'Tis the Season

I don't, anymore, rally myself around the season. We do celebrate Solstice though. My pagan ancestors live on in my bones and I find their worship of visible objects much more logical to my analytical brain.

But this year I hauled out some small bits and pieces and am readying myself to make more of a go of it. You wouldn't believe the lashings of decorations in my building. The word excess doesn't do it justice. 

With that in mind I  bought some flowers and took the time to arrange them in my mother's old jug, I say old, the thing must be well over a 100 years old, formed on this earth out of clay and bone-ash or whatever went into jugs back then. 

Not stopping with this huge effort (I was in a lot of pain as I lurched around) I spied these chrysanthemums and grabbed them. Why not? I sez to myself.

And my Christmas cactus decided to show her multiple faces recently:

I thought I would reinstate my Women's Christmas this year on January 7th. A long standing tradition in my home county of Cork, Ireland, which Covid and other health issues has prevented me from hosting. You can read all about it in this previous post from 2021 I am amazed at how many times that post has encircled the globe and has instigated the tradition as far away as Australia and New York and even Paris.

Once my little itty bitty corner of seasonal decor is completed I will post a few pics.

Merry Christmas!

For your pleasure - one of my favourite Christmas Albums - the Bells of Dublin.

Enjoy yourselves wherever you are, whatever the weather, and peace. Most of all peace.



And thanks for the comments, the wee gifties, your presence in my life.

Bliss

I really don't care what happens to any of my work. Seriously. I'm just having the time of my life writing, writing, writing.

Some of my friends request work to read, I send it on. They comment. I love the feedback. I love when they're touched. But you know? It doesn't matter how anyone 'feels' about it. I'm writing just for me really. If it jells or sticks I'll be happy. If it doesn't, oh next!

The rolling cart containing all the tools of my trade is hauled over in front of the fire every morning. I added hooks for wires and headsets and backup flash and a nice pot of pencils and pens and wee note pads and it's a ready steady go for winter writing and easily shoved out of the way.

I took a break today and went off to an afternoon tea and a lovely performance by a top notch choir. We had a charming time, meaning we had our nice manners and clothes on and were totally charmed in turn. Several of my friends performed and it was all very festive and jolly and the food was delish. And the choir were sequinned which always pleases me. Not the guys though, they looked rather drab but wore nice smiles. And one had a bodhran.

There was a cute song about Mrs. Claus doing all the work behind the scenes keeping her man on track, the unsung busy heroine. It was very well received. And understood.

There's a sprinkle of Christmassy snow on everything. I've always wondered about that, the disconnect of saying it is so Christmassy as the snow laces our trees when Bethlehem was baking in the heat back in the day and Jesus was well, brown, a desert boots kind of guy. He would not have felt at home in snow. Or in Ferguson for that matter.

The Best of Times

For your pleasure ~ The Chieftains - The Bells of Dublin

I don't take anything for granted. Some are alone and in despair this time of the year. Some are overcrowded and miserable and overeating and overdrinking. Some are alone by choice and loving it. It takes all kinds, right?

Whatever you're doing, I hope it is what you desire.

The season can be fraught with pitfalls. I know. One of my friends would brace herself every year for the 911 calls over the three days. They would draw lots in her office for who was unlucky enough to answer the non-stop telephone calls. It was the worst time of the year. Suicides, domestic violence, drunkenness, homicides or serious injury, overdosing. The stories she would tell from her 3 agonizing days of double pay had me never viewing Christmas in the same light again.

Mine?

I am truly grateful Daughter and Grandgirl are here with me. We are into a rhythm of daily walks in the snow, taking turns cooking and dishwashing, fire-lighting, movie watching, music listening. And most of all peaceful reading. We three are all avid readers and bonus! love each others' favourites.

I've loved our walks the most, I think. The snow has been deep and crisp and even and we play with our footprints in it and chase the dog who runs around us trying to decide who her favourite person is - for the moment. A friend took a wonderful portrait of the three of us at her house which some of you have seen on Facebook.

Memories. Created by the minute.

I wish you peace.
I wish you contentment.
I wish you quiet joy.

Lessons

A time of reflection in the last few days, away from the whizz and bang.

(1) More than you would think really despise this season.

(2) More than you would think absolutely adore it.

And it has nothing to do with family or friends or being alone or not.

Now that I am older I censor myself more, do you find that? Less revealing to those younger than me. More revealing to those my age or older. I tamp myself down when talking with family, conscious of being boring with same old, same old or forced cheeriness. I would observe this phenomenon in elders as I got older myself. A contrived jolliness, less revealing, more dismissive of aches, pains, heartbreaks. Even though the heartbreaks hurt worse as I age and they get swallowed down. For fear of...more. It must be just fierce to be old and all one's peers gone. No one to talk to. Fear of being abandoned by those younger as too much of a downer? Perhaps. So one would have to remain secretive, unrevealed. A friend is doing this now. She is 84 and doesn't speak the truth like she used to. No more worries, no more cares, grins and chuckles all the time. Or maybe this is the nirvana I so desperately seek? When I turn 80 all days will be cloudless and giggles? I'm not talking dementia, though now that you mention it....

I'm still formulating these thoughts. I wrote, a lot, over these last few days. Good stuff I think. I read an entire book in 24 hours too. A lazy, decadent thing to do. I watched a few movies I'd seen before but good movies, like books, never lose their allure. They offer something new each time.

I ran away once too. But not for long. I play what ifs? when I do this. What if I vanished completely, just drove and drove. What if I went to the most expensive hotel in town and pretended I was somebody I was not. What if I got a blonde wig and dark glasses and just walked around jewellery stores. Back in the day a friend and I would do this, pretend we were people from out of town. And howl for days at the sheer entertainment value of it and the gullibility of people. Innocent masquerades. No fraudulent intent at all.

An old boyfriend would never grocery shop. He'd take your full one if your back was turned and check out. Saved him the time and trouble and only got stuck once with a box of tampons that he thoughtfully put in his washroom for people like me giving the illusion he was a considerate, caring, sensitive man. Everybody won in his life except the poor shopper who lost.

Did you win or lose this holiday season? I hope you won.

A friend woke up on Boxing Day with every room in her house trashed by grandchildren and their drunken minders. She wept as she emailed me. Her grandmother suicided on the railway tracks on Christmas Day and she totally understands.

And yes, I won too. I kept a very low profile and did the limbo beneath. All was calm. All was bright.

Calmy brights to all my blogland buddies.

December Blues

Fog rolling in to my front yard.

 

 

Each year it creeps up on me and takes me by surprise.

I'm chugging along, minding my own business when wham, out of nowhere, comes black December. A month I despise.

It wasn't always like this.  Or maybe it was. Every year, it just seems to get a little more bleak, a little more sad as it hoves around the corner and up the driveway and into my house. It's clever. Like a fog. It pours into the corners and stays there. Making faces. Reminding me. I used to drink my way through it. For many, many years now I've "done" it stark raving sober.

This time of the year I see an abused dog in a news story and I bawl my eyes out. That dog in Chicago shot by a policeman? Did my head in.

And babies, hurt babies. Have to jerk past the headline to avoid a catastrophic collapse of my emotions.

Even poor old pregnant Queen Kate in the hospital? Good for a five minute weep. I couldn't care two whigs for the monarchy, But a stranger's pain? Let the floodgates roll away.

My father died in a December. My closest friend of the time did also. In our family car. And worst of all, really, it's my estranged daughter's birthday. She was named for my dead friend. I don't know how many years she's been gone, I deliberately don't count them as the length of the chasm would probably astonish me. And make it worse.

Let me say it loud and clear. I don't like Christmas. I'm not in humbug status, just apathetic about everyone's jolly homes all posted on Facebook with the lights strung everywhere and this year it looks like pink and gold trees - whoa, nelly! - and last minute runs to Walmart for Chinese gifty tat. I like Solstice and would celebrate that in Toronto, but here there is nothing of secularism and paganism. That I can find anyway.

I've nowhere to run away to. One of my clan goes to Egypt every year to escape it. (I know, Egypt?!)
But he manages the annual Great Escape quite well. We discuss the ghosts of Christmas Past together. And there were many. And try to extract a modicum, a soupcon, of happiness out of it all. And can't.

A couple of bahs you might call us. And you're entitled. And chin up and chest out advisories? It just seems to make it worse.

So yeah, I'll let it flatten me like a steamroller.

And the one great cheering thought I have is that I know I am not alone..

Merry Mas

 

As a person who celebrates the solstices, yeah, call me pagan, whatever, I find the constant harassment of Christmas worshippers around me, well, stressful.

"Put Christ back in Christmas!!" bleat many, nearly in tears as they stagger from Mallwart with two laden trolleys of Chinese tat, clanking their way awkwardly across the parking lot. 

"Well, who took him out?" I want to shout back, "Happy Mas!"

And then I see a confidential note from Jesus (see picture above) posted and reposted across the vast etherworld of Facebook as an antidote to the - heaven forbid!  - admonition-wish-heresy of "Happy Holidays!"

I am forced to picture Jesus, on his not-birthday (born sometime in the spring, not winter as noted by eminent scholars) sobbing, broken-hearted, over the absence of Merry Christmas being said out loud by the English speaking section of this tiny planet. Mostly Mallwart people I'd surmise. 

I've never seen so many Jesus fans freak out so much at the innocuous sound of "Happy Holidays!" It gets savage, far, far removed from any Merry or Happy.

Do they not realize that Solstice was appropriated by the early Christians?

The Archbishop of Constantinople wrote that church fathers fixed the Nativity during the pagan holidays because "while the heathen were busied with their profane rites, the Christians might perform their holy ones without disturbance."

I'll let you dwell, but not for too long, on all those holy rites which make the profane of goat offerings seem seriously mild in comparison. And "without disturbance" brings starkly to mind centuries of child abuse.

Maybe I should respond to the hostile anguish of the Christ grievers:

"Return my stolen Solstice!"

I've got an excellent case.

The Gift of Wisdom

Age presents wisdom (acceptance, too) if we let it. For instance, happenings that would have devastated me years ago no longer do.

For the first time ever in my life I awoke this past Christmas morning with nothing to open. In past years the pickings were getting slimmer but there was always something. It was a strange feeling, this absence of even a token, but also exhilarating in that our worst fears are often nothing to be afraid of. I don't really celebrate Christmas anymore. I find it so far removed from peace and goodwill as to be oxymoronic. A friend worked on the distress lines in Toronto and told me this is the peak season for violence, mayhem and murders and both attempted and real suicides and alcohol poisonings.

So I batten down the hatches, light a candle or two, remember my loved ones, both past and present and cook myself a turkey with all the trimmings. I also carefully select those I visit. I am partial to the families that still believe in magic. And there are a few. And I visited these and shed some tears in private afterwards. Missing my own. Intensely.

But also appreciative of my life, alone or with others. It is always my choice and how wonderful is that for a gregarious loner?

So no, this is not a pity pot post. Just a reflection on my life and the wee bits of growth and evolution I have had on my journey. A wise shaman said to me one time: Happiness is a direct result of the subtraction of stuff.

So I was alone. But not lonely.

"Tis The Season

'Tis the season
And good reason
To wish you all ~
Renewal
Hope
Love
Abundance
Light from darkness
Peace from strife
But
Most
Of
All
~
~
~
~
Contentment.

Ita's List

The graveyard had a festive look to it. A light layer of snow had smoothed out the hodge podge of headstones, black, grey, white, marble, wood, stone, cast iron. Gave it a pleasing December uniformity. I slowed and stopped, taken by a stooped figure bent over a grave.

Her appearance was edging more towards the grotesque than the eccentric. A long greenish coat, hooded. Footwear that could only be described as old-fashioned with ancient galoshes, unfastened, flapping around her ankles as she trod gingerly around the oversized graveyard plot, leaving huge footprints.

A massive scarf, knitted in the colours of a shabby rainbow, bleeding dropped stitches and a half-hearted incomplete fringe at one end was thrown around her neck. She had stuffed a large pair of snow-mobile mitts into each capacious pocket of the coat.

The hair I could see was scandalous. Her yellowed scalp bore an inch of white roots followed by the lankest blackest straightness of any hair I'd ever seen. I felt an unwelcome revulsion at the filth of it.

A much younger woman stood off to the side, bored, texting furiously on a pink pad. She didn't even raise her eyes to look at me as I approached the older woman.

She was very busy, I could see that. Draping pieces of Christmas tinsel on to some small wooden crosses. Standing back to evaluate her handiwork. Moving forward again to adjust the sparkled thread in some intrinsic pattern only she was privy to.

"A time of remembrance" I said to her, a bit nervously, for how dare I intrude like this. A stranger. A nosy stranger.

"Yes, my darling," she said, as only old women of Newfoundland would speak to someone they didn't know. Something caught in my throat. How long had it been since I'd been someone's darling? I wanted to hear it again.

"A lot of family graves here, then?" I gestured at the many crosses.

"I replaces them every few year, my darling", she stood up painfully. I was surprised at her height. A tall outport woman, far, far older than I had originally guessed.

I told her who I was. I told her I was a writer.

"I'm Ita O'Neill, my darling," she said, "and this here is my family!" and she slowly waved her hand out over the plot as if introducing everyone. I bowed generally in their direction.

"I'm ninety-one," she said then, "and over there is my great-grand-daughter, her nose and hands so busy with no one who is here, the way of things now, right my darling?" I nodded. We are all so busy with no one who is here, I thought. It is easier than dealing with those who are.

"And these," and she spread her hands outwards and over the graves, "are my babies."

"Your babies?"

"My ten babies. Imagine that. All dead within a week of their coming into the world. Some right after their birthing. Some within a few days, no doctoring then. No reasons at all. All born with my black hair. All dying. None to have a birthday or Christmas or schooling." She draped a piece of tinsel over the last white cross.

"Well nigh over sixty years ago now since the last one. Albert. I gave them all names when I put the holy water on their foreheads. I never had the money for a real headstone. With the names all fancy on it. A list, like."

"Maybe this way is better," I offered, "Now they've all got their own markers."

"And I'm the only one now who knows which darling is under each cross."

"Tell me," I said, "I'll remember".

Bernadette. Rosemary. Peter. John. Annie. Bernard. Sheila. William. Agnes. Albert.

Ho Ho Ho

“Gawd!” he sez to me last night, “I just hate this season, how 'bout you?”

“I wouldn't say hate,” I responded, “Indifference would be my default position on it.”

“Ah, good one!” he sez, “How 'bout the rest of ye?”

“Stressful.”
“Frantic.”
“Busy.”
“Unhappy.”
“Depressed.”
“Lonely.”

Not one person out of about twenty around us said:

Happy.
Joyful.
Content.
Peaceful.

“For Gawd's sake,” I said, “Why don't ye all pay attention to those ads and commercials and follow the instructions, like?”

I got a laugh, I did.

>
>

PS My interwebz got unbelievably worse, now offering me days of no connection due to too many users on the system, so forgive me if I'm not visiting you as much as I'd like or responding to comments. I am seriously considering going back to dial-up and twice weekly visits to my favourite WIFI cafe. Desperation-top-of-the-line letters to the premier of this province go unanswered. And right she is - why should the Blackberried One care about her peasants?

Hash/2

How on earth do people do it?

The maximum crowd I ever had to cook for was 36, a daunting task about 15 years ago for my annual Ladies' Brunch/Women's Christmas.

Today, at the Hash, food was prepared for ninety people. 90! And mainly by one person.

And yes, it was all hash. Hash turkey, hash ham, hash beef, hash beans, hash potatoes. All piping hot set upon the outside BBQ, portable electric roasting tins, oven, stove top and hot plates. At one point I could almost see the sides of the house bulge with all the guests wandering about.

The old folk have passed on now but their adult children use the house for parties and get-togethers and summer and winter stays and hunting (the menfolk all went out to hunt a moose early this morning, and yes, they were successful).

All ages were in attendance and there must have been forty different kinds of dessert all homemade. The walls were covered in the paintings of the deceased matriarch whom I knew for a few years before she died. A well-known artist.

The history of the family has been written by a professor out of Boston. Massachusetts and Newfoundland are so well connected through the centuries by the intermingled fishing grounds that Massachusetts is still called “The Boston States” here. The family is still very active in fishing and now it is a daughter, recently certified as a master mariner, who is set to take it over.

I met many interesting people including the family chaplain, a couple of lawyers, a media consultant, a police chief, a politician and a judge. Before I left, I was presented with a copy of the aforementioned book which I can hardly wait to get into it as it reads like a novel. I can't imagine fishing in these tiny dories out in the rough ocean. Countless fishermen died in them, including the direct ancestor of the host family who left a wife and seven young children who were all successful in spite of their incredible poverty.

Along the way over the holidays, a friend gave me this gorgeous handmade driftwood/drift glass piece to hang in my window.



It says:

“How Sweet The Salty Air”.

But as “Alone at Sea” reminds me, the sea can be deadly too.

Hash

What an interesting season this is turning out to be for me.

I read one of my stories to a wonderfully captive audience at a steak BBQ (you read that correctly!) in a town not too far from here yesterday. What an honour it is to be asked to share one's words with others. I never plan to "get over" that feeling. It is humbling and wondrous all at the same time.

My original holiday season plans have been scattered to the high winds so for now I have settled down with my beloved canine in my lovely little home on the bay.

I am continually astonished at the number of invitations that have come to my house via email, phonelines and snail mail.

One I will not miss is an invitation to a "Hash Party" on Boxing Day.

On the invitation itself, several definitions of the word were helpfully researched and offered:

"A large number of people gathered in small places to consume various types of hash and to reminisce, socialize and enjoy family and friends."

"A reworking of old and familiar material, food, music, relationships."

I can hardly wait.

PS And the "resin" definition was covered also, thanks!

The Annual Trek to Granny's

At Christmas time each year, the layer of unhappiness lying over our childhood home in Ireland was more tangible with each year that passed.

After they got married, my mother went to live with my father and his widowed mother. My father was the only son in a family of six - all the girls were older than him and all these women he grew up with literally adored him. He never had to lift a finger. After about six months, when my mother was pregnant with me, she and her mother-in-law had a huge fight and my mother left, towing the beloved and forever worshipped son behind her.

From then on, she refused to have anything to do with her mother-in-law but parcels would arrive occasionally for me in the post, containing dolls or games.

On Christmas Day, the unspoken hovered around the turkey and the tree. Because my mother refused to have her mother-in-law in her home, her own mother was banned as well, thus absenting both grannies from our table.

On St. Stephen's Day (Boxing Day), pre-car ownership, my father would pack up a few of the older children and take us by way of train but when that service was cancelled on a bus all the way down to his mother's house which was in a small town in east Cork. I remember it as always raining, with steaming windows and smelly wool coats on everyone.

My grandmother would be overjoyed to see us. I was always a little afraid of her, she was thin as a rail and wore her hair in a tight silver bun and called my father by his diminutive "Jimmy" which I found very amusing. Her table groaned with goodies, endless tins of biscuits, another turkey, fruit cakes, sweets in boxes, and extravagant presents for the children. We were on our best behaviour because we knew what was coming.

Her beloved Jimmy and herself would get caught up on all the news. Even then, I noticed a tightness to her lips when my mother's name was mentioned. I would study the odd British type pictures on her walls and she had the only chaise lounge I had ever seen in a house prior to then. It lay in glory by the front window, upholstered in red damask with a shawl draped carefully across the back of it. And I remember wondering if Granny ever fainted on it when we left and did she have smelling salts to revive herself.

She asked me about my "books". Books in those days were an old-fashioned term for the class (grade) you were in.

"What book are you in?"

"Two, Granny".

"Ah," she'd say,nodding, "You'll be writing them soon enough. Now who does she look like Jimmy? Not like our side at all."

I never could take a conversation with her anywhere. I never could respond beyond her first question as with her next one she'd always involve my father who would always turn the question back on her.

"Mother," he'd say, "Sure I think she's got a great look of you, myself."

Which I knew to be a great white lie, as everyone said I looked like my other granny.

When we left, stuffed to the point where we all should have been mounted on her parlour wall, she'd catch the wrist of each child in a strong grip and lay on the coin. Huge amounts for those days. I would get a whole half-crown and the boys would get a shilling each. In farewell, she would never kiss us or hug us and she'd shake my father's hand and watch us all as we traipsed slowly down the hill from her house.

Daddy was always irritable on the endless, steamy bus-ride back to the city. We'd be complaining we'd missed the Wren Boys, we always missed the Wren Boys every year because of the trek to Granny's.

But fondling the magical possibilities of the coins in our pockets made up for a lot.

Look Carefully

at the NASA photo above and you'll see a little white dot. This minute speck is Earth seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it exits the solar system, nearly 4 billion miles away.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Currently I'm in: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Why: Waiting for daughter's flight from Toronto.
Listening to: Maddie Prior, Steeleye Span ("all around my hat")
Watched: A lecture by Naomi Wolf on The end of America
Weather is: Unbelievably mild
Planning: A midnight picnic of seafood and salad
Wrote: A strange story of a marriage which falls apart.

My wish for everyone out there: Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís!

Which translates to: May we all be alive this time next year, which was said as a prayer during the nights of Advent when the candle in the window was lit by the youngest of the house when I was growing up in Ireland.

Thank you all, my faithful blog readers and writers!

'Tis the Season

This scene (looking out my front door) was a meditation to me today, the pink blush of sunset tinting the bay, the very little snow we have whitening up the world like fresh laundry. It is warm - +10C. The Gulf Stream swathes this part of Newfoundland in a warm cuddle.

I am reminded of friends and relatives not doing so well at this time of the year.

One dear friend has got bone marrow tests coming up very shortly, her white blood cell count is very low and we are worried for her.

My daughter, who has MS, is going through a very bad cycle with tremors and joint pain.

My nephew has a court appearance tomorrow due to his ongoing addiction to drugs and his methods of securing them. All history now (we pray) as he has been clean and sober for over a year and we are hoping the judge will take that into account in the sentencing.

Last year another friend moved to BC with her partner to take care of her mother who was blind and debilitated due to diabetes. And her mother just died unexpectedly with the house all decorated. She died in my friend's arms as she was putting her to bed.

And all around me the shopping continues, the last minutes stresses. I'm glad I backed away from the insanity years ago and celebrate winter solstice - and very quietly at that.

A friend who used to work on the 911 lines in Toronto said it was the worst time of the year for domestic violence and suicides.

I'll be on the road on Christmas Day, heading back to Toronto for several months.

I was asking my daughter about seasonal memories and the one that stands out for us is the time we jumped in the car with my granddaughter and headed down to South Carolina in one stretch of shared driving on Christmas Eve and walked on the beach on Christmas Day. Myrtle Beach was abandoned, we had it all to ourselves and it was wonderful.

The big gatherings in Ireland were good but not really memorable. It is funny, that. I find in my family that we all revert to our old familial childish patterns when we get together, some of which should have been thrown out years ago. The big gatherings in Toronto, likewise. So much work and so much stress choosing the gifts, cooking and baking for often upwards of twenty people (who always seemed to stay over for Boxing Day Brunch!) and this total anti-climactic feeling afterwards. And the wreckage to clean up.

I'll probably celebrate "Nollaig na Mban" when I get back to Toronto. This is "Women's Christmas" which was my mother's big event of the season when all the females would get together on January 6th and dispose of the old year and welcome in the new.

Peace.