SILVER BELLS YOLADEHOO! December 11th 2021

    It is just two weeks to the day and we are at Christmas Eve.  Tell you what,  I have always liked Christmas eve better than Christmas Day.  I think the peek of the anticipation comes then.  Christmas Eve?  You have arrived.  When she was five, my granddaughter told me I was nuts, Christmas day was way better cause Santa came and you could open presents.    A goodly number of Christmas traditions are practiced on Christmas Eve.  While I don't know about the European French culture,  I know in the French Canadian culture Christmas eve is the big celebration.   Tourtiere, meat pies and wine,  breads and cheese.  An evening of games and family that culminates in midnight Mass.   Growing up in my house,  there were treats and baking and shrimp rings and egg nog.  We would watch the 1951 movie SCROOGE which has been on t.v. Christmas eve as long as I can remember.  

  It was crazy in our house on Christmas eve.  I could hardly stand it.  In my day school went right up to and including Christmas Eve.  We were dismissed at noon.  What a horrible day that had to be for elementary school teachers.  I remember one year Christmas eve was on a Saturday.  You would think that would be better,  but I think the day was actually longer.  We went to the afternoon matinee at the Cardium theatre.  It was full of kids from five to 15.  From the nib chuckers to the chatters to the smoochers, I doubt if any of us ever watched a movie.  

  When the movie ended  I remember wandering from house to house looking for a parent who would let us in.  It was a pretty snowy but mild day and parents were having non of the over excited neighbourhood mob.  They attempted to settle us by telling us that it was still day time and Christmas eve didn't start till night time.  Of course we are the north here in my home and native land and darkness occurred by about 4:30 p.m.  Christmas Eve lasted a long long time.  

   In my adult years, after I became a cop, working Christmas eve wasn't always all bad.  (When it was, it really was, but it usually wasn't)  In the early evening we started getting special broadcasts to BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR a house break and enter specialist moving quickly from house to house and gaining access via the chimney.    I worked for a national police force and the computer system CPIC sang for hours with well wishes from across the country. 

   There was always room for the single guys stationed far from home at the married guys table.  I remember a Christmas eve in my single years when we stopped at the local motel owned and operated by a retired member in Outlook, Saskatchewan.  They had me in for coffee.  The house was full of their adult children and grand children and a couple of stragglers home from University.  There was a Christmas tree and trimmings everywhere along with plates of goodies.  I just remember not wanting to leave there in what seemed to be the centre of the world of Christmas.  

     Our first married Christmas was pretty delightful.  We in our first house.  A tiny house with a tiny front room filled with a Christmas tree wider than it was tall.  Carol made a turkey and we dressed up like adults to dine with our wedding gift china and silverware.  We acted like adults but like children without adults to keep us in line,  we opened our Christmas gifts on Christmas eve.  

     Our first Christmas with a child had us so excited we could barely contain ourselves.  Now our daughter was born on October 27th,  so she wasn't really in the Christmas spirit a couple months later.  But Christmas eve that year was spent in Regina with my inlaws and there were three babies that year.  We dressed them up and played with them like they were dolls left to us by the big guy himself.  

     I worked my last Christmas before I retired.  Hadn't planned to by one of my guys got hurt that day while Christmas Shopping.   Since then, I have never worried about work and Christmas.   We had the single guy over for Christmas dinner the year I retired, but after that, I kinda lost touch with the new bodies.  

    Since then, over the last 15 Christmases,  Our family has grown to the point we have anywhere from seven to 11 grand children here for part of Christmas day.  We split up Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing day in three different family homes.  There will be over twenty at the Christmas table.  And there will be enough wrapping paper in the bins on boxing day to fill a dump truck.   Christmas is good for about three to five pounds.  Christmas night, the men do the dishes while we sing along to that most famous Christmas recording:   Silver Bells as covered by Wilf Carter complete with yodeling   SILVER BELLS YOLADEHOO!   

   Just two weeks,  and it will be a full two weeks.  But like I said before,  I can wait.  I no longer wish time away.