Christmas around our house has always been anything but predictable, generic or conventional. If anything, it has been zany, bizarre and downright unusual. Not that we tried to make it that way, it just came OUT that way. In particular, most of that strangeness has centred on Christmas trees.
Let me fill you in.
The first year my husband and I were married, we rented this beautiful big house on the south shore of Nova Scotia which was surrounded by 18 acres of grassy field. The field was surrounded by several rows of various sized coniferous trees; there were pines, firs and good old spruce trees. To top it off, our kind landlord told us that, come Christmas, we were welcome to cut down and use any one of those. I was ecstatic and eagerly looked forward to December, at which time I began to stalk the perimeters of the property, looking for the perfect Christmas tree.
Before I knew it, the weekend before Christmas arrived and I still had not found that tree. So I asked my husband to go out and find one. That is when my world was rocked. That was when this strange trend started.
"Oh," he said, thoughtfully chewing his last mouthful of eggs and bacon as he looked out the window. "I don't think we should celebrate Christmas."
A bomb going off couldn't have created a bigger shock wave. I almost choked on the orange juice I had just swallowed.
"What?" I asked, hoping against hope I had heard incorrectly.
"Christmas is a pagan holiday and I decided we shouldn't celebrate it." Now he was looking at me, which, I decided, took some courage, considering what he had just said.
Needless to say, the conversation got very animated suddenly and the end result was he did go out, axe in hand, to get that coveted tree for our home.
It took him a while too, which I thought was rather strange. Surely it couldn't take that long to find a simple evergreen, cut it and haul it back, considering most of the good trees were within two or three hundred feet of the house. I mean, come ON.
Some two hours later, I heard a tapping on the windowpane. I looked out to see hubby, surrounded by great green boughs from the tree he had cut and hauled back. It was gargantuan; colossal - People, it was BIG!
I heard this grunting and scraping and then he came in and mumbled something about it probably being too big to get in the house and, if so, we could always put it outside.
The game was on, I could see, and I had no intention of losing. His strategy was clear. If he spent all that time finding a tree, THE tree, that was supposed to go in our house, if it was too big, SURELY I would relent and let him off the hook and he would have his way.
Nu uh. Not if I had anything to do with it.
So I told him if it were too big, he would just have to trim it back. Then I realized it would fit beautifully under the cathedral ceiling in the great room.
So he reluctantly started in.
Finally, after tugging, pushing and sawing off about two feet from the bottom, it was in the house and in place, supported by a complicated system of wires and hooks.
I stood in front of it and smiled smugly. I told him all we needed to do now was to decorate it. The room was silent and then he spoke.
"You can do that yourself. That's woman's work."
Just as I was going to argue about how sexist his last remark was, I bit my tongue, realizing I would get to call the shots on this project, so he had really done me a favour, begging off that part of Christmas. I hated getting into squabbles about where to put lights and baubles so actually preferred to work alone on things like this.
So I dug out our Christmas decorations and he slunk off upstairs to watch television.
I am not sure when it hit me that I should have given in to his suggestion we keep it outside. Could be it was when I ran out of red, blue and green decorations, or maybe it was when the last string of lights came out of the box and I had only managed to cover about half the tree, thus far.
Crap, I thought and wondered if there was a painless way to eat crow.
Then there was the time, once hubby decided maybe Christmas wasn't so bad after all, and we had moved back into Halifax, we hadn't yet bought our tree and it was, once again, about a week before Christmas. Just a few weeks earlier, a wonderful elderly gentleman, out of his abject poverty, had given us a belated wedding gift; an envelope containing a meager ten dollar bill folded into a beautifully illustrated copy of a marriage blessing. We knew this man was hurting financially and probably could not even afford that, so we had agreed it was a real gift of love. I had tucked that ten dollar bill into some dark corner of my wallet and prayed that the Lord would bless it.
It was late in the afternoon, about four o'clock, and I had been Christmas shopping and was all shopped out. It was cold and snow was coming down and I was downtown waiting for the next bus home, loaded up with bags and packages. I was looking forward to getting home, making a nice hot meal for us and slipping into a toasty bath as a reward for braving the stores that late in the season. Goodness knows, I earned it.
As my bus approached, I had this nagging sensation the highlight of my day was yet to take place. I got on the bus and as I rode closer to home, I knew I was supposed to get off at a different stop, at the Sears outlet store that was about a ten minute walk from our little attic apartment. And not only that, but I was supposed to get off at the back entrance, not the front one. I had no logical reason for thinking like this, but I knew, deep inside, I would miss a blessing if I didn't obey the urge.
So I didn't. And I got off that bus at the back entrance of Sears, packages in hand, with a sense of exhilarated anticipation.
I opened the back door of the store and trudged in, drawing a deep breath, hunger pangs reminding me I should really be at home.
"This had better be worth it," I thought.
Turns out it was.
Just as I entered, I saw two young male clerks dragging large, rectangular boxes to my left and I instinctively followed.
Those boxes contained artificial Christmas trees and there was a display with a sign that read "Last years stock - $10 each."
I nearly wet my pants.
And I chose a gorgeous white one that we used for many years; each year, using a different colour scheme.
And the weirdness did not stop there. A few years back, once our daughter, who has Down Syndrome, realized what Christmas was all about and that it was a good thing, she made the holiday season very memorable for us.
After I put up the tree, each morning, she would get up and ask whether "Ho Ho" had arrived yet. She did that for a whole month until Christmas had come and gone. Then, for months after I took it down, each morning, she came downstairs and said, "Wee (her word for "tree") - Gone!"
It got old.
Just when the weather started getting warm, about the time summer vacation started and school was out, she finally decided to ditch the "Wee - Gone" routine. We were mega relieved.
Did I tell you she was born in July? The end of July, to be exact. In the exact middle of the hottest season of the year, when the birds and bees are out and about and everyone goes to the beach to cool off.
It sure doesn't seem like Christmas time.
At least it didn't seem like Christmas to US. Reasonably, we thought we were free and clear. Big mistake.
About two weeks before her birthday, our daughter surprised me one hot summer's morning. We had been telling her that her birthday was coming and we would have a cake and presents. The usual. Never dreaming, for a second, the connection she was making in her mind.
I was sipping on my juice when she said it.
"Wee, Mommy? Ho Ho come?"
Like I said, Christmas at our house has always been really unusual.
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