Illustration by Alex Chen
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Every year in early December I have a moment of shame when I realize that, once again, I’ve neglected to plan a Christmas party. I meant to, of course. Back in January (this and every January) I vowed that this was to be the year I would finally do it. I would overcome my introversion and inertia, throw on some holiday music and invite some friends over. How hard could it be?
But pretending it’s not a big deal never works. I could never just invite a bunch of people to my haphazardly decorated house and serve them store-bought snacks. I grew up in the golden age of suburban Christmas parties. I know how these things are supposed to be done.
The Christmas party was an entrenched tradition in my family. The preparations began weeks earlier. My mother juggled the invitations, planning, shopping, baking, cleaning and decorating. There would be special trips to Safeway for supplies: maraschino cherries in glass jars, tins of smoked oysters, frozen strawberries and an exceptional amount of flour, sugar and butter. She spent entire weekends baking endless batches of cookies that my siblings and I were warned not to touch – they’re for the party! Somehow, she also wrangled three children and spent long shifts on her feet as a geriatric nurse.
My toddler is the star of my Nonna’s retirement home
Although my dad helped, notably by going out the night before and borrowing chairs from all our neighbours, it was an incredible amount of work for her. Even if I didn’t let my ambitions dwindle by mid-January and really did spend all year preparing, I still don’t think I could manage it. Some years my musings about holding a party are derailed when I realize I’ll have to clear the pile of bills and newspapers off the dining room table.
Growing up, by early December every piece of Tupperware we owned was filled with party food and stacked neatly in the deep freeze, labelled with masking tape and my mother’s ballpoint scrawl. Garland would go up around the house, fancy paper napkins with snowflakes emerged from storage and the plastic poinsettia was dusted off. My parents straightened up the basement in sections, declaring the clean areas off limits to us kids. They were neat and tidy and ready for the party, and they were sure as hell going to stay that way.
The day of the party, my mother would spend the hours before the first guests arrived in an endless whirl, laying out no less than 25 different hors d’oeuvres. Chicken wings in their special copper serving pot, warmed by a candle below. Sculpted gelatin salads, shiny and wobbling ever-so-slightly. Cold cuts, chopped vegetables displayed in patterns. Pies, nuts, cookies, candy and bars. I need to lie down just thinking of the effort involved.
Then the guests arrived and filed into our wood-panelled basement for hours of eating and talking and laughing. Even with the neighbours’ kitchen chairs there were barely enough seats for everyone. Friends filled their plates, joking that they had waited all year for more of these cheese puffs. There was a playroom for the kids which kept us entertained for a few hours, but we didn’t have the stamina of the adults. They chattered away happily long after the children became droopy and irritable.
This is how the years passed. At each party the children got a little taller, until one year they were old enough to stay home alone. I stopped going to my parents’ friends’ holiday parties. I started to get annoyed by my mother’s weeks of preparation. What was the point? But the party was still going strong when I moved out. I stopped by once when I was in my 20s to eat cheese puffs and shortbread and give unimpressive answers to questions about what I was up to these days.
Eventually the crowd thinned and there was no need to borrow chairs from the neighbours. It became an every-other-year occurrence for a while, until my father died, and then there were no more Christmas parties. It wouldn’t be the same. Maybe my mother didn’t see a point.
Years later when she was dying, my mother’s friends gathered at her bedside. They talked for hours and they talked about her Christmas parties. They held her efforts in their memories and appreciated all she had done. I never really understood until then. A modest party in a basement is friendship. All that planning and baking and cleaning is what knit lives together over decades. This is how we take care of one another.
And this is why, a month from now, I’ll find myself once again vowing to throw a holiday party. I want to be the one who brings people together. It seems more important than ever. When everything feels like it’s falling apart, the centre that holds everything together is made of cheese puffs, dip and gelatin salads.
Pamela Haskell lives in Calgary.