Tag: Christmas

“I sing of a night..”

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festive

Yesterday I was down in Sechelt (about 45 minutes south of where I live) and I thought how festive the small town looked. In the Bakery, where we had coffee and one of the delicious chocolate-dipped shortbreads, John observed that every surface was decorated. Big tins of gingerbread people, silver stars, baskets of the shortbreads (and several other versions), so that we felt we sitting inside a Dickens story. And outside, the chestnuts and acacias on the square were draped with lights, the trees along Cowrie Street twinkled, the storefronts were bright with stars and garlands. I wonder if it’s easier somehow to keep Christmas in a minor key when the place where you shop is so lovely? I was thinking about this as I drank my coffee this morning, planning how best to pack the parcels going to Victoria and Edmonton (we are going to Ottawa for a few days over Christmas so it’ll be a matter of finding room in our suitcases for the gifts going there). I remembered the early days of our family life here and how we wondered if we’d be able to continue the traditions of a tree cut on Christmas Eve, cards printed on our old platen press, simple presents for our immediate family, baskets and bags of homemade treats for our friends. I’m happy to say that most of this continues. I say “most” because this year the card—a Steller’s jay cut into lino—didn’t work out, despite two days of painstaking work on the part of the printer. I made the lino-cut, from a sketch by our friend Liz, using a photograph and an actual jay on the railing of the deck, eating its breakfast. John set the type, blocked it up, but the ink was old and the results aren’t nice. We are of two minds. He wants to send it, with an apologetic verse (more typesetting, more tedious fiddling). I don’t.

Still, the woods look so beautiful this morning and the oranges in a bowl in the kitchen smells like Christmases past and today I’ll wrap and package the things I hope carry messages of deep affection and longing. The old carols call, asking to be played, to be remembered on the cold days leading up to the day itself. My favourite might be the haunting “Don oiche ud i mbeithil“, recited by Burgess Meredith in English, sung in Irish by Kevin Conneff, on The Bells of Dublin.

I sing of a night in Bethlehem
a night as bright as dawn
I sing of that night in Bethlehem
the night the Word was born

redux: bringing home the tree

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From last year, as we plan this year’s tree cutting…

rosemary trees

There was never much time for thoughtful reflection all those Christmases when my children were young. Baking, making things, cutting lino for our annual letterpress cards, school parties (including at least two for which my children had promised their teachers I’d provide gingerbread boys for the entire class and then forgot to tell me until bedtime the night before…), the Carol Ships party at Edith Iglauer’s house when we’d all stand on her deck and watch fishing boats strung with lights float by with carolers singing over the dark water. I remember sitting on her low couch afterwards with 3 children sleeping across my lap. I felt things intensely but didn’t seem to have time to think about what they meant, what each thing meant when it was happening, and now it’s part of my vast archive of memories, and I have time to summon up those years and remember them.

Today we cut our Christmas tree. We used to do this on December 23rd or 24th, bringing the tree in on the morning of the 24th to decorate. Some years the tree came from our woods, a weedy fir in danger of being crowded out by the bigger neighbours. Other years we downloaded a permit to cut a tree from under the power lines. We walk there fairly often and keep our eye out for likely candidates. The trees grow to a certain height and then the crews come to cut them and shred them to keep the line clear. This is where we went this year, wanting to have a tree home early as there are several events over the days leading up to Christmas. We had a few in mind. I liked this one’s bendy wood near the top:

bendy wood

This one was clearly a favourite of the Roosevelt elk that roam the lines.

chosen by elk

But then we found the one—

the one

—that we knew would be beautiful dressed in all our old ornaments: the glass stars made by our friend June; the wallpaper trees studded with glittered macaroni; the Chinese paper lanterns sent to John’s family from his grandmother in England shortly after they’d emigrated in the 1950s; the felt birds and wooden fish; lumpy angels; string balls formed over balloons, now collapsed. In short, a lifetime of saving, of storing away a season of memories in a box in a dark closet. This year’s tree is in a bucket of water in the woodshed to be brought inside on the 24th so that we can decorate her with Angelica and the ghosts of all those who’ve helped in the past, some of them gone. Last Christmas it was Forrest, Manon, and Arthur, joined by Angie, and the year before, Brendan, Cristen, and Kelly —and the very beginnings of Henry. Yesterday Brendan sent a video of the children decorating their tree and the most poignant footage of Henry trying to find a way to place a piece of a hairdryer on the tree. He’s 1 and not entirely clear on the concept of ornaments yet. But given what goes on our tree, maybe he’s not far off.

I can see our tree waiting as I work at the kitchen counter, so green against the wall of firewood. Already a squirrel has raced along its branches. I kept peeking out as I rolled out shortbread fish and stars and the special ones cut into trees and studded with rosemary leaves (as Ophelia told Hamlet, “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts…”, and she of all people knew about herbs and their latent power). I was listening to satellite radio as I cut and baked and found myself in tears hearing a Richard Thompson song I’d never known:

In the old cold embers of the year
When joy and comfort disappear
I search around to find her
I’m a hundred miles behind her
The open road whispered in her ear

And she never could resist a winding road…

Somehow it seemed to be about our tree as I walked behind John back to the vehicle. You can’t see our Element. It’s beyond the bend in that winding road. Joy hasn’t disappeared but it’s cold out and we need to remember that trees come in during the shortest days to remind us of what comes next. The light returning, little by little, and if we take care of our fires, the embers will last.

cut.jpg

redux:“…the bells the children could hear…”

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This was posted last year, on Christmas Eve. But with the scent of shortbread in the kitchen and this Santa waiting to be hung on the wall in the dining area, it seems particularly seasonal today to remember the bells, the trees, and the arrival of those you love.

santa

I first heard Dylan Thomas’s recording of A Child’s Christmas in Wales when I was a teenager. It might have been my favourite high-school English teacher George Kelly who introduced me to that iconic tale. It struck a chord, as it was meant to. (George Kelly was the first person who told me I could be a writer.) I remember making batiked Christmas cards inspired by the Ellen Raskin woodcuts

ellen raskin.jpg

that illustrated the New Directions edition of the, well, not quite a poem, unless one calls it a prose poem. A tale might be the best term for it after all, a summoning, complete with fire and music and cups of good cheer.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

My teen years were filled with yearning. I wanted a life that included beautiful poems, handmade cards, Christmas traditions of nuts and chocolates in pretty foil wraps, even a small ceremony of the tree itself. I wouldn’t have put it like that and that does sound a little shallow, doesn’t it? But I wanted a kind of dense accumulation of Christmases so that each lived within the memory of the ones before it, extending as far back as the first Christmas. I’m not a Christian but I am willing to believe in a sort of miracle this time of year. That a newly-born child might be invested with hope. That stars might be read for their guidance and meaning.

So today we are busy with the work of bringing in our tree from its resting place in the woodshed, bringing out the boxes of ornaments, readying ourselves for the small rituals we have always observed. One of them is the hanging of Brendan’s Santa in the dining area. I imagine he was painted in about five minutes, in kindergarten, and done with the least amount of effort. A few quick brushes of paint, an artful beard, a decision to include a small sack of gifts (looking not unlike a turkey drumstick, or a club), and there you have it: Santa in an insouciant mood, his belt buckle the artist’s own signature.

I can tell by the cold draft at my back that the tree has come in. I can even smell it, the fresh sap of a Douglas fir, the scent of the mountain brought down to a house in the woods where the ceremonies continue. One year John and I were awake early, waiting for the children who were maybe too old to want to race out for their stockings before light. And John said, “What’s that? I think I hear bells.” I listened, and yes, I thought I heard bells too. But it was the metal wind-chimes turning in the wintry air. Or was it?

I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them.

When I came downstairs this morning, I heard the last part of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, an annual tradition on the CBC on Christmas Eve day. All that lush language, all that careful detail collected to make an idealized compilation of Christmases past, complete with house fires, ghosts, postmen, and snow. That teenaged girl was listening, as I listened, though I hardly needed to: I know the tale by heart. Last night, driving back from an early supper at the local pub after collecting Angelica from her flight from Victoria, I was already hearing my favourite part.

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night.

A few lights blinking on the other side of Sakinaw Lake, the most beautiful stars, and the smoke from our fire waiting for us at home.

magpie gathering

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book and linen

Half the charm of the magpie system of shopping is that one comes across unexpectedly pretty and festive-looking things for so little money; in the window of the Empire Shop in Sloane Street there is a pyramid of white candy sugar in rocky lumps, so irresistibly decorative that one would like to hang them on the tree; and inside the shop, by-passing the chain-dairy goods which have somehow strayed in, are dark and dazzly genuine Indian chutneys, garnet-bright Jamaican guava jelly, English quince, Scottish rowan, and squat jars of shiny lemon curd.

The other day I was looking for a book on my cookbook shelves and found instead my beautiful Folio Society edition of Elizabeth David’s Christmas. It’s cover and interior decorations are by Sophie MacCarthy who makes brussels sprouts and sliced red cabbage look like jewels, not to mention Mandarin oranges and chestnuts. It was a good thing to read for an hour by the fire (I am still recovering from a cracked tailbone…), thinking of my own Christmas plans. I love the season, its capacity for plenitude and conviviality, and how it can bring out our best selves. The selves that are willing to suspend disbelief and to allow generosity and warmth into our hearts. Ours is not a Christmas of big ticket items. I remember once putting little soaps shaped like ducks and new mittens in the children’s stockings, along with oranges and chocolate, and how thrilled they were. And that has always been a kind of guiding spirit.

Just now I was thinking about the baking I’ll do this weekend and whether it’s too early to make buttercrunch (which has a way of disappearing far too quickly). I love the smell of shortbread, particularly the pans of trees with fresh rosemary. This year I thought I’d add finely grated lime zest too.

gathering

Elizabeth David’s books have been on my shelves since I was 19. Well, not all of them, but the ones I treasure: Summer Cooking, French Provincial Cooking, and this Christmas beauty. I don’t necessarily read them for the recipes but for the way she describes food, the way she praises a simple dish well made, and for her eye for what’s important. That Christmas shopping can be a magpie gathering: yes, that’s exactly how I do it. I buy small things and find ways to put them together. Pretty bowls from the Coombs market enroute to Long Beach in October will accompany jars of the olives I buy in bulk at the Mediterranean Market on Commercial Drive in Vancouver and marinate in olive oil, red wine vinegar, slices of lemon, lots of our homegrown garlic, and stems of rosemary from the pots on the deck. I love the linen tea-towels available here on the Coast, made in North Vancouver by Rain Goose Textiles. (They’re hard to give up because they’re so bright and original.) Jars of jams and jellies made in late summer when everything is ripe all at once. Old baskets or tins to carry them from our house to yours, with love.

“…the bells the children could hear…”

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santa

I first heard Dylan Thomas’s recording of A Child’s Christmas in Wales when I was a teenager. It might have been my favourite high-school English teacher George Kelly who introduced me to that iconic tale. It struck a chord, as it was meant to. (George Kelly was the first person who told me I could be a writer.) I remember making batiked Christmas cards inspired by the Ellen Raskin woodcuts

ellen raskin.jpg

that illustrated the New Directions edition of the, well, not quite a poem, unless one calls it a prose poem. A tale might be the best term for it after all, a summoning, complete with fire and music and cups of good cheer.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

My teen years were filled with yearning. I wanted a life that included beautiful poems, handmade cards, Christmas traditions of nuts and chocolates in pretty foil wraps, even a small ceremony of the tree itself. I wouldn’t have put it like that and that does sound a little shallow, doesn’t it? But I wanted a kind of dense accumulation of Christmases so that each lived within the memory of the ones before it, extending as far back as the first Christmas. I’m not a Christian but I am willing to believe in a sort of miracle this time of year. That a newly-born child might be invested with hope. That stars might be read for their guidance and meaning.

So today we are busy with the work of bringing in our tree from its resting place in the woodshed, bringing out the boxes of ornaments, readying ourselves for the small rituals we have always observed. One of them is the hanging of Brendan’s Santa in the dining area. I imagine he was painted in about five minutes, in kindergarten, and done with the least amount of effort. A few quick brushes of paint, an artful beard, a decision to include a small sack of gifts (looking not unlike a turkey drumstick, or a club), and there you have it: Santa in an insouciant mood, his belt buckle the artist’s own signature.

I can tell by the cold draft at my back that the tree has come in. I can even smell it, the fresh sap of a Douglas fir, the scent of the mountain brought down to a house in the woods where the ceremonies continue. One year John and I were awake early, waiting for the children who were maybe too old to want to race out for their stockings before light. And John said, “What’s that? I think I hear bells.” I listened, and yes, I thought I heard bells too. But it was the metal wind-chimes turning in the wintry air. Or was it?

I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them.

When I came downstairs this morning, I heard the last part of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, an annual tradition on the CBC on Christmas Eve day. All that lush language, all that careful detail collected to make an idealized compilation of Christmases past, complete with house fires, ghosts, postmen, and snow. That teenaged girl was listening, as I listened, though I hardly needed to: I know the tale by heart. Last night, driving back from an early supper at the local pub after collecting Angelica from her flight from Victoria, I was already hearing my favourite part.

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night.

A few lights blinking on the other side of Sakinaw Lake, the most beautiful stars, and the smoke from our fire waiting for us at home.

 

after the Solstice

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day after Solstice.jpg

So now we wait for the light. In our house, there are little strings of fairy lights draped around picture frames, windows, even the iron wine rack hanging in one corner of the dining area (with a sign saying It’s Five’O’Clock Somewhere). Last night we went to the Grasshopper Pub for supper and watched the carol ships making their way around the harbour below, small pleasure boats with lights outlining every possible angle. Years ago we used to watch the carol ships from our friend Edith Iglauer’s deck. In those days the boats were fish boats — the local trawlers, gill-netters, seiners — and working and charter boats. We’d all bring food and we’d stand in the darkness while the boats came into each small bay, those on board singing and those watching joining in. I wrote about it my book, Red Laredo Boots:

We sing, of course we sing, whatever song comes to mind, and no one is self-conscious in the dark. My children love “The Huron Carol” and we are usually the only ones whoknow more than one verse so we sing of the hunters and the babe wrapped in rabbit skins and the humble lodge, and I think I’ve never believed more in the nativity than at those moments, singing with them in the cold night. This holy child of earth and heaven is born today for you. The boats move slowly, like winter constellations, and we watch until they disappear.

So I have to confess that I’m not a Christian. If anything, I’m a pagan. But these moments call to us from somewhere deep and the language we use for that call is redolent of what we knew in our childhoods. And mine was within the Judeo-Christian tradition so the miracles of the season are of birth, special foods, music, candlelight, and the stories told by stars. Which, come to think of it, are among the miracles of other traditions too. The Midwinter Yule. Hanukkah. The cycles of birth and death, light in the darkness, the horned god marking the return of life to the earth.

In our house, there’s a 14 month old boy, grandson Arthur, to keep the noise level high. He has words: ball, owl, Mama, Daddy. And he likes nothing better this morning than the task of removing the alphabet letters from the fridge and then replacing them. He likes to dance. He laughs beautifully. It’s good to have children in the house at Christmas, to keep the old habits alive — the carol ships, the little lights, listening for bells as the old year winds to a close.