Relax, it’s Christmas ~ December 12, 1991

David Heiller

Thank goodness for folks like Vonnie Vayder. She imparted a bit of wisdom the other day that almost stopped me in my tracks.

I had just taken a picture of her with some of her students at the Pine County Area Learning Center. They had painted a beautiful Christmas card, four feet high by eight feet wide, and placed it outside their school in Finlayson.

I was flustered by a day with too much to do, with a sick little girl, with forgetting my camera, with a dozen other pressures that always seem to rear up at this time of year, at Christmas-time.

As Vonnie and I walked back into the school, I asked her what she liked about making Christmas cards with her students. She liked the cooperation it brought out, she said. And she said that it gives a more realistic sense of Christmas than what the students might see on television commercials, for example.

Christmas doesn’t always live up to a person’s expectations, she said. “And they (students) get uptight about that,” she said.

That’s what stopped me. She had put words to a truth that had been working its way forward in my mind the past week, and especially that day: I was blaming my pressure-filled day partly on Christmas.

Malika, Noah and Joey: 
scoping out a tree with Queen Ida

I have expectations that this is supposed to be a time of joy and love, a time of fellowship with family and friends. Certainly it is all that. But it’s also a hectic time. At home there is planning and preparing for parties and house guests, there’s house cleaning, tree decorating, cookie making, and much more, not to mention the regular household chores.

At work this time of year, running the newspaper means selling many ads, taking photos here and there, covering the news, writing stories, paying bills, collecting money (these last two go hand in hand), and lots more too boring to mention.

It all adds up to a time of year that doesn’t mesh too well with people gaily laughing and chattering over their favorite champagne, i.e. the television version of Christmas.

THERE’S SO MUCH to enjoy this time of year. Like on Sunday, when we cut our Christmas tree with the help of friend and neighbor Deane Hillbrand. He had some white spruce that needed thinning. We looked over his woodlot, and compared this one and that. Finally we settled on a pretty one for our living room and a smaller one for Noah’s school classroom.

Deane and Kathrine.

Deane is happy to share his trees. He’s been meaning to thin them anyway. What better way than to have them used for Christmas trees in the process? Afterwards, his brother Steve joined us, and we all visited over hot chocolate and cookies. It was fun.

Then we went home and decorated the tree. We put on four strings of lights, and lots of ornaments. (Most of them are on the bottom of the tree, where the kids could reach.) We got out the boxes that hold the crèche and Wise Men and candles and centerpiece and a dozen other Christmas garlands, wreaths, and do-hickeys.

It was a lot of work, setting this all up, and I said as much to Cindy as we sat, stooped and tired, in the sauna that night. “Yeah, but it’s Christmas,” she said. She went on to say that this is a busy time of year, but what better thing to be busy with than cutting and decorating a Christmas tree. When I look at the tree, radiant with color and light, I can see she’s right.

And when I think of the ALC students working together on a giant Christmas card for the community of Finlayson to enjoy, I know Vonnie Vayder is right too: we have to create our own Christmas expectations, and live up to them, and not worry about anyone else’s.

It’s a good lesson to carry with us through the holidays: relax and enjoy this special season the way you like to, the way that’s best for you.