgown. Maybe a toy gun or toy dishes. Maybe a book or some crayons. But there was always something.

Roast turkey with all the trimmings? Don't remember. But there was a wood burning stove cooking something.

Technology has complicated Christmas, not made it easier or more special. It's not easy to be a kid today. They know too much. And instead of things getting better or easier, there are more food hampers going out than there ever was.

Something is just wrong, not balanced and out of whack.

But maybe this evening after it gets dark and I light the tree (oh who am I kidding, I plug it in as soon as I open my eyes) I'll coax Jamie to join me under the tree to look at the lights from that angle....

Wait a minute, who's gonna get us back up out of there?

Better not!