I love the holiday season.  And part of what I love are the many traditions our family has shared and passed on.  And most of traditions included my grandmother, Gigi.  From early on, my family would spend the weekend before Christmas at a hotel in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where my sister and I performed in The Nutcracker ballet.  Amid final rehearsals, make-up and costumes and several shows – we made memories visiting Beerntsen’s candy story and swimming with Gigi in the hotel pool.  And Nutcracker weekend was the first time my mom allowed us to “sample” the Christmas cookies, which she would pack in a Folgers coffee tin and bring along on the trip.

Speaking of Christmas cookies – they took on a life of their own.  My family had several sets of the Electric Company cookbooks published by the Wisconsin Electric Power Company in the 1960s and they served as the bible of traditional recipes.  From Sour Creams to Scandinavian Drops.  Pinwheels to Pecan Fingers. We would gather annually, each selecting a traditional recipe to make – and spend a very long day baking, drinking coffee & eggnog, napping, baking some more and splitting up the finished product across all the households.  Fights would ensue over who selected a recipe that was too tedious or consumed too much oven time… or why uncle Randy’s oven didn’t seem to be heating to the designated temperature (with Randy yelling that it would heat a lot better if we didn’t keep opening the damn oven door)…

My family: mom, dad, my little sister, Melanie, and I, would always go out to the tree farm to find our Christmas tree.  We would spend hours hiking through the fields, trying to identify the perfect one.  Melanie and I trading off whose year it was to make the “final” call and leaving an errant glove or scarf on the trees that were in contention.  We would chop it down (yelling, “timber!” of course) and decorate it with coloured lights and all of the miss-matched, homemade and Hallmark ornaments that my family had acquired through the years.

And the music!  We had an old record player that mostly got used during the holiday season – my mom spinning Barbara Streisand’s Christmas album and all of us singing along to the fast “Jingle Bells?” version she’s iconic for.  From classics to modern – we listened and learned it all.  The Very Special Christmas albums were first released in the 80s when I was growing up and my mom embraced those too – listening to U2 and Madonna, although Gigi was NOT a fan of the Run-D.M.C. “Christmas in Hollis.”  When that would come on, she was quick to ask, in a critical tone, “is this Christmas music?”

We would always hit the mall for Black Friday deals, laying out the circulars from the newspaper on Thanksgiving afternoon to pick out the best finds and plan our line-up… would it be a new camera at Target?  A great set of Pyrex glass dishes from Kohl’s?  I still have the $10 DVD player that Gigi snagged me one Black Friday in the mid-90s.  An under 5-foot grandmother, fighting her way into Best Buy when the doors opened at 5 am – but she was feisty and always hungry for a deal.

On Christmas Eve, my dad always had to work at the pharmacy until they closed around 3 pm.  The rest of us would get dressed up and ready to drive to my dad’s family in Milwaukee.  It always seemed that my dad would arrive home and my mom would still need a bit more time to “get ready.”  He would feign annoyance and ask Melanie and I to get in the car so we could fill up the gas and then swing back to pick up mom.  After we grew into our preteen years, we realized our mom was doing more than her make-up and hair… as we would return after visiting family to see that Santa had left an incredible display of gifts and stockings while we had been away.

For Christmas Eve, we always visited the Milwaukee family – loads of cousins and aunts, uncles, ham sandwiches, French 75s (or is it 76s… nobody ever seemed to remember) and raw beef sandwiches on rye.  We would head out late on Christmas Eve and drive from Milwaukee to Madison, Melanie and I crashing on the sofa bed in Gigi’s living room, lit by the glow of her Christmas tree.  And in those moments, falling asleep to the lights and smells of Christmas, I always felt the most safe and loved.

And Gigi (like the rest of us) aged… we moved the gatherings, but Christmas was when we were together and most of the traditions: baking and music and Black Friday shopping continued.  Even when our family moved away and added a 4^th Canadian baby to our brood, we still found time to gather and share the tradition Sour Cream cookies that Gigi was famous for.

And then came 2020.  COVID Christmas.  There would be no celebrating with family.  No baking together or watching Christmas Vacation for the 1000^th time surrounded by uncle Randy, Gigi and my parents.  I tried to carry on some of the traditions: from both my family and my in-laws.  We made the traditional Christmas Eve goulash that my mother-in-law is famous for.  We did some baking – I luckily scored my own set of the Electric Company cookbooks.  And video-chatted as the kids and I frosted cutout cookies with their grandparents.  But I quickly realized, it would not be the same.  Perhaps never again.  I listened to my Christmas favourites and somehow Sarah McLachlan’s “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” really touched my heart in the most bittersweet, melancholy way.  It’s a beautiful, haunting rendition:

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men."

The Christmas of 2020 was dark and joyful – helping me continue to explore the depths of paradox and also nudging me to establish some of our own traditions.  My daughter requested that we get matching Christmas pajamas to help brighten our spirits – and a new tradition was born.  My enthusiastic little boys made so many homemade gifts and pictures, we started a new tradition of “wrapping” those and handing them out on Christmas Eve.

I didn’t know it at the time, but there would never be another Christmas with Gigi.  Before Christmas 2021, she passed on.  Although she left us all infinite memories and an incredible collection of Christmas decorations and treasures.  We sorted through her Christmas belongings as a family – telling stories and discovering more hidden treasures than we even expected.  As an avid gambler, child of the depression, and life-long prankster, Gigi had managed to hide around $5,000 in cash throughout the boxes and tubs of Christmas decorations.  Her love of the holidays, traditions, and quest to make this season magical, live on in me – and I continue to honour and add to those.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."