Years ago when I was a kid, maybe 8 years old, I remember decorating the Christmas tree all by myself on a quiet December afternoon. I was listening (?) to Hawaiian music on the radio, that’s how i remember what I was doing, with those plunky plunk tunes an incongruous accompaniment to my efforts to create Christmas cheer. I have no memory of someone putting up the tree or of stringing the lights on it. It was probably the man who shovelled our walks.
I also don’t remember my mother baking Christmas goodies, nor do I remember visiting Santa Claus. Was Santa Claus available for visits in those days? It was 1939 and World War II had only recently begun (September). The next year—or the year after?—I remember carefully removing the silver tinsel from the branches of our tree after Christmas so that we could save it for the following year. Everything was getting scarce, but not everything. A bountiful Christmas arrived in a truck from Gimli (90 miles north of Winnipeg) from my grandfather’s store and my grandmother’s kitchen.
My maternal grandparents were Icelandic, having immigrated in in the early 1890s , first to Winnipeg where they met and married, and later to Gimli, were Afi launched a general store that’s still there, run by the fourth generation of the family (cousins of mine). I didn’t call him Afi (Icelandic for grandfather) then nor did I call my grandmother Amma (grandmother). That’s another story, related to the reason my mother did not make vinarterta, or ponnukokur, rulapilsa, kleinur, and so on. See my next book. Right now I’m recalling my Christmas memories, sketchy as they are.
Well, there was the war, and my father was young enough (40-ish) and eager enough and essential enough (a medical doctor) to be actively involved, first in Canada and then in England; he got as far as The Netherlands. So my mother was a single parent to me and my older brother for five years. That explains my Christmas memories, too.
I’m realizing all this as I/we approach the oddest Christmas in most of our sheltered lives. Think about it. I will too.
Anon, anon.