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My Look at Christmas

© Linda Casselman

The days are colder and the nights are longer; the season of good will and good cheer is upon us - ah Christmas! The Christmas season has always been my favourite time of the year. So, let me take this opportunity to share my thoughts on Christmas with you.

Christmas is an exciting and magical time of the year for me. It's a time for gathering with family and friends, a time for eating delights, a time for wondrous surprises, and a time for wishes coming true.

Each Christian culture, each family, each individual practices cherished traditions at Christmas time, from trimming the tree, to stringing popcorn, to carolling and telling stories, to preparing special meals, to waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. These collective practices and traditions make up a kind of mythology of Christmas - a mythology with its own stories and rituals and supernatural beings which convey a deeper meaning, the meaning of Christmas. Now, the meaning of Christmas may be different for everyone, but underlying it all is the feeling of Good Will mixed with brotherhood and hope.

I'm Canadian with a French-Canadian background so growing up in my family Christmas meant having lots of relatives around as well as plenty of mouth-watering food like tourtiere (meat pie) and, of course, roast turkey cooked with maple syrup.

I'll share a family secret with you. Here is how to make tender, juicy, delicious roast turkey with maple syrup for Christmas dinner:

Put your turkey in the roasting pan. Put your usual amount of water in the pan, about less than half. Peel an onion or two depending on the size of the turkey and let them float around in the water whole. Then... drum roll please... add about 1/4 cup of Maple Syrup to the water (or one nice good long squeeze of the bottle). Try not to get any on the turkey as it will burn. Then be sure to baste your turkey about every 30-45 minutes for the most wonderful, most tender turkey you have ever tasted.

Christmas traditions in my family included piling into the car and possibly stopping at Tim Hortons (you'll know what this is if you're Canadian) to pick up something warm to drink as we drove around the city to take in all of the beautiful twinkling Christmas lights, leaving beer and a piece of pie out for Santa Claus, opening presents on Christmas morning and leaving our stockings for last, and of course, revelling in the smell of the turkey cooking in the oven and then fighting for one glorious taste of turkey when mom would check it to baste it.

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