The holiday season has arrived once again. With a solid layer of snow and ice upon our ground and the frosty chill, it feels like winter, like late December and Christmas. Monster is abound with festive decorations, and we are super thrilled with our disco lights under the shrink wrap this year. Why didn’t we think of this before? Once again we have a real tree secured and strapped down upon a settee shelf, the needles falling everywhere and further pushed about by the dog.



Gordon and our Son have been busy baking on the weekends while I’ve been at work. I’ve been coming home to sample Star Wars Gingerbread Characters with crushed candy cane topping and a Canadian favorite, Nanimo Bars. Of course, nothing will quite last until the Christmas weekend. The Boy also happily opens his Lego Advent Calendar every morning, counting down the sleeps and slowly creating a winter Lego scene upon our salon table. And I have taken to daydreaming with my holiday Palm Trees. I’m forever longing for a tropical Christmas, with white sand rather than snow. 

What I enjoy most about the holidays are the traditions, carried on year after year, family to family. It’s such an appropriate time of year to gather and cherish your family, friends and loved ones, commemorating the past year with annual rites. Myself, I enjoy pulling out all the Christmas ornaments, many passed on from my Mum and my childhood. It’s a walk down memory lane, and at the same time a means in which to create new memories and traditions. As I grew up my Mum gifted my Sister and I an ornament every Christmas. Each usually pertained to an event, a happening, a reminder of the year. Adding these ornaments to our tree now, holds a moment of all those years in each simple act of hanging the bobble on the tree. Each year the holiday season in itself brings recollections and memories, it’s not about decorations. It’s about the sentiment, the spirit. We add to the sentiment by slowly building a collection of ornaments for our Boy. Our tree is an ode to our past, that carries us into the new year ahead. 

In keeping with Gordon’s family’s tradition, on  Christmas Eve, Gordon, Boy and I will listen to Fireside Al read The Sheppard on CBC Radio. Over the years we have tuned in to listen from here, there and everywhere, from the comfort of our home, and once in a rental car of a McDonalds parking lot. The Boy will open his Christmas Eve gift of new pajamas, as I did as a child. We will listen to our Christmas playlist. The music comprised of Boney M, Blue Rodeo and The Good Lovelies, amongst other classics and it’s certainly been on repeat already. 

From our Family to yours, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, a peaceful holiday, and a bright, prosperous New Year. 



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