I sit here and look at Christmas light displays on “youtube” and cannot wait to see the pictures being sent to me of the fesitve lights put up this year in Canada.My friend Wanita sent me a link to her ex husbands outdoor Christmas light display that was so good it was featured in The Globe and Mail today.It brought tears to my eyes. I am basically living Christmas through others and feeling darn sad for myself.The Martha Stewart Christmas CD plays for the umpteenth time and after 17 Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel I just cannot watch another one.Or can I ? Are these gut wrenching movies and especially the Martha Stewart CD making me into a Negative Nancy?

I had something happen to me this year that was life altering.There is not a day that does not go by that I do not think about it.It literally changed my perspective on life .It was almost like learning there was no Santa Claus when I was a child.That innocence and the good of mankind was gone.So I sit here and ask myself at almost age 59 how many Christmas’s do I have left? What had I not lived and missed Christmas this year? Well, I did live and Christmas is almost around the corner.

So I try to snap out of this funk and remember.Remember the smell of Christmas Trees.The sharp pine pungent scent and smell home baking in the air.To be honest the last years of my Christmas’s twelve years ago were not spent smelling a fresh Evergreen tree.It was spent looking at the latest model of Sears “best in the line “of decorator trees.:) I remember the delicate fragile glass ornaments that belonged to years gone by.I remember the blue lights on the tree.Why my family could never ever splurge on colours I will never know.I can always remember Miss Watson playing the church organ next to a huge tree filled with blue lights too and thinking it was quite strange. So maybe, yes maybe, this must be the reason.. I feel like it was something that was decided one day on Altar Guild Day.Yes, I can hear them now talking with their glasses perched on their noses and fluffing their short tight perms.Everyone except my grandmother.My grandmother poor Mary Deller Knight lost most of her hair in a tragic accident at a hair dressing salon one fateful day in 1953.In Mary’s case she pulled her wig on straight. Yes they all stood there and decided blue lights and only blue lights should be on a Christmas tree.I am sure that is what happened. Well,maybe not, but it does seem quite peculiar and darn right odd.

Then I remember two weeks after Christmas fourteen or was it fifteen years ago when my sons and I stood on top of a wet soaked carpet staring at a completely black Christmas tree..Staring at burned out walls and my oldest son wondering if his purchasing one small TY Beanie Baby monkey started the fire that turned our lives upside down for over a year.He kept telling me for a very long time that “Congo” caused the fire, and that he should not have bought it. I am sure deep down today he still thinks about it.He is very much like his mother.We dwell on things and don’t give them up. We are good like that

But Christmas went on the next year and no one was a Negative Nancy.We still watched Charle Brown’s Christmas and baked cookies and hung up stockings and I still left small presents on the door steps of the elderly.I used to dress up our German Shepherds with antler’s ears and take them around after the midnight service.It was usually snowing and cold and first it was Zar that accompanied me .Then after he passed Snoopy used to run his nose along the snow filled sidewalks and snort much like he was Santa’s helper.He never wanted much except the jellybeans I carried in my pocket.I swear I turned that poor dog into a sugar junkie. There isnt a time that I dont look at jellybeans and remember him riding shot gun in the Cherokee jeep and catching the jelly beans in his mouth that I threw at him.

So what to do? How do I get out of this Downer Dan mood. I decided to make the “only in Canada eh?” pastry that would make me feel festive called Butter Tarts.
Butter tarts are unique to Canada and consist of small pastry tart shells that are filled with a sweet mixture of butter, brown sugar and eggs.They are kind of like a pecan pie or even a British treacle tart. So not having the ‘good” Canadian shortening to make pastry I use a Trader Joes frozen pie crust. I cut out small circles with a floured glass and spread each one out in a small muffin tin.The first one was a bit sloppy but by number two I am a pro.I make the filling of eggs, brown sugar, vanilla and half and half and carefully pour it into each tart shell.You can add raisins, but why put anything thats really good for you in it? I smell them baking in the oven and know using Organic brown sugar just isn’t going to produce the real butter tarts Im used to, but it will do.

Twenty minutes later after listening to Loreena McKennitt singing Good King Wenceslas for the umpteenth time I pull them out the oven.They smell wonderful but as I had assumed the organic brown sugar did not pass muster but they did look great.Of course just as I want to bite into one I remember I have celiac disease and cannot taste one.You know..No flour, no gluten , no fun. But I know they will be enjoyed so that is what Christmas Hannukkah, and Kwanza is all about isn’t it?

Making people happy, making people smile, good will to all? I sit there and pomder.I try to make people happy every day so Christmas should be every day for me right? I guess it is.So why so glum chum?

I take off the Martha Stewart Christmas CD and file it away not to be played for let’s say at least a day. I put out a Christmas wreath with a Hanukkah rattle in it. I play Linus and Lucy from Charlie Brown’s Christmas by Vince Guaraldi on the CD player and I dance. I dance and I dance and realize the holidays are what you make out of it and not to expect anyone to drop the Christmas spirit outside your bathroom door. because it just ain’t going to happen.I would seriously bet my last butter tart on that:).Even if they are made with organic brown sugar.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Linda Seccaspina

Savannah Devilles