Our Smart­Canucks Christ­mas count­down tra­di­tion is back, except this time the sto­ries and ideas are con­tributed by our won­der­ful Smart Canucks mem­bers! Every­day, a dif­fer­ent per­son will con­tribute to the count­down post. I got many bril­liant con­tri­bu­tions, some are funny, oth­ers touch­ing and a few are sad. I truly enjoyed read­ing all these heart-warming sto­ries and I hope you do too.

Please leave a com­ment with your thoughts on the sto­ries and con­tri­bu­tions to moti­vate the writ­ers

Writ­ten by Sara Lilley:

Hello,

Here is a sort-of Christ­mas story I wrote. This is non-fiction (although I wrote it like it was fic­tion.) It’s about Christ­mas rev­e­la­tions and grow­ing up dur­ing the first Christ­mas din­ner that I hosted. 

      In the rush of the moment she lost the tini­est part of her inner child. Such a small, mostly mean­ing­less, moment took some­thing irre­place­able. It’s hard to spot if you aren’t pay­ing attention.

      The lit­tle girl stood, jit­tery and delighted in a red and green party dress.

      “I wanna sit beside you.”

      In her head she thought the lit­tle girl should sit beside her mother. It was the pout on her face and pre­co­cious atti­tude that made her real­ize this evening was going to become some­thing she’d have to let go of if it were to go smoothly. Some­times it’s eas­ier to let chaos han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. She was ner­vous about host­ing her first Christ­mas din­ner but shouldn’t have been, her fam­ily and her friends were gen­er­ous and forgiving. 

      She handed out the gor­geously wrapped gifts and set her own behind her. Though she did check the bags, glance at the names on the card, she didn’t open it. She set it aside and helped the lit­tle girl with her task. Soon there was Cinderella’s face star­ing up at her, wooden blocks coloured in the bright­est pri­mary colours, a tossed aside kitchen set, a blink­ing doll named Sasha (even though it was a boy) … and a pile of still neatly wrapped and for­got­ten gifts at her back. 

      When she opened her first present, she found a lit­tle purse in her hand and she didn’t fake her enthu­si­asm. It was cute and it was trendy and it was just what she didn’t know she wanted. Yes, it was all those things. She hur­riedly pulled out the tis­sue from inside. A penny spilled into her lap.

      “Oh! A lucky penny!” she said as a thank you. For her, receiv­ing gifts was hard, though she tried to be gracious.

      “Of course,” said the gift giver knowingly.

      The moment was rushed as din­ner still had to be made and the wrap­ping paper needed to be plucked off the floor from between the toys and trea­sures. Her mother and aunt res­cued all the coloured tis­sue papers, smooth­ing it and fold­ing it up again to be used later. She could smell the turkey and while she was refresh­ing everyone’s drinks she was also men­tally count­ing how many min­utes before she needed to mash the pota­toes. The lit­tle girl was under foot, build­ing a Christ­mas tree out of blocks and singing car­ols to herself. 

      It was later, after chaos was replaced by the sooth­ing tones of her guilti­est plea­sure of a hol­i­day movie, that she dis­cov­ered she had set the penny down amongst a hun­dred other pen­nies on her dresser. She’d lost it. She wor­ried and felt guilty though it was worth­less. She’d wanted to stuff it in a shoe box or bet­ter yet, keep it in the purse, for years at a time. Just until the magic wore off and it was safe to let go. It occurred to her to just arbi­trar­ily pick another penny … but it wasn’t the same. These silly tra­di­tions that she’d kept so long for her­self was fad­ing and she knew, with cer­tainty, that she was grow­ing up. She’d lost it.