A Green Christmas

When I was young, my family and I lived in Grande Prairie, Alberta- a small city five hours North of Edmonton- or as my mother always said, in the middle of nowhere. Christmases were different then- they included sleigh rides through the woods with my dad's office, skating, toboganning and vain attempts at making snowmen- an unfortunate challenge in a province as dry as Alberta. I remember lying awake at night- unable to sleep because of the excitement of Santa's arrival, the countless gifts under the tree and the promise of spending the day playing with Tyler and Travis out in the snow. When I was in grade four, we packed up our whole house and moved to Calgary, where I was to experience my first green Christmas. I didn't understand. This new city was so strange- one day it was -20, the next it was +15. I remember one year wearing shorts to school on Tyler's birthday- in February. I came to accept the chinooks as normal, making my first winter in Montreal absolutely brutal. I kept anticipating that warm wind that would sweep in over the mountain and give us a well-deserved break from the bitter cold. But it never came. I even begged friends on the Plateau to join me with hair dryers on the north side of Mount Royal. If only we could get that warm wind going... Christmas in Korea could hardly be called green, though it was warm. The heat emenating from the concrete structures allowed me to experience a grey Christmas for the first time. I wasn't a fan.


Back here in Montreal, Christmas Eve is upon us. The sun is shining, the grass is green and mitts and tuques can be left at home. Images of Christmas past flash through my mind- images of Christmas long past. Before my time. I remember how my parents grew up together on Harvard (NDG) and how they would spend their winters playing ice hockey in my dad's backyard. I remember seeing pictures of snow banks big enough to bury your car- and my mother explaining to me why she always kept a shovel in her trunk (she's never really settled in Calgary- despite her claims, her heart is in Montreal). But this Christmas, there will be no ice hockey in any Montreal backyard, nor on Beaver Lake. Jewish ski day is a bust, unless you appreciate artificial snow (which no real skier does). I sat at Croissanterie a few days ago (our old coffee shop of choice) and overheard an older man saying 'Jamais de ma vie j'ai vue ça- l'éclair et tonnerre au mois de Décembre' (Never in my life have I seen thunder and lightening in December). On the tips of the tongues of every Montrealer are not the usual complaints of cold weather- but whispers of fear. How frightening to see such change in so short a time. Will we left only dreaming of a white Christmas?



But with thy brawls, though hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea,
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents,
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are indistinguishable,
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now hymn or carol blest.
Therefore the moon (the governess of floods),
Pale in anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thotough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' (thin) and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase now knows not which is which.

-Midsummer Night's Dream (Act II; Scene I)
Titania- Queen of the Fairies