Our whole world shrank this year during the Great Pandemic Christmas.
But seeing how people coped during this time gave me hope for the New Year.
And it reminded me of the first time I was alone at Christmas, several years ago.
The door slammed shut, it was quiet. Quiet. That was a sound I hadn’t heard for a long time.
It was the first time I wasn’t part of our large family gathering of cheerful people, lots of food and Christmas joy.
But what a Christmas Eve that was! Nobody was clinging to my legs, saying, “Mommy……mommy!”
No one was drawing on the walls or upending giant containers of Lego blocks all over the
freshly washed floor. The cushions were on the couch; they were not part of a kid fort. Nobody was crying, or wailing (us or the kids) and no bottles were heating up on the stove.
Snow was gently falling. The manger scene beside the fireplace looked peaceful.
I made a cup of coffee and listened to Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.
But after a few hours, I began to think, “When are they coming back?”
I looked at the front door, waiting for my husband and our three little ones who added so much joy to my life to come back.
It was close to midnight. At last the door flew open and everyone tumbled in, snowsuits flying everywhere. They couldn’t wait to tell me what Santa had brought them at the family party (yes, he was there in person).
It’s funny that a bad case of the flu had forced me to stay home that year.
And now the whole world has the flu and now the whole world has to stay home.
For another month, we’ll be following the edict that came down just before Christmas. Stay home. Stay out of other people’s houses. For Heaven’s sake, try to avoid shopping in person. Here we go again.
This year’s peculiar Christmas made me realize even more that we who have a safe place to live and are pretty healthy are really the lucky ones.
Even with all the bad stuff coming from the Pandemic, it was amazing to see how people coped.
I look to my 92-year-old aunt for inspiration. In the old “normal” days she went out every day to visit her friends at her favourite coffee shop. That got taken away on March 13 when our first lockdown happened. She lives alone. And somehow she has managed to adjust and even thrive. Relatives and friends kept in regular phone contact throughout the year and she still went out to shop once a week. She keeps her place spotless, is interested in everything going on around her and has managed to keep her spirits up. On Christmas Eve, she lit the candles on her Advent wreath, and celebrated with a nice piece of Stollen (German Christmas cake) and freshly-brewed coffee. She got out her list of people to call and was on the phone for a couple of hours to share Christmas greetings with them.
In other parts of our larger world, people shared what they had. Researchers have been toiling to bring us vaccines against the virus. Local merchants and businesses bent over backwards to keep their staff and customers safe.
Christmas decorations and lights began popping up all over the place earlier than any year before, as if to say, “We will not be defeated by you, virus!”
I read that someone in Alberta left $250 gift cards to many people, along with a letter asking them to pay it forward if they didn’t need the money. Local food banks and charitable organizations have served more people than ever. In Stouffville, it has been a tradition for volunteers to prepare a Christmas dinner for anyone who needed it. It began as a large sit-down affair complete with Santa, but later changed to volunteers delivering the festive meals on Christmas Day. And despite the pandemic, the group was still able to provide Christmas dinners for people in need.
In our smaller world, we heard about children making outdoor visits to their grandparents and opening their gifts at their own house by the shining light of their computers. This way, their grandparents could be part of the fun, too. We also took to the outdoors. Since we couldn’t invite anyone over, we exchanged festive food with another family while the kids played on the lawn and made snow angels. After dinner at our respective homes, we huddled by the computer to open our gifts with the other family, ZOOMing all the way. People made Christmas videos to tie their families together, and to say, “We are still here for you”.
Maybe these are some of the things that give me the courage to say Happy New Year 2021 to all of you and hope that it will really be a better year.
.png)
