JOY IN CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON MEANS MANY DIFFERENT THINGS TO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE P. 3
In the spirit of the season, we asked five prominent Saskatchewan folks to share their thoughts about Christmas and how they plan to spend it with their loved ones. Here’s what they told us:
After Ted and I married, my mother-in-law gave me a Christmas diary where I could record the weather, menu, guests, best presents and big events of the next 25 years of our Christmases to come. When that book was filled, Babba gave me another. It too, is jam-packed with details of our family’s celebrations.
When our three kids were little, we were seldom home for Christmas. Most of the time we visited Ted’s family — first in Florida (60 miles from Disney World — brilliant grandparenting strategy there). Later, we had many Christmases in Texas where our sons, Max and Nathaniel, tossed a football around on the lawn; our daughter, Hildy, shopped the malls with her Babba; and because my mother-in-law was a teetotaler, Ted and I snuck bourbon back to our bedroom before bedtime and listened to radio station KLUV (all love music/all the time).
Christmas was Babba’s holiday. She loved everything about it — especially having her family near. She had an extraordinary Santa Claus collection, half of which we now own and proudly display. Of course, like Babba, what Ted and I love most about Christmas is having family close. Many of the people with whom we celebrated our 50 years of Christmases together are no longer with us.
There have been deaths and divorces, but there have also been marriages, new people whom we love joining our family. And there are grandchildren who are, of course, practically perfect in every way.
On Christmas Eve this year, as is our tradition we will all be in the front pew of St. Paul’s Cathedral for the children’s candlelight service at five o’clock. However, our oldest granddaughters will be in Chile with their abuela. We are trying very hard to share their excitement. Madeleine and Lena are now 19 and 18 — on the cusp of adulthood and of Christmases to come. They will make their own decisions about celebrating the holidays, but in the Christmas diaries Babba gave me all those years ago, the girls have a solid blueprint to guide them.