Hamilton Holiday Family Traditions

By Jennifer Hamilton
When we were kids Christmas was quite the celebration. There was lots of baking (there will always be lots of baking among the Hamilton women) and Christmas music chimed from every available speaker in the house.

Some years we headed far north to our cottage; three or four children in the back of a station wagon. We trekked through sleet and snow to get a Christmas tree. My parents endured an over-heated car, kids vomiting in the back seat and the intermittent loss of a small cocker spaniel/poodle in the snow drifts (we always found him again, I promise).

We would hunt for the perfect tree, stay the night and then bring it home the next morning. Set up in the living room against the French doors, the lights and decorations would twinkle twice, reflected in the darkened windows. Presents would pile so high beneath that tree that sometimes the 8-footer would be more than half obscured.

My grandparents would arrive on Christmas Eve, toting gifts and hugs and kisses. We would order Chinese food and then we’d sit, in a bit of a holiday daze, stuffed full of egg rolls and noodles. My Grandfather would read me T’was the Night Before Christmas before we headed up to bed ― my father whispering “the sooner you go to bed, the sooner Santa will come!”

We slept fitfully that night and awoke, to my father wondering aloud (talking to the dog) if we were going to get up soon to see what Santa had brought.

Christmas mornings were filled with squeals of delight and laughter, happiness, warmth, grown-ups drinking coffee, my grandfather making bacon and eggs for everyone, stockings, candy canes, music, twinkly lights and lots and lots of love.

It was a time of year that I adored, no matter what I got for Christmas, because even then that wasn’t the focus; it was everything else. The food, the family, the time off from school and time with my family. It was about the things we did to mark the occasion that I still remember now, all these years later.

Dressing up in new, special clothes to go and see Santa at Eatons (or Simpsons if you go back far enough in time) the week before Christmas. Going to pick up Chinese food with my dad on Christmas Eve and getting a hot, fresh egg roll to eat on the way home in the car. Hugs from my towering grandfather that made you feel warm and fuzzy and dizzy and happy all at the same time.

Many of these traditions have survived in one way or another and have metamorphosed now that we’re grown, some of us starting families of our own. I do still adore this time of year and am hoping to pass that sentiment along to my son.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!