Whaddya mean everyone doesn’t make sugar cookies with coloured sprinkles at midnight on a weeknight? When you go out to the kitchen and there’s nothing interesting, then go back into the living room to find out when Futurama comes on, and there’s a muted commercial showing a plate of sugar cookies for Santa, what else are you supposed to do? Bakery cookies are “meh”, and anyway, they’re cold; I wanted warm sugar cookies, fresh out of the oven.

I wonder whether that’s why I can’t really get into the whole Christmas thing here the way I did at home? Cooking may not be my favourite task, but I’ve never killed anyone with my cooking, and I do love to bake! I used to bake at least a couple of times a week, and even more during the Christmas season because I’d deliver “holiday cheer” in the form of what I knew were favourites of family members and friends, and take stuff in to work, too. Date squares, soft molasses cookies or blueberry pie for Dad, chocolate macaroons or jam “thumbprint” shortbread cookies for V., apricot bars for PW, fudge brownies with walnuts for R., anything with fat and sugar that wasn’t chocolate for B., decorated sugar cookies in Christmas shapes for C., especially when he was there to help me decorate them…that was fun. Mickey still has the red bowl from the set of Pyrex I used to use. The small red one for eggs and liquids, the medium yellow one for combining dry ingredients, and the big blue one for creaming shortening or butter, and mixing the whole lot together. I got them in 1986, and I know that because they were a wedding present when J. and I got married. I have a set of Pyrex bowls here that are the same sizes, but they don’t get used, at least not by me. There’s a stove in the kitchen, of course, and enough counter space if I cleared away P’s stupid rice steamer and other junk that really doesn’t need to be there, but what would I do with the stuff when I was finished? P. doesn’t like sweets much, I never did eat more than a couple of anything, and there’s no one else here to whom I’m close enough that I’d turn up at the door unannounced, bearing a Tupperware container of warm baked goods. Christ, we even buy the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas, although I’m perfectly capable of making pumpkin pie that tastes better than “mass produced” bakery pies. I used to make birthday cakes, and I have a couple of times here for P. because he likes cream cakes better than “birthday cake”, but over half of any cake always ends up being thrown out anyway, so…why bother? If it’s only going in the garbage, it might as well be a bakery cake as my own effort.

I think the reason I don’t make that “Oh god” groaning noise when someone says, “Christmas” is because to me, it isn’t the presents. Sure, I love presents (both giving them and receiving them), but for me, that isn’t the biggest part of Christmas. The biggest part is…telling Roger to come in for coffee and cookies after he’d finished plowing my driveway. Seat-belting a Tupperware box of brownies into the passenger’s side of my little Tercel and driving over to take them to Marina. Turning up unannounced to see Mar and Rod, and knowing where to find everything when Rod said, “Lisa-baby, make some tea, will you?” Filling my big silver tray with an assortment of sweet stuff and going over to Bob’s shop because I knew his whole work crew would be there and they’d like a little treat. Marina and I, wrapping present after present for Gram because she always bought so much stuff for the family. She’d always say in that singsong voice, “Ama…Cori….Liiii-sa…would you help Marina pack some presents?” and I always did. Gram…heh. You never knew what name she’d call you, but if you just waited a little while, she’d get the right one in the end. Dad would always get their tree early, usually from Kenny’s tree farm, and it would sit in the back porch, waiting for R. to have time to decorate it. She never did, and I knew she wouldn’t, so on Christmas Eve, I’d always go there to decorate it for them. I think R. left it intentionally, too, because even though she’d not had time to decorate the tree, she always had the decorations ready, and always had the cherry liqueur I liked to mix with Diet Coke (yeah, I know, but it actually tastes pretty good), and neither one of them liked it, so it’s not like she just had it around. Dad would put the tree in its stand, getting fir needles all over the place, then put some kind of music that I liked on the stereo and sit at the kitchen table, drinking tea and watching R. and I in the living room. R. would bring out the boxes of decorations, and I’d say, “Okay…now if only I had some rocket fuel, I could get to work!” She’d go in the kitchen and mix me a drink, and I’d get to untangling the lights, R. and I talking a mile a minute about…any old thing. Once I got half-drunk, I’d sing that turkey song for her, and she’d laugh her arse off at the funny voice. Dad, harnessing a reluctant Shadow and hitching him to the sleigh so R. and I could take him out across the Alton Allen field. Shadow’s lazy, as horses often are, but as an ex-harness racer, he knows that once he’s backed between the shafts, it’s time to work whether he wants to or not. He’s black, and his harness is black and red with silver decorations, so he looks beautiful hitched to a black sleigh with red velveteen upholstery, and he’s got a set of silver belly bells that sound just wonderful in a quiet field surrounded by snowy woods. A real “one horse open sleigh”…the one that Shadow pulls is a cutter, built in the 1930s, and has been lovingly restored to near-mint condition.

Christmas shopping at the last minute with V. because he’d left it that long…rushing around, trying to find things that he thought PW would like. He never knew her clothes sizes, but I did. I remember the time he bought her that Tweety push-up bra. He asked me what size and I said, “Well, how the hell would I know how big her boobs are? She’s your girlfriend!” Then I said, “Oh, wait–I know!”, picked up one I thought might be right, and stuck both fists inside the bra to fill out the cups, then held them out. V. put his hands over the bra cups, and I said, “Okay, does that feel about the right size?” He said it did, then I looked over at the clerk, who was staring at us as if we’d lost our minds. I nudged V. and we both laughed our arses off, but by god, that bra fit PW perfectly! Christ…the tennis bracelet. That god…damned…tennis bracelet. We drove around in that little MR2 he used to have, going to every jewellery store in a 100km radius, looking for the kind she wanted. Found one, too, but not until just before the stores closed on the 24th. Then, I had to go to their place and wrap everything for him because V., paper and tape is not a pretty combination.

That’s what I miss; it isn’t the presents, or the decorations themselves, or the holiday music, because none of those things is what I truly love about Christmas. I think P. doesn’t understand that, and doesn’t like Christmas because to him, it is all about the presents. I don’t think he even knows there can be anything else because although I’d readily “adopt” his family as a substitute, I can’t; his is as distant as mine is close, and he doesn’t have any real friends, only people with whom he occasionally hangs out. It’s not that he’s unlikeable–he gets along well with most people–but that’s the way he chooses to have it. Neither one of us is much into the “holiday party” thing. I work here, and he only grudgingly participates in the thing they do at work. For someone like that, it can be only about the presents, but if it is, then it’s all over in an hour or so on the morning of the 25th, and when it’s done, all you have is a pile of…stuff (and an empty chequeing account). Who cares about stuff? I sure don’t. I used to try to add some “holiday cheer”, but it’s hard to do that when you’re the only one with actual cheer; as the years pass, you just get drained of it because you don’t get any back, and eventually, there’s nothing left. That’s why I don’t decorate anymore, and indeed, have to be pushed into putting up even a small tree. A far cry from the ceiling-height balsam fir I always had in my living room, even when I lived alone. I mean, what’s the point? We drink and put up the tree, but…we drink every weekend. It’s fun, but if Christmas is just the presents, then why bother with the tree at all? Just stick them on the table, and there won’t be anything to take down or needles to vacuum on New Year’s Day. Hell, last year we even had an artificial tree, and there was a time when I wouldn’t have allowed one of those in the house, let alone decorate one. We’re not putting that up again; it’s in the basement somewhere, and that’s where it stays unless he wants to put it up alone. The Oddfellows are already selling trees, and they even have balsam firs from Naugler’s tree farm in Lunenburg County, NS. Surprised the hell out of me that they’d have NS trees instead of ON or QC, but they get them from Naugler’s and truck ’em all the way down here. They’re expensive and always the first to go, and nothing smells as good as a balsam fir, but I’d settle for a Scotch pine from northern IL. No green plastic this year, though. In fact, I think I’ll light a fire under P. tonight and tell him that if we’re having a tree, we’re getting it this weekend, and it’s not going to be 1m tall, either–that fucker’s going at least near the ceiling, if not right up to it. Maybe I lost the things I love most about Christmas when I came here, and maybe he would normally procrastinate until all the live trees are gone, but I can still have my balsam fir…if we hurry and get there before they’re sold out. I’ll “hurry” him. I don’t have tanks in the corner this year, just a mantis house, but that’s very easy to move. Yes…I will put up a nice tree this year, and if he wants to complain about not being able to afford a lot of presents because he thinks that’s all there is, I just won’t listen. I won’t let him suck dry the last bit of real Christmas cheer that I have!