THE MOOD
Playing house.
Jules Torti takes going home for the holidays seriously—but not in the way you might expect.
“GOING HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS?”
Where exactly is home anymore? Is it a person, a bricks-and-mortar place or a gauzy Polaroid memory? Our concept of home shifts with age, like the neon blobs of wax in a lava lamp. It’s logical that home becomes a person, not just square footage and a coir doormat that reads “Come back with tacos!”
Maybe that person is still one of your parents. (Millennials, right?) Maybe it’s the person whom you’ve chosen to play house with forever and vowed all sorts of poetic things to before that ceremonial first dance. Maybe you swayed hips to Melissa Etheridge’s sappy lament “Breathe” and whispered “Home is a feeling I buried in you” in sync.
My sister transplanted to Banff, Alta., nearly 20 years ago and still says she is flying “home” at Christmas—even though my parents moved 163 kilometres away from our childhood house 15 years ago and her home is 3,468 kilometres to the west. Is home always where your parents are? Were? Who holds this nostalgic key? My sister-in-law spends the holidays in Charlottetown, where she never lived (but her parents did), and she calls it home.
There is inevitable displacement as we take turns playing house in shiny new cities with equally shiny husbands and wives or non-binary lovers. From dorm rooms with a panini-maker kitchen to crappy basement rentals to sun-bathed flex rooms in the sky, what remains, indelibly, is a sense of belonging. And we all belong to some holiday ritual or tradition, religious or retail, that connects us to home, past or present. It can be an agnostic December 25 blockbuster matinee that moves from buttery popcorn to takeout Chinese and pyjamas by six. It can take the form of a tipsy night of eggnog elixirs and wrapping DIY gifts with Boney M. on repeat. The holidays can be everything from a table setting for 10 to a turkey leg and candy cane dessert feature for one.
We’re all playing house, perennially, with a rotating cast of characters and carols. Wasn’t this the universal default setting for a kid? Playing house with whoever was available? Storm-stayed Sundays had a predictable itinerary: tobogganing until someone had to pee, downing mudlike hot chocolate with mini mallows during a thaw-out death match round of Yahtzee and then “Let’s play house!” It didn’t matter how many players you had—an imaginary friend or unsuspecting cat would do in a pinch. Lunch was a simple affair: uncooked batter cakes warmed by the 50-watt light bulb glow of a Holly Hobbie oven. One person (or cat) was the husband—the other, the wife. This was before gender-binary talk and cat and/or gluten allergies. Back then, you could have a couple of pals over and build a gingerbread house without the anxiety of someone having an anaphylactic blowout over gingerbread house construction materials. »
My partner, Kim, and I still like to build an annual gingerbread house, mostly due to our minimalist tendencies. The prefab kits are perfectly Ikea-like (minus the Allen-key hell). You can go all out and keep Christmas contained to less than half a square foot, under a green and red jujube roof. That’s our tidy tradition. This naturally disappoints my mother. My parents’ garage is half dedicated to festive decor (meaning their vehicle will never see the indoors—ever), and on December 1, watch out! It’s time to deck those halls with boughs of holly. On the flip side, Kim and I own three decorations, sticking to our firm belief that all that glitters is not gold. Glitter is glitter, and it’s a vacuuming nightmare. We have 236 Christmas trees surrounding our house. Why would we bring one inside?
Our holiday ritual is this: full-fat eggnog and spiced rums (but not before December 1—we observe some rules!). We sit down on our industrial barstools with a dozen old-school Christmas cards and play our only two holiday CDs
and Madison Violet’s On Christmas Eve, we dutifully
(sobbing every single time during that $#&* scene with Emma Thompson when she learns that her &%$#* husband might be up to no good). We drink Prosecco and graze on an elaborate charcuterie board, holding off on the kielbasa until that Emma scene is well over.
At my parents’ house, it’s a whole different Christmas story (when we arrive on Christmas Day): The carols are non-stop, rag-doll cats wear red ribbons and jingle bells around their necks and there’s a nutcracker at every turn. My dad has taken it upon himself to work part-time as Geppetto, creating a sanctuary for injured nutcrackers with broken noses, missing boots and ratty beards. He finds them at thrift shops and polishes them up, creating tiny parts for them out of wine corks. If you’re new to the family, be prepared for the nutcracker tour! (Insider tip: Grab a glass of Champagne first.)
My parents’ home is pure winter alchemy: crimson cranberries bubbling on the stovetop, an ostrich-size turkey with skin the colour of Bob Barker in the oven and a handsome spruce leaning with nostalgic ornaments. My dad saves a commemorative ornament for each of us to place strategically on the tree. There’s an orna-
ment that represents each of our beloved pets, all dearly departed: Moker, Drakkar, Xanadu, Whisper, Phantom, Chloe, Casper. Oh God... Then we subject ourselves to Meryn Cadell’s song “The Cat Carol” and have a good weep over that. Open more Champagne!
Coming home for the holidays, here, to our house, would be like visiting a just-divorced friend with three sad decorations. Kim and I focus on the Nordic side of design and the bonhomie of the holidays rather than on tinsel and nutcrackers. Welcoming birch lengths and cedar swag are placed in planter boxes on the front step, and the holiday owls make their short but sweet appearance. They are layered in glitter and sequins and kept out of DeRozan-length reach. If you even look at those owls, I swear they shed like a golden retriever. This is why we focus on the edible and audible version of the holidays. We let Mother Nature handle the visuals, and she does a fab job with her Jack Frost limited editions.
This is why my sister prefers Christmas at “home” (my parents’ home) versus our spartan house. I get it. Our three decorations and Dwell-style gingerbread house don’t compare to my dad’s nutcracker hospital wing and my mom’s stuffing. Though we have 1,500 square feet more than my folks (and three guest bedrooms with two ensuites), the holiday feel isn’t here. We’ve only furnished one guest bedroom and have place settings for four. And no turkey baster. Or meat thermometer, for that matter. Gravy boat? Nah. However, we do have Champagne glasses for 12 and uncomfortable but cool industrial seating for four.
Luckily, home for the holidays knows no walls— and sometimes they are made of gingerbread or visited via FaceTime across Oceania from a beach in Phuket. It’s about belonging, somewhere, even to a cat. And whether it’s tofurkey with the framily or solo Chinese chicken balls with a sprig of hopeful mistletoe, home for the holidays has no fixed address.
Whether it’s tofurkey with the framily or solo Chinese chicken balls with a sprig of hopeful mistletoe, home for the holidays has no fixed address.