Dec. 21: Happy Christmas memories from Calgary

 We had a family zoom chat tonight. At one point, dad asked us kids if we had any happy memories of childhood Christmases. He asked it in a roundabout way, telling a sad story about how neither he nor my uncle had a whole lot of happy Christmas memories from when they were kids. Indeed, their happiest memories of December 25 mostly involved fleeing the house after what passed for good tidings of comfort and joy had come to an end.

I guess all three of us knew he was looking for reassurance, so we gave it to him. 

My younger brother talked about the living room of Hooke Road, which, I'm pretty sure, is the first house he remembers. The Christmas tree was always situated in a corner of the living room and, he recalled, waking up on December 25 and seeing the living room overflowing with presents. It was a typical middle class 1980s Christmas. Times were booming and a two-income home like the one I grew up in could afford to spoil the kids.

 Again, I told the story of Electronic Detective, the primitive computer game that I got for Christmas in 1980, when I was just a week away from my eighth birthday. I saw that game advertised on television and fell in love with it immediately. I told my mom and dad and Santa that all I wanted for Christmas was Electronic Detective. And I got it. I still have it. It still works. 

My parents gave us happy Christmas memories and they gave us happy childhoods. I'm fortunate and blessed. I am grateful for it.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dec. 6: Embroidery

Image
 Chuck Klosterman is one of my comfort writers. I have read a few of his books but two of them have stuck with me. I WEAR THE BLACK HAT is a meditation on villains and the nature of villainy. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE is about a cross-America trip in a rented car where Klosterman visits the various sites where rock stars died. It should come as no surprise that the book ends with him dropping in at the place where the music died. February 3, 1959. A plane crash that claimed the life of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and a pilot who no one remembers. The pilot's name was Roger Peterson. I mention him here because his life was also valuable even though he wasn't a rock star. Roger Peterson, died at the age of 22  I listened to the audiobook of KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE today while driving up to Petawawa to do a magic show. It is about the sixth time I have listened to that book. My brain is stupid. Instead of seeking out new information and new stories, it keeps insi...
Read more

Dec. 8: The Christmas pickle

Image
 Here is the legend of the Christmas pickle. I am not making this up. This is an actual legend that involves Santa Claus himself, St. Nicholas. According to legend, a long time ago, an evil butcher killed three little boys, cut up their corpses, and put them in a barrel full of brine, hoping to sell them as pickled pork. St. Nicholas - perhaps fresh from throwing money in a poor girl's stockings or punching Arius in the face - happened on this butcher shop and, with a holy touch and a prayer, restored the three children to life.  I should think that those three boys suffered from PTSD the rest of their (new) lives. And even today, it is customary in some homes to hide a Christmas pickle on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Whoever finds that pickle gets an extra present or gets to decide on the order of the present opening. As for me, I want to see a movie about the life of St. Nicholas that incorporates all the legends: punching Arius, resurrecting hacked up children, and ...
Read more

Dec. 9: Weird family

Image
 For a while now, my dad has supplemented his income by officiating at funerals. He's a pastor/chaplain, so he's most comfortable invoking the Lord at these funeral services, but there have been times when the family strictly forbade him from mentioning anything divine or metaphysical. At one of these occasions, dad had to wait for the family to show up at the graveside. They wandered in fashionably late. Several were hungover and a few were wearing attire more suitable for a strip club than a funeral. They seemed bored and listless as dad spoke the words that would see the dearly beloved into the ground. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to say before we depart?" "Yeah," one guy says, and then breaks into a story about how the dearly departed took a lot of money off some recent immigrant restaurant worker who was trying to make a little extra money as a bookie. The poor guy didn't understand how things worked on this side of the pond and he los...
Read more