Merry Christmas To All And To All A Good Night

Bing Crosby has just finished crooning, “I'll be Home for Christmas.” on the computer.  It's Christmas Eve in Tanzania and Debbie and I will be home for Christmas, if only in our dreams.

We have a plastic tree up and the house has been decorated in minimalist style.  Elaborate Christmas decorating is impossible here.  Being able to decorate for the holidays at home is one of countless examples of Canada's productivity and richness.  I am promising myself this Christmas that I won't take our country's amazing skill and wealth generating ethos for granted ever again.

Our larder is well stocked.  Beef filet, carrots, potatoes and onions will go into a delicious pressure-cooker stew tomorrow evening.  Dumplings will grace the top of the stew and the whole dish with be seasoned with summer savoy and sage. We have tomatoes, green peppers and the biggest avocados I have ever seen for a salad.  The dressing will be made with olive oil.

We also have a small fruit cake and a plum pudding.  I will light the plum pudding on fire and we’ll enjoy it with real coffee brewed from beans we picked up in Arusha.  Something special involving bananas might be on the menu.

We are healthy and happy.  We are together.  Our African journey has been productive and there have been many times when the adventure has left us awestruck.  We have learned much more than we have taught and have met more kind and generous people than we can count.

This is the time of year when I think about 'Christmas Past.'  Maybe you do to.  It is my time for reflection but mostly for nostalgia.

I remember the year our daughter was born.  We brought her home on Christmas Eve and put her under the tree.  The three of us spent Christmas alone in our tiny apartment in NDG.  We roasted a goose bought at Favourite Meat Market.  The day was filled with love.  Life was an endless promise.

I remember all those many Christmases we spent with my parents, my aunt and my cousin singing ‘Deck the Halls’ when the guests arrived, eating the Christmas goose, opening piles of gifts, reminiscing and drinking wine.  Watching our kids dig into their Christmas loot.  At the end of the meal there would be my father's Irish Mist and Drambuie and every year we discussed which was best.

Then there were the years we piled into the car on the last day of school and drove non-stop from Montreal to Nova Scotia with the kids in the back seat.  Christmases on the West Tatamagouche Road were special.  The smell of Ina and Lawson's wood stove heating up the kitchen and the traditional goose roasting in the oven are things I will always remember.

I remember that Christmas in our son’s first apartment.  It was his first time to host a Christmas dinner in his first home.  Our daughter and her husband were there.  I was so proud of my son's new found independence.

There were the Christmases we spent away.  In Korea we were with our niece and son.  We watched Jimmy Stewart in 'It's a Wonderful Life' and ate pot luck.  In China we feasted with our friends and my cousin and his family.  Our friends and family made everything perfect.

Every Christmas has been the best.

 The last few have been celebrated with Debbie’s sister and her husband.  Seeing Debbie and her sister in the kitchen together doing the preparation is heart-warming.  They have become even closer since we moved to Tatamagouche.

I could go on.  I could write about Christmas shopping in Montreal with my friend. There were our inevitable trips to the Body Shop where every year I asked about animal testing.  There were our long lunches of meat blintzes and boiled beef (when it was on) and a bottle of the red at that little Polish restaurant on Prince Arthur.

It's getting late and the stockings are hung.  It's time to find 'All Creatures Great and Small,' the Christmas episode, on the hard drive.  It's time to cut the fruit cake and to open the Glenfiddich.  It’s time to let Siegfried and James transport us to the world of Christmas in the Yorkshire Dales of 80 years ago.

We wish every single one of you a very Merry Christmas filled with peace, joy and happiness.