“My COVID Christmas: a Guilty Pleasure” by Kathryn Hazlewood

 

My Christmas as a precocious, wide-eyed, five-year-old in the 1940s seems quite magical now. I still experience a Proust moment when the aroma of mincemeat fills the air, triggering childhood memories of my mother making this holiday treat.

I remember the mischief I instigated too. After mom stashed her vacuum-packed jars of mincemeat in our musty, bone-chilling fruit cellar, my impish three-year old brother and I crept down there, popped the lid of a jar of that luscious goo and began digging a well from the centre to leave the appearance of a full jar. When too cold to continue, we licked our fingers, replaced the lid, and anticipated the shrieks of “Who did this?” days later when mom opened the jars to start baking Christmas tarts and pies. We giggled, knowing full well that all would soon be forgiven under our protestations to mom that her mincemeat was better than anyone else could make.

Intensely evocative memories always seem to focus on baking and eating in my family. My mother’s kitchen was a joyful anchor throughout my life and her recipes continue to take centre stage at all our Christmas gatherings.

Guiltily, though, I admit that I associate being mischievous to those times past as well. Mom was a determined woman and very proud of her baking, with talent gleaned from her mother who our family believes was chef to Emmeline Pankhurst, champion of women’s suffrage in the early 1900s London. Channelling that strong, competitive spirit, Mom sculpted spectacular gingerbread families — mothers, fathers, and children outfitted in fancy jackets, trousers, hats, boots and gloves. Wrapped in cellophane and tied with ribbon, they were hung on our Christmas tree — a ready target for two naughty children.

We waited till the house was quiet, then crept into the living room and snapped off every last head we could reach. The beheadings were discovered next morning, but undaunted, mom carefully applied a thick, colourful icing scarf to the headless bodies and glued each head back on. We, on the other hand, were sentenced to time in our rooms with threats of coal in our Christmas stockings.

Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales had nothing on our Christmas celebrations. My five-year-old self singlehandedly made sure of that. A mammoth carved oak table awaited our Christmas dinner with the best china, silver and crystal at each place. 

When all fourteen of us sat down to eat, attention was drawn to me when dad expected me to recite a Christmas blessing. I had learned it at school and shown off to my parents by parroting it at home, but I became shy and tongue-tied with all those adult faces looming toward me in expectation. Stalling for time, I snatched up a crystal water goblet intending to take a sip, but, panic-stricken, I crunched down on the rim and came up with a tongue full of crystal shards.

I was rushed to the kitchen by two old aunts all flapping and fussing. Someone ran for tweezers and the arduous task of fetching bits of crystal from my tongue began amidst salty tears mixed with rivulets of blood. Emergency surgery completed, someone remembered that dinner was getting cold, so we all slid back into our places and my dad said the blessing. If looks could kill…I sat feeling very alone and remorseful.

Fast forward now to Christmas 2022. My expectations for our annual Christmas celebrations were shattered just days before December 25 when double lines appeared on my COVID tester. I had COVID!

The plan, as always, had been to revive my mother’s traditions but that year there were to be no aromas of roast turkey and mincemeat pies, no gingerbread families on the tree and no grandchildren’s childish antics. I was as alone on Christmas morning as if I were that five-year-old sitting humiliated and solitary at the dining room table, now with only my thermometer and a dose of Paxlovid.

But wait! The first surprise of the day began at 8:00 a.m. when my friend Bill shouted through the front door to put a mug outside so he could fill it with fresh-brewed java. As I bent to retrieve it, he called out, “Merry Christmas” from twenty feet away, pointing out a loot bag at my feet.

I recalled a line from Little Women when Jo says “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents” but there was one for me.  Maybe this day wouldn’t be so bad after all, I thought. In my loot bag were shortbreads, Nanaimo bars and other little goodies. Not mom’s cooking, but a close second.

I had settled down to read a book, sip my coffee and nibble on shortbread for breakfast when my younger daughter, her husband and my two overly excited grandsons called on Facetime so I could virtually visit their living room where gifts had been torn open and the kids paraded across the screen with loot from Santa. They were to have been with me for Christmas dinner, but what a turnaround to be invited into their home on Christmas morning.

Two more sips of coffee later, and my sister and her family called on Facetime too, so I joined them at their festive brunch complete with a new puppy in a knitted sweater embossed with Ho Ho Ho from scruff to rump. We all toasted to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A rap on the door another half hour later and I opened it to find that a thoughtful neighbour had left a plate of homemade cookies, a little battery-powered candle, and a pretty red poinsettia. The accompanying note wished me a Merry Christmas and a quick recovery. Not soon enough, I thought.

As lunchtime approached, my older daughter texted to say she had deposited frozen homemade soups and a full tin of, yes, more cookies on my doorstep. I loaded up the freezer, guiltily thinking, I kind of like this.  

That afternoon, two masked and cautious family members arrived to pick up all the gifts from under my tree to take to their hastily organized replacement Christmas, sans moi. (Was I happy not to be there? Well, I’ll bite my tongue on that one.) Off they went, playing Santa and leaving me a bit guilty yet relieved that everyone would receive their gifts.

Two hours later, my reading was interrupted by another virtual call, transporting me to the replacement Christmas with everyone gathered round the screen as their dinner cooked, ripping into the gifts from me to them. I felt present as the adults chatted and my grandsons ran in circles with their aunt’s two bouncy, antlered Jack Russells. I was really getting into this Christmas-at-a-distance thing.

Then, the moment I signed off, I heard insistent knocking, opened the door and beheld a full Christmas dinner and a Christmas cracker too. I placed the dinner tray before me, snapped the cracker, and became a queen in a red tissue crown, dining contentedly alone. And best of all? I didn’t have to cook!

By the last bite of dessert, I was becoming drowsy. Being waited on and Facetimed throughout the day had tired me right out. I texted my thanks to all the family, saying how sorry I was not to have hosted Christmas, but was I?

When my head hit the pillow, I mulled over the day which had defied my Christmas traditions yet had been one of the most satisfying Christmases I’d ever had. It held its own kind of magic that I could never have imagined – family, friends, screen time, sweets, lunch and dinner had all come my way. I yawned and thought, I wonder if I can get COVID again next year?

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Kathryn Hazlewood is a retired educator. Her career spans elementary and secondary teaching to PR for a major bank, a sabbatical in France, executive producer of youth TV programs and finally, executive director of a not-for-profit. 

In her retirement she is a busy widow taking conversational French, volunteering in long-term care, traveling, hosting a book club, mentoring high school students in English, serving on a tenant association and spending lots of time entertaining and cooking for grandchildren and close family. 

During COVID she self-published a children’s book I’m Done! and wrote an unpublished, as yet, biography Twisted Twins as a favour for grown twins with Cerebral Palsy. She lives in Burlington.

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