Canadian girl of German descent meets Canadian boy of English descent in Whistler. After a day of skiing it’s clear there’s a high level of compatibility. There’s also no doubt these two want to get to know each other better.
The year is 1994 and the twenty-something boy in this story is me while the other main character is my wife, Heidi.
A co-worker of mine had arranged for me to ski with her best friend visiting from Ontario on a weekday that just happened to be a vacation day for me. A day before the on-mountain adventure, the friend from Ontario announced her cousin Heidi, who also happened be on vacation, would be joining us. My co-worker had to work that day so the plan called for the three vacationers to meet in the morning before a day of skiing. We all gathered and after a few mildly awkward minutes of introductions, we were off.
The following Christmas, Heidi and I were planning the holidays together.
This proved to be a challenge. In her German upbringing her family’s big holiday celebration happened Christmas Eve, while Christmas Day was the important time for my family.
Like any good mixed-heritage family, we decided to have it all and celebrate like Germans on Christmas Eve and treat Christmas Day like an English holiday.
Our first Christmas together started Christmas Eve with a big festive dinner that included Heidi’s sister, a bunch of her friends and me. I felt out of place and even a bit dirty because it seemed all wrong to be feasting and sharing gifts more than 12 hours ahead of schedule.
Our first Christmas Day together was spent with my family and it included another big feast.
Once our first child came along, I was introduced to Saint Nicholas Day or Nicholas Tag, as Heidi calls it. In this tradition children put their well-polished boots out in plain sight before going to sleep on the night of Dec. 5. When she was young, Saint Nicholas would come to her Toronto apartment in the night and either fill the boots with small gifts and candy – or coal. If the morning brought coal it meant you had about 19 days to get your act together.
Our two-day Christmas festival has become the norm for us after all these years. We have a big Christmas Eve dinner with Heidi’s parents, and there have been years when Heidi’s sister and her husband have joined the festivities. We exchange gifts then sleep for a few hours to rest up for the next round, which begins early the next morning to exchange more gifts. A trip over to my parent’s house happens late in the morning for yet another gift exchange. Most years, Christmas ends with a big turkey dinner with as many members of my family as we can get together. We drink more wine, more beer, more eggnog and in recent years, we’ve discovered that gin, scotch and whiskey are also fun to sample Christmas night.
So, there it is. That is how the French family unites the English and the Germans over the course of two days during the Christmas holidays.
