No 2020 Christmas in Cape Breton this year for some

Carol Savoie lives in Guelph, ON now, but her heart is still in Cape Breton.

“That was my deal when I moved to Ontario with my husband. I said, ‘You can take the girl out of Cape Breton, but you can't take the Cape Breton out of the girl.' I need to go home once a year.”

Savoie has kept to this schedule, rotating Christmas and summer visits each year. When she's home, the family gets together for a classic bigfamily Christmas in Cheticamp.

“My father's family, all the Aucoins, we get together and we have a Christmas Eve dinner. We sing songs, and then all the grandkids open up presents. We usually have one or two from our grandparents to open. And then my grandparents open all the presents that all the grandkids and their kids got them,” remembers Savoie.

“Then we will just hang out as a family and talk about childhood memories and past Christmases, because like everybody else, we lose loved ones as the years go on. ‘Oh, do you remember this time?' and ‘Oh, do you remember that time?' ”

But there is no aspect of our lives, it seems, that COVID19 will not upend, and so this year, that rotation ends for Savoie. 2020 was supposed to be a Cape Breton Christmas.

“We spend one Christmas here and then we usually go down to Cheticamp for the next, so that the kids can spend it with their grandparents and their cousins. But sadly, 2020, it's not in store for us.”

Savoie is going to try to stay true to old traditions, as she has done in past years in Ontario. She has a cousin in Tottenham, who she is hoping will be able to stop by with their family, depending on what local COVID restrictions are in place by then.

“My grandmother is no longer with us, but I'm one of the grandkids that has really tried to keep up with tradition. I homemake Acadian meat pies and tons of deserts and we just have a huge feast,” says Savoie.

“I serve my grandmother's traditional Chrismas Eve supper, which is a ham with potatoes and carrots and turnips and homemade bread rolls. We usually do stockings on Christmas Eve, we've always done that, after supper and before midnight mass. This year, we're still going to keep the tradition but with less family.”

As Savoie watches her children grow up, she feels more connected to these traditions and more aware of a need to pass them on.

“As my generation has grown up and we watch our kids, it changes the meaning of Christmas. You get to feel the real magic of Christmas, seeing the smile on your kids' faces,” she says. “So, we're going to all do our best to make sure that everybody has a great Christmas. But it feels different. I'm feeling a lot more lonely than I usually would at this time of year.”

The one consolation of 2020 has been that technology has made that loneliness less acute than it otherwise would have been.

“Christmas morning, we're going to Facetime with the grandparents while the kids open their presents, so we can all virtually be together,” says Savoie. “It's just going to be low-key and we'll probably get to enjoy some outdoor fun time.

“We usually, after supper, go for a drive around the city and look at all the houses that are lit up. That's our little tradition with the kids. We're going to all make the most out of it, the best out of it, that we can.”

This week, Saltwire will bring you the stories of some of the families who won’t be able to be together this Christmas due to COVID-19, and how they’ll celebrate this very different holiday instead.