The Ghost of Christmas Past

(Please note: if you are reading this blog for the first time, you need to start with the post entitled " The reason" )

Blog entry preceding this one is "Fuzzy, furry, finned & feathered friends".

Not as scary as it might read humble reader. Just a list of Christmases Past in our lives that we would like to share with you.


Lily: I do not know about my fellow peer group, but as I am getting older, my memory is failing me. It could be from the nightly painkillers I take to sleep painlessly through the night or it could be something I smoked in my twenties (who's really to say :) This blog helps as a reminder, especially when friends comment about something J.J or I mention - then it gets interesting.

As mentioned in a previous entry, J.J arrived November 2001. A Canadian in Australia for the first time heading into a very hot Summer. To be fair going from the Canadian cold temperatures to our heat at Christmas time must have been a shock for him on top of everything not really feeling like Christmas.
I mean for me, as an Australian while I would like to experience one Hollywood cliched "White Christmas" moment, Christmas is not Christmas if it's not a barbecue in the backyard, cicadas making that noise that only cicadas can make and if the temperature isn't making you sweat as in the days before air-conditioning was affordable for all, then you're just not doing it right. Christmas is about backyard cricket, it's swimming in the pool or at the beach. And it's about family no matter what country you come from.

Now, for me, I always wanted to be apart of the BIG FAMILY CHRISTMASES that all my friends would complain about - where you have all the cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great grandparents yet that would never be the case for I come from a family divided by geography, soap opera dramas and few numbers. When J.J arrived it really was just my dad, my sister and her boyfriend, and my brother and his girlfriend (I think they were together at that point).  Everyone else were scattered to the winds for the above reasons and if you include my father's reluctance to take part in the festive season with the exception of " Bah Humbug" I was already behind in providing J.J with an Aussie Christmas, especially when your siblings had to go their partner's family houses as well.

However, every year I would decorate the house and force my dad to get a tree despite his protests about the mess a live one makes.

J.J on top of what I could only imagine was a lack lustre Christmas in comparison to what he was use too, had to deal with surburbia and the Australia Native Fauna - namely all the birds and their songs of the very early hours of the morning - He hated them all!
(Excuse me while I laugh about it even to this day)
So for his first Christmas in Australia I managed to talk my father and my siblings into going into a gift for J.J as a way of welcoming him to the country. His gift was a Sydney Harbour Bridge walk.

Lily: Our second Christmas together was our first as husband and wife. During my entire existence before J.J, my family had always - and I mean always bought a Christmas tree from the Rotary Club. A real tree ( though not by Canadian standards) that gave off that sensory "smell" of what Christmas was. J.J refused and said we were getting a fake tree. It helped that I abhorred cleaning and the promise that a fake tree would require no cleaning at all sold me.  However, the price of a good fake Christmas tree was just staggering to my cheap-arse self. I mean honestly... who pays that much for a tree???

We did - at around $350.00. Once J.J picked me up off the floor from fainting at the shock of the price, again he sold me with the idea by saying that with each year we had the tree, we wouldn't be paying for a tree at all - and since it still looks as good as the day we got it, who am I really to complain...especially since there is no mess and it is now nine years old.

J.J.:

It's true, Christmas is a magical time that I've never quite recaptured here in Australia. The reasons are exactly as Lily said, I come from the cold, cliched white Christmas tradition. Although my immediate family is small, just Dad, Mum, my sister and I. We always had the big Christmas day festivities. We would go for Christmas lunch with my  Mum's family and then have dinner at my Dad's parents. Dad is the third of ten children, and whilst I never remember EVERYONE being there together for dinner there was  always a large contingent, espcially once the other grandkids started appearing.

Christmas to me was a huge tree, a roast turkey, honey glazed baked ham, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, peas, carrots, and any other bits and pieces you can think of. The house was always warm, noisy, welcoming and fun. Christmas always had lots of food, sweets, relatives that you only saw once or twice a year, football watching on the t.v., afternoon sleeps, laughter and good cheer.

As the years went by grand parents passed, aunts and uncles scattered to the four corners, the celebrations got a bit smaller but never lost that festive magic. Even when I moved away to Ottawa, the years I would come home always had the same joy. Which is why when I didn't go home I always tried to do a roast dinner on Fifth Ave for all friends that had no family to celebrate with.

So, in 2001 I came to Australia, I had settled in by this point, made to feel very welcome by Lily and her family and friends. The heat was bearable but unpleasent, I hate the Kookaburras, still didn't like the beer, but everyone did their best to show me a typical Aussie Christmas. The tree looked like it came from Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, the sausages and steaks were over  cooked and it seemed to be over far too quickly. But I'll never forget my first Aussie Christmas.

Since then, I've tried to find a happy medium between the two cultures. We do have a 7 foot tree with lots of ornaments, the stockings are hung on the piano with care, and we alternate barbeque with roasts. This year, it will be roast duck, with wild rice pancakes, sweet potatoes and asparagus. I suspect this may just be the most memorable and important Christmas of them all.

Lily: Do we really need to spell it out for you as to the reason why?

Last year's December was spent Monday to Friday in the radiation clinic late in the evening. I run a home based business in childcare and would  finish out my work day, prepare something for Arwyn (our daughter) to eat in the car and then the three of us would drive the 45 - 50 minutes into the Mater hospital that was giving J.J his radiation treatment. It was an exhausting month because I had also taken a night job with a restaurant to help pay the bills. It too was an important Christmas because it became that much more valuable when a loved one is sick.  

I barely remember the time. Exhaustion comes to mind but I have it recorded on video to play back. And while last year was an important Christmas - this year... this year just takes on a whole new meaning.

Arwyn is completely Santa obsessed. When she thinks her own behaviour is less than desirable she will ask J.J and I " not to tell Santa" of it. We have never used the whole " good children get presents, bad children get coal", so we do not know where her thinking has come from but Santa this year is big, and I really want to make this year big.

I want presents galore under the tree. For Arwyn, for me yet for J.J - what do you get him? I mean if he is looking at stage-diving with Death between now and a (overly generous according to today's doctor) less than two year period, "experiences" are the gift to give isn't it? Time with Arwyn and I is what he wants. Time with friends, laughs, fun - these should be what he deserves before he goes into that good night. And so here is where I ask people for suggestions. This is where I want you to comment - to suggest things that J.J's and my brain under constant emotional strain can not come up with. 

Our December this year has thus far consisted of receiving the bad news that the Cancer is incurable and that treatment is for quality and quantity of life. Tomorrow, December 13th, J.J will be in hospital for the beginning of a six day chemotherapy treatment. He wont be feeling the best the week that follows and who knows what else we will have to endure between now and Christmas but whatever it is, we'll go through it together...

Blog entry to follow...What they don't tell you in the cancer pamphlets.