1425.....

"AT CHRISTMAS  all roads lead home." -David Cameron

The house where I grew up. 1425 Fairfield. Used to be known as the "Christmas House", or so my dad called it. My mother would just sniff at that.  A vacant  shell of itself years later.  Christmas long past.  It was  a modest box house. Set amongst a forest. That forest is long gone now. Other homes  bloom beside it.  Great trees that used to be, are no longer. But I know them. I wonder if they would remember me.....

Those first Christmases  at 1425 were scorching hot. A new Coal and Wood stove heated the house and cooked the fruitcakes.  One Christmas there was a fire in the stove pipe.  My mother beat out the flames on the wall with a wet dish rag and a dish pan full of soapy water. The scorch marks were there many years later. 

  Another Christmas the old stove was taken out and a new electric oven installed. My mother didn't trust it. She  cooked on a Coleman burner outside for weeks, till the gas ran out around New Year's. She used to dry underwear inside the oven, till they scorched.

That year, Christmas dinner for eight hungry humans, was hamburgers and french fries. AND her hard as rock plum pudding.  She used to boil that thing till it turned into a bowling ball. The women set the table, while the   men smoked outside. The smoke hung in drifts outside the back door. Cigarette butts stuck out of the small patches of snow, left by some ancient storm. My mother used to collect those butts when everyone was gone.

When the  fire burned low my mother took it upon herself to hike up to  chop wood. I saw her doing that, well into her 70's. She'd march through the men smoking on the back steps, grab an ax, hoist up her skirts and trudge  to the back of the property. The men were told not to stir themselves.  They just blew rings of smoke and chuckled.

You could hear the chop chop hack of the ax  from the kitchen.   My mother  plopped  the wood into a piece of burlap and dragged it back to the house. Then hauedl piece after piece  into the living room to stoke the fire. The men just chuckled and smoked. Cigarette butts everywhere.

The Grandfather clock rang out announcing the start of  the radio broadcast of Messiah. It was a new clock then. Old clock now. It still rings the hours and moments. Every year, at 1425, would see everyone  sitting in a ring.   After  the Hallelujah Chorus it was time for a  smoke  break. More cigarette butts to gather, as people hurried home. 

Years later, my  mother told me stories, late at night, about driving the cutter on the farm.  In the snow. In the cold. Deep cold. On Christmas Day. Blankets, cushions, hot bricks to keep their feet warm,

Driving so fast the horse broke the reins, one Christmas morning causing the cutter to slide  into a ditch, and the horse, named Sandy, to bolt back to the farm.  No harm was done. They laughed and squealed , till they could laugh no more.  Then raced back up the lane to get Sandy, so he could  pull the cutter home.  All roads lead home. 

The last year my grandmother was alive was 1956. Never knew her.  I knew she and my grandfather had come from the farm to live with my parents. 1425 was a full place by then.  My grandmother did not like her picture taken. Said it was unnatural. Insisted on wearing new hose and new shoes, then she changed her dress and had my mother  pin up her hair. Then changed her shoes again. Grandfather draped himself beside her, fragrant pipe smoke drifted from his nostrils. Then it was evening.

Candles were lit. Tough old plum pudding   washed down with sherry.  Christmas Eve was quiet. Filled with someone reading Dickens aloud. Stockings hung by the hearth. Lumps of coal  shoved into the bottom, with an orange in the toe. Socks and underwear filling out the middle  A small paper bag of prunes on the top ...reindeer food....

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"The best of all gifts around any tree, the presence of a family wrapped up in each other. " -Burton Hills

There have been many houses in the years.  But I still see 1425 . Small and  quiet  in the forest, where trees  grew, where  people lingered ,  and cigarette butts were left.It's smoke stained kitchen,  and the electric stove where my mother burned oatmeal . The ax  on the hearth. 

I still see my mother opening her house to anyone who came calling.  I still see her chopping wood in any weather. I see her handing people coal at New Year's telling them to bring it in and bring good fortune. I see her stirring plum pudding and fruit cake, neither of which was edible.

There is without a doubt she offered  the best seat in the house. Right by the fire. Guests found dozing.   There'd be music and kind conversation, shortbread, treats and that ever present tea, sometimes laced with sherry, sometimes not. Mincemeat tarts so hot you'd burn your fingers on the pastry.

The smoking parties  vanished in time.  Ashtrays now held scotch mints  in every room of the house. My mother preserved my father's tin of tobacco, with his cigarette papers,  along with his smoking jacket , in a corner of her closet. Every so often she'd bury her nose in  that jacket. She'd say, years later, that  it still reminded her of him. Standing there in the night, with the others. His laughter ringing out. She liked to remember that.

Every Christmas eve,  1425 shared a spread of cheeses and crackers, sherry, wine, coffee, pickles, smoked oysters, sweets galore, fruitcake, hot mince tarts, shortbread , frosted strawberries, and that infamous Plum Pudding, for the friends who dropped in. And they came. One after another. Faithfully friends. To sit by the fire. To warm their hands.  To laugh and  remember the years. To speak of the past and of the future. To wait for the moment of the Watch night. It was their  road home. To hear the Grandfather clock ring out  Joy,  on each dark Christmas morning, that beamed with Light..........

 Photographs 2022