Sing It, Perry!

When the days of December are numbered

And the earth begs the snowflakes to fall,

That's the time of the year when Christmas is here

With peace and goodwill for all.

How I love that Christmas feeling.

How I treasure its friendly glow.

See the way a stranger greets you --

Just as though you'd met him Christmases ago.

Christmas helps you to remember

To do what other folks hold dear.

What a blessed place the world would be

If we had that Christmas feeling all year.

When I was a child, Christmas was a wonderful time. It wasn't just the gifts, though I certainly wrote my share of letters to Santa and made lists of my heart's desires based on what I found in the Christmas Wish Book (aka -- the Sears Catalogue). But that was only a small part of what made Christmas special.

In early December, the newspaper would print a sheet of Christmas carols and other holiday songs, at which point I would start getting excited. Then one day -- usually around the 11th or 12th -- Dad would show up with a wooden crate of Japanese oranges. I can still hear the wood groaning against the nails as he pried open the top slats of the crate to expose the tightly packed oranges individually wrapped in green tissue paper. They had their own distinct smell, and even before I removed the paper I would inhale the tangy orange scent. The challenge for me and my siblings was to see if we could get the peel off in one piece, before we broke off the sections and savoured every juicy piece. We had regular oranges the rest of the year, but Japanese oranges were only around at Christmastime. At our house, that box of oranges signalled the official start to the holiday season.

In those days, Christmas cards were a big thing -- people sent them to all their family and friends, even if they lived in the same city -- and each day there would be a new collection stuffed into our mailbox. After our mother opened them and shared the messages written inside, we kids would set them up on furniture and window sills or hang them on a string looped around the living and dining rooms, counting them each day to discern the new tally. My parents had moved away from friends and family when I was quite young, and those cards were an affirmation of hands reaching out to us across the miles -- proof that we were connected to others beyond our immediate family.

Christmas was a time of delicious secrets. Because my mother worked in retail, she did her Christmas shopping during her workday. I don't ever recall her coming home with mysterious bags and boxes, but she must have. And when her shopping was done, she would devote an evening to wrapping, at which point we kids were banished to other parts of the house. Then out would come the paper, ribbons, bows, gift tags, scissors, tape, and the secret gifts. I think she hid them in her car most years, because I didn't often find them. (Yes, I did snoop.) One Christmas, Mom had bought Dad a new chair, and so that he wouldn't suspect, she covered it with a sheet and stored it in my brother's bedroom, raising an eyebrow and shaking a finger in warning at us kids to stay away from it. (You didn't mess with my mom when she raised her eyebrow, so we gave the chair a miss.) That is, until we couldn't find our gifts anywhere. I'm not sure who's bright idea it was to check behind and under the chair, but at some point we did -- and there were the unwrapped presents. I was getting exactly what I'd asked for -- a paint by number set with 3 canvases!!!! Almost immediately I wished I hadn't found it. Not because I felt guilty -- though I probably did -- but because I had to hide my excitement, try not to let my parents know what I'd done, and then act surprised on Christmas morning! Talk about pressure!

I was a regular kid, so of course I liked presents. But once I was old enough to give to others, I quickly discovered that was even better. The first time I went shopping on my own, I had managed to accumulate $5, (maybe my parents gave it to me) and I had to stretch that to buy for my mom and dad, my brother, and my sister. These days that would be an impossible task, but in 1961, though it was a challenge, I did it. The only purchase I remember was the one for my little brother -- it was a toy monkey that clanged cymbals together. My brother really liked it, and that made me so happy. Finally I understood the expression, "It's better to give than to receive."

After that, I was so busy trying to think of the perfect gifts for others that I didn't have time to dwell on what I might like. As we got older, my sister and I started filling Christmas socks for our parents too. Shopping for cheap but fun stocking stuffers was a hoot, and to make the enjoyment last longer, we wrapped those little gifts just like the ones that went under the tree.

Cleaning the house and doing the Christmas baking always happened on December 23rd. (You can't have Christmas in a dirty house.) Mom would turn into a cleaning machine with three helpers. When the house finally sparkled, she would bake. There'd be mince tarts, date and nut loaf, shortbread, and Julie's cookies. There was usually a Christmas cake too, but Mom bought that. When I look back, I'm pretty sure the reason she didn't bake earlier in the month was because it would have all been eaten long before Christmas.

My version of a partridge in a pear tree. Made with fake garland wrapped around a tomato cage, decorated with mini-lights, red baubles, and gold pears (painted lightbulbs). I had my friends saving burnt-out bulbs for me all year. That was back in 1996 and that little tree still looks great! The partridge (actually it might be a quail) I bought at a post-Christmas sale at Eatons in Vancouver.

These days I decorate the house for the entire month of December (it takes me most of a day to do it), but when I was a kid, there weren't a ton of decorations, and I don't remember a specific time frame for their appearance, though it seems to me the tree didn't go up before the 18th, and some years not until Christmas Eve.

That was always a fun family evening. Mom would put on the Christmas music -- Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, and Perry Como -- and we'd all sing along. There were snacks -- Ritz, cheese, pickles, garlic sausage, potato chips -- and fancy drinks my dad made for us kids with grenadine to give them pizazz. We always had a real tree, so the house smelled like a forest, and we would wait impatiently for my dad to sit it straight in the bucket and get the lights on. Then we would decorate it. The ornaments were mostly old, coloured plastic baubles, but they had stories attached to them, so that each year's tree embodied all the trees that went before it. I still have a few of those old decorations. The most important part of the tree decor was the icicles. They were made of sturdier stuff in those days, (we reused them year after year) and we had to lay them one by one over the branches so that the finished product was a series of icicle curtains that shimmered in the Christmas light. Laying on the icicles was a slow process but so worth it. The final touch was the angel on top. Some people had stars as their tree toppers, but we always had an angel. (When my husband and I married, I wanted an angel of course, but he came from star stock. Over the years, both have topped our trees from time to time. There have been many other Christmas compromises too, not to mention the creation of entirely new traditions unique to the family we created together.)

There are so many ways of celebrating Christmas, and each family who celebrates it does so in a way unique to them. And that's perfectly fine, because the Christmas hoopla is merely a way of expressing that special feeling that comes with Christmas. That feeling that includes giving to the Salvation Army Christmas kettle and the food bank, helping at a soup kitchen, taking toys and books to the Children's Hospital, donating winter coats to the needy, singing in a street choir, or volunteering to read to seniors. It's shovelling a neighbour's driveway, pushing a stuck motorist out of the snow, or shopping for a shut-in. It's phoning an old friend or making coffee for the guy fixing your furnace.

If we let it, Christmas brings out the best in us. It encourages us to smile and laugh, to hum and even tap our toes. It makes us thoughtful of others, it causes us to swell with goodwill and put others before ourselves. It makes us kinder, more patient and more generous -- not just in the literal sense -- but in the way we perceive others and the world. Christmas makes us optimistic and prompts us to look for silver linings.

Perry Como was right --

What a blessed place the world would be

If we had that Christmas feeling all year.

Maverick and Miles -- the grandpuppies whooping it up in Winnipeg and Australia.

Thanks for reading. See you next year. And however you observe the season, may it warm you from the inside out.