Drumming out Christmas

Since we moved, one shortcut into town takes me past our old house on Collinson, a fine opportunity to torture myself with nostalgia. It was the one home I truly loved; I was reasonably fond of our other homes, but this one had my heart. Our daughters were young in it, and I adored the size, shape, and location of it.

The people who live there now ring the portico with lights, much as we did, and seeing the familiar shape and glow from Quadra Street nearly did me in.

In Victoria, it's very common to take the tree down a day or so after New Year's Day, although we cling to the tradition of leaving it up for the Twelfth Day of Christmas, which is today.

I'm frantically cleaning and pulling a dinner together for the friends who come and help us ease through this rather depressing chore.

On our old street, in our old house, the tree was being dismantled on the second day of the new year. Oh well. It's their house, now.

Twelfth Night and what I will

Less than half an hour of Christmas left. I can really smell the balsam which is either because the tree is dying or because my Christmas cold has worn off.

We've just got back from the annual Twelfth Night celebration with A Company of Fools, one of the few compensations for dwelling in Hades. It was long, but we won two door prizes. Scott Florence, the Fools' director made cracks about killing Christmas which younger daughter failed to find funny, Christmas being her favourite time of year, but she found most other things funny including the company's annual mangling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. They find a different way to warp it each year and this time they did a read-through with weird hats and asides.

As I watched, I recalled I'd forgotten and foregone one of my Christmas gifts: a DVD of Des McAnuff's charming production of Twelfth Night from the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival's 2011 season. I won't be able to see it this Twelfth Night, but I'll use it to ease into Epiphany.
I also picked up my library hold of Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Talk about killing Christmas....