Family traditions make holiday season special
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but family love in action. Memories create a Christmas tradition, and traditions hold families together forever. If you doubt it, read on. Lexus Edmonton GM Bruce Kirkland says he comes from a close-knit family of 11 that had much love but few material things.
“We have a great many nieces and nephews now, but everyone still gets together Christmas Day,” he says.
“My oldest nephew Dale Kirkland and his wife Jo host a hockey game at a community rink near their Greenfield home. Players’ ages range from 10 to 70, but there’s a small rink for the little ones just learning to skate. There is energy, love, coffee, Baileys and champagne at the game. A brunch follows and being the most outgoing, I toast our late parents for instilling in us the value of family.”
Doug Hicks, former Edmonton Oiler and now St. Albert wine store owner, never has to decide where he will enjoy Christmas. “Since 1982, with my parents and my brother and sister and their families, I have never missed a Christmas at our Rocky Mountain House cabin. We built a goodsized cabin back then from trees on our land. Sometimes in the middle of a cold night we have to throw another log on the fire. But the smell of the wood smoke stays with us all until the next year.”
NorQuest president and CEO Jodi Abbott and her five siblings try to get together in Edson at Christmas and talk about growing up in their dad’s jewelry store there.
“We’d all be home by noon on Christmas Eve to work and let my dad’s team go,” she says.
“My most memorable moment was when an oilpatch guy came in when I was in my teens and gave me maybe $10,000 and told me whom I needed to buy for.
“In the evening we’d go for a family dinner. But always about 8 or 9 p.m. we’d get a phone call from someone who had forgotten to get his wife a gift. My mother would say, ‘Are you kidding me? Everything has been put away in the vault.’ But my dad would go and select three or four pieces for the customer to choose from.”
Global TV anchor Gord Steinke reports: “My favourite Christmas memory is about to happen. My 79-year-old dad just had major heart surgery. He still runs his own electrical contracting business and it took some time to convince him to put down his tools for the surgery. The operation was a complete success. Christmas morning will be so special with dad surrounded by family and friends, safe and sound in his Saskatoon home.”
Era Rowles, owner of Rowles Gallery in LeMarchand Mansion, was staying with her 92-year-old mother Freda in Port Colborne, Ont., on Christmas Eve 2012 when they found themselves wideawake at 1 a.m.
“Mom was planning on making Christmas dinner for me and a couple of girlfriends and I suggested we get up and make the pies,” says Rowles. “We made apple and blueberry pies until 4 a.m. They were the hit of the dinner. Freda died last year, but she left me with the sweetest memory of our last Christmas Eve together.”
Handling the emptynest syndrome badly is 630 CHED’s Bruce Bowie: “When my boys were growing up, we would always go to the legislature Christmas Eve, look at the lights and skate on the rink near the amphitheatre. I don’t even know if they have that rink anymore. My boys, Dave and Dan, have grown up and moved out. So now I sit at home and yell at the fireplace.”
A sweet time before Christmas is guaranteed for Mike House, the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation president and CEO.
“A tradition in our family is making chocolates at the beginning of every December,” he says. “More than 1,800 individually hand-crafted chocolates are created and wrapped or packaged into boxes. My wife Kathy and I have been doing this for over 10 years with our McGeachy family friends, Pat and Al, Leanne and Scott and Eric. It’s hard work, but absolutely worth it. We give the chocolates to family and friends and they are so tasty people actually ask us where we bought them.”
Dermatologist Dr. Barry Lycka, founder of the Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation, grew up in a poor Calgary family.
“Every Christmas my dad would go to the Italian meat shop close to the Calgary brewery where he worked and buy Genoa salami and mortadella ... It was served with gherkin pickles and Ukrainian Christmas bread. Boy, was that a great treat for breakfast on Christmas Day.”