subject: A Canadian Christmas Tradition: Our Family Hockey Game [print this page] There are many things that I remember about Christmas time when I was a child. It was always a hectic time as my parents divided Christmas visits between both sides of the family. On Christmas Eve or in the evening on December 25th we went to have dinner at my grandparents" home on my mother"s side. The house was ornately decorated with Christmas lights as we arrived outside and inside there were candles, festive bowls filled with tangerines and nuts and a beautiful spruce Christmas tree with opaque colored lights and decorations such as stars. The food was scrumptious; especially my grandmother"s baking that always included her delicious carrot pudding with its hot, sweet, brown sugar sauce.
We often slept overnight on Christmas Eve at my other grandparents" home on my father"s side. The house would be brimming with cousins, uncles and aunts, even great grandparents, great uncles and great aunts. My cousins and I often slept on the floor of the living room. Sleep was not all that easy to come by in the excitement of the season. We were truly delighted to be able to play with our cousins and then wrestled for a prime spot on the floor, close to the Christmas tree and well within reach of an already vast number of presents assembled both under the tree and along the wall. The quantity of presents was surreptitiously added to once we were all asleep. We always managed to sneak a peek at the gift cards on the presents, identifying our own and wondering what treasures were hidden inside. A shaking of the gift and listening for a betraying sound was seldom helpful although a soft gift surely foretold a pair of socks, mittens or some other clothing item. There was the marvelous anticipation of Santa coming and our parents" warning that he wouldn"t come if we did not go to sleep. Eventually we settled down in our sleeping bags and one by one nodded off as we listened to the happy chatter of the adults who sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee, eggnog and punch while snacking.
In the morning the whole family gathered and opened gifts in an orgy of tearing paper, cardboard and Scotch tape before we sat down for breakfast. The mountain of gift wrap heaped in the middle of the living room floor in the aftermath is something that I will never forget.
A Christmas tradition followed that lived in our family for many years, the Christmas Day ball hockey game. Either before or after our big Christmas meal of turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, yams and minced meat pie, all of the men and boys went out to the driveway or to the nearby tennis courts to play ball hockey. The was a cacophony of sound as wooden hockey sticks, goalie sticks, black tape, masking tape, winter jackets, sweaters, boots, gloves and hats were frantically thrown together on the stairs and landing leading to the side door. From behind the garage we dragged out rickety and rusty hockey nets, often having to take out some string to repair the many holes in the mesh.
The weather varied from year to year and this affected the consistency of the tennis ball that we used. Sometimes we preferred tennis balls that had completely been denuded of their fuzzy covers through overuse in previous hockey games. Sometimes when it was frigid the tennis ball would be as hard as a brick. When it was raining, the newer ball whose cover was still intact turned into a soggy blob of mush and trailed a stream of spray as it rolled along. In the wetter and muddier weather, tell-tale ball marks covered the garage door when we were finished.
It was always a mix of men and boys on each team until my brother, cousins and I grew into our teenage years and then it was the young guys against the older guys including my grandfather, father and all of my uncles. We hacked and wacked our way along muddied gardens, saturated grass, granular melting snow banks, ice patches, powdery drifts and soupy ditches. If someone wound up for a slap shot the trajectory opened like the Red Sea as anyone in harm"s way scampered for the sidelines while turning their back to the shooter. We always worked up a good sweat, no matter the weather, and had a rousing game that nearly always was even.
When later on my uncle Bob moved up to a 10-acre farm we often celebrated Christmas there and this added a whole new dimension to the ball hockey game. A couple of years we played on a frozen pond near the back of his property. We played in boots rather than wearing skates and so some of the pratfalls we took were as hilarious as they were painful. At the edge of the pond where reeds grew, the ice often broke through under our weight and we sometimes would get wet up to our waist. In the cold winter air our pants would then transform into stiff, icy, heavy burdens. The advantage was that being hit by a frozen tennis ball no longer caused your shins or thighs to sting.
Another Christmas up on the farm we played in arctic-like, windblown conditions on an ice rink that my uncle and cousins had constructed closer to the house. This was definitely not the day to take a frozen tennis ball off of a rosy, wind-chilled face but nevertheless, one cousin and one uncle managed to suffer this indignity and sported a fat lip to prove it.
One peculiar Christmas it was raining outside and the only place to play ball hockey was in the barn. We flailed away at the ball amongst dust and straw and in the pungent aroma of horse manure.
As we all got older the Christmas ball hockey game gradually went away. This was in part due to our age and also because we all had commitments elsewhere once we were married. Perhaps even the tradition waned through the cultural pressures of gender equality, where the women who were once left to prepare the meal and clean up afterward would no longer tolerate the men and boys going off to play in the middle of Christmas Day. Whatever the reason I really miss those days and whenever I see some boys out playing hockey on Christmas Day, in front of their house or on a frozen pond, I am overcome with memories of that special Christmas tradition of my youth.
