This Christmas was my first Christmas dinner in two years. The story below is about why I didn’t have one last year.
Christmas. 2009. My ski bum sister was ski bumming at Sun Peaks Mountain Resort, just outside of Kamloops. Ski bums being the bottom feeders they are, neither my sister, nor Garth (her Aussie boyfriend), were able to get time off to come to Medicine Hat for the traditional sometimes white/sometimes brown Selkirk family Christmas. For the first time ever, we were going to celebrate Christmas somewhere else.
The plan: Load up the family Previa (sadly, no longer a family VW) on Christmas morning and make the 12-hour forced march of a drive to Sun Peaks with all the crucial elements of Christmas: presents (required), family members (optional), and booze (essential). Being good Canadians and having Thanksgiving spaced appropriately far enough away from Christmas, our Jesus-inspired dinner is always a turkey. Occasionally a ham is suggested, and even encouraged by one family member, but it’s always turkey for the win!
Christmas dinner is paramount to any Selkirk Christmas. Sure we spend time together – and sometimes we even get along – but the holiday is really about the Christmas meal. With my occasionally culinary challenged sister hosting Christmas, we all thought it best to cook a turkey the day before, and bring it with us to Sun Peaks. Roxanne would whip up the Christmas accompaniments, Christmas dinner would be served, and the day’s goal would be achieved!
The day began like every other Selkirk family vacation. We were on the road before dawn after a short stop at the (thankfully open) Tim Hortons. Markus was passed out before we were even out of the city. The family cooler was loaded with snacks, the ipods loaded with music, our hearts loaded with Christmas cheer.
At 6 pm Christmas Day, we rolled up to our mountain side hotel. At 6:10 we checked into our above-average room (housekeeper family discount!). At 6:12 the power went out. For the entire conglomerate of condos, shops, and hotels that constitutes the Sun Peaks village. Imagine, a magical collection of hospitality and dwellings on charming streets without signs, and thoughtfully designed so that when one person loses power, everyone does! What team spirit!
We drove around in the winter darkness with only the Previa headlights to guide us. The building signs and labels were swallowed by the darkness. No matter how many laps we did of the village while on the phone with Roxanne, our collective navigational genius failed us. Eventually my darling sister set out with a flashlight to hunt us down and save the final threads of our Christmas spirit.
The first hour of the power outage went smoothly. We exchanged hugs and greetings, opened presents by candlelight, and admired our good planning to cook the turkey the day before while the rest of village scrambled to figure out what to do with a partially cooked turkey. The second hour went even smoother as we drank all the wine we brought and polished off the chips and cheezies. During the third hour, we warmed out souls to the soundtrack of Charlie Brown’s Christmas (thank you laptop battery), and warmed our throats with the majority of the bottle of maple whiskey. During the fourth hour of power outage, the family brain trust hurriedly agreed that the power was probably not coming on any time soon, and in the name of survival we needed to carve up the turkey! Carve we did, and it was turkey sandwiches all around for our candle-lit Christmas dinner.
Two hours later, as well lay our heads to rest, the power came back on. Sleep came easy knowing that we had not only celebrated Christmas, but had also bypassed the Boxing Day necessity of eating leftovers and therefore would have no reason to wake up the next morning at all. But wake up we did. The mountains were calling and the skis were freshly waxed. Throughout the day, everyone on the chair lift was trading stories about what they had to do to save (or purge) their Christmas turkey, and through an assortment of conversations we learned the cause of the Christmas outage. Naturally, it was the clever incompetence of one person. One individual made one driving error and drove into one pole. Outing the power for one village, but ruining the Christmas dinner of thousands!
There are several lessons to be learned from this Christmas tale. Firstly, in the Grinch-free 21st century, it’s still possible for one individual to ruin Christmas. Secondly, never travel anywhere without a bottle of maple whiskey, and lastly, always cook your turkey in advance!
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