Getting ready for the holidays

Driving through Fort Frances on Sunday evening, I was surprised by all the outdoor lights that are illuminating yards in our community.
From large blow-up snowmen to white lit deer and moose and dancing lights across the front of homes, the darkness that falls shortly after four in the afternoon is whisked away by the lights of Christmas.
The merriment of the seasonal lights and figurines denies the cold darkness of December.
We all make preparations for the holiday season. In our household, both sons with their fiancées will arrive on Christmas Eve. For the first time in several years, our extended Cumming family all will meet around the Christmas table.
The Christmas dinner table keeps expanding and planning for the meal with everyone sharing in the preparations keeps growing.
It is interesting how traditions begin in families. My parents always had a real Christmas tree that was picked out at Hammond’s. My wife and I always have had a live tree, and as our sons grew up, the tree filled with eclectic ornaments that they chose from year to year.
There is a baby’s first Christmas. There is a glass globe that spins for our world traveller. There is a painted dough skier figurine. There are a bunch of pewter ornaments.
Each year, new unique ornaments with a story were added.
This year we are breaking with tradition. My younger son always has been allergic to pine trees, which we only realized after he had gone away to university. He would arrive home and within 24 hours, he had a runny nose and eye-watering tears.
No amount of antihistamines could diminish his allergies. Then almost immediately after he headed back to school, his sniffles would disappear.
Tradition insisted that we would have that live tree. But this year we broke down and bought an artificial tree. The eclectic ornaments still will adorn the tree, but it won’t seem the same without the smell of fresh evergreen in the house.
On Christmas Eve, we have created a tradition of enjoying a seafood casserole that’s filled with shrimp, scallops, mushrooms, and Gruyere cheese. The meal begins with some seafood appetizers, along with crisp blood orange and butter leaf lettuce salad with poppy seed dressing that coats the soft leaves of the lettuce.
The casserole either is served on a Christmas plate filled with fettuccine noodles or rice.
That tradition, too, might be broken this year as we had talked about doing something simpler. Would grilling a steak or racks of lamb and barbecuing skewers of large shrimp suffice?
We hoped so, but in discussing the change of the meal with both sons, it became evident Sunday evening that part of their coming home at Christmas included that traditional Christmas Eve meal.
With a new fiancée, my wife has sewn another stocking to hang beside the fireplace. Each of children has their own specially-sewn stocking to be filled with treats (mine has a large bite out of the toe).
Even with our grown sons not being home, our stockings always were hung.
When the trees came down in our yard this past summer and fall, one of the first questions asked by neighbours was, “Will you still be putting up the white lights in your yard?”
For 37 years, the lights always have made their appearance from the Santa Claus parade on.
You wonder about traditions and the customs that people watch for at Christmas. I guess our outdoor lights were one.
For our sons, real Christmas trees and special once-a-year meals is another.