It’s too early to be thinking about Christmas, let alone writing about it.
This coming from the girl who gets excited when Christmas lights start appearing in windows, who spends hours baking peppermint flavoured goodies in December and who honestly doesn’t mind having to bundle up to go outside in the snow. There’s something nice about winter—especially after watching everything shrivel up and die in autumn. Summer might be a fun, punch-drunk love affair, but winter’s a romantic calm that gets me every time.
Except this year. I don’t mean to sound like Scrooge, but I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit yet.
Maybe it’s because the decorations went up in the store I work at a week before Remembrance Day, something I think is really inappropriate. Maybe it’s because exams are not something I associate with Christmas cheer and I need to get through those before the holiday season can begin. Or maybe it’s because for the first time ever, I won’t be going “home” for Christmas.
For some, not being able to go home for Christmas is normal–it’s too far away and it’s expensive to take off for such a short period of time.
When I tell people I’m staying in Fredericton for Christmas because of work, I always get the same ‘oh, that’s such a shame!’ reaction. But it’s not as if I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick aren’t that far apart and it’s not overly expensive to get there. I could take a week off and chances are Sobeys won’t have fallen apart in my absence.
But I chose to stay here instead. Why? Because as much as I love and miss my family, Nova Scotia isn’t really home anymore.
This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy going back to the town I grew up in every once in a while. As much as I can’t see myself going back for an extended period of time, it’s nice to return to a place where you were once deep-rooted sometimes. Going to Pictou County means going back to a time when having a couple hundred bucks every two weeks was a lot of money—when going to Dooly’s was considered a “night on the town” and my cell phone bill topped out at $30 instead of $55.
I stayed with my grandfather in the summer for the first two years of university. Last summer, I went to stay with my aunt in Waverley. I wasn’t unhappy in either place, but maybe that’s because I knew it wasn’t permanent—the suitcase in the closet and the boxes under the bed were there for a reason.
To take me “home.”
I use the term loosely—I don’t know if Fredericton is home either, but I’ll go with it. It’s been four years and I’m still learning the city, but that’s okay. The silences—the uncertainties, the things I don’t know yet—are comfortable, not awkward.
And even though it will be strange not decorating the tree in the office and not helping Grampy and Mary set up for Christmas dinner at my great-grandmother’s house on Christmas day, I have amazing people all around me to spend the season with and remind me any place can feel like home if you let it.
