Looking back on highlights from Christmases past
snow “could cover the carpet and be cold.”
In 1985, our oldest was a donkey in the Christmas pageant, we had 11 for turkey dinner, it poured rain and the snowman on the lawn fell over. Two years later, Alan reprised his donkey role and his little sister was an angel (at the front of the church at any rate).
That holiday was the year Lumsden Pond froze perfectly for smooth skating. We started a tradition involving real eggnog with the aunties on Christmas Eve. The memorable gifts were homemade — a paper maché Castle Greyskull and a classic dollhouse.
1989 was notable for caroling door to door with Andy and Linda Nette’s family and other friends. Our tree that year had no ornaments from the height of our youngest down. At 13 months, his Christmas spirit was too hands-on.
On Dec. 22 that year, we took our last ride on the Dayliner. Three days later, Christmas morning began at 5:30 a.m. with a feverish two-year-old who didn’t care to open anything.
One of my happiest Christmas memories was watching Emma ‘sign’ a song in sign language along with the hearing-impaired class during a Wolfville school concert.
One year I made ‘Pecan Puffs’ for the cookie exchange, then it was ‘Swedish Angels’, followed by chocolate macaroons. In 1991, we got our first microwave under the tree.
There was a beautiful Christmas tableau downtown in 1993 featuring live animals in a manger/old gas station where a parking lot sits today. Alan and his grandfather got to be shepherds, stopping cars asking, “Have you seen a star in the East?”
Ma and Pa got to bed at 2 a.m. Christmas morning — at least the kids slept in till 8.
The first Dickens' Christmas in Wolfville was in 1994. David Ripley whipped everyone into a Victorian frenzy and there was a gorgeous second nativity tableau.
Our nieces came over the next December, baked delicious cookies and left a layer of flour all over the kitchen. We made traditional paper silhouettes of them and framed them as gifts.
In 1996, I counted 11 performances that the three kids were involved in. We were all worn out by Dec. 25.
In 1998, the father of my children was stuffing the turkey at 3 a.m. (Were we crazy?) Another tradition started when we began trading joke gifts with the Stewart family. We roared over a limp spiral-wire carrot, but it still gets trotted out to trim the tree.
Time changes everything and nothing. My kids are all grown, one is a married man, but many of our Christmas traditions remain and I eagerly await them. I feel such gratitude that our children want to come home.
There is always food in many guises, carefully prepared, shared with others and savoured — homemade cinnamon buns and meaty tourtiere and trifle full of toasted almonds.
Home from church, after dinner is consumed and the festive wine emptied, there is a great calm. Our family dares to light real candles on the tree. Hardly breathing, we listen as Christmas spirit fills the house. That’s what the season is about.