The first real brush of snow for the season has softened the landscape up behind the house. First snow does that. It hides some of the summer toys that were left out in the garden. It traps the occasional basketball. Little plastic shovels and Paw Patrol toys also get trapped. The recently discarded Christmas tree with bits of tinsel still clinging to it looked sad in the snow but still offered happy memories of Christmas 2024. Lots of family and smiles, and good times in our home.
This year’s version of “The Furlong Christmas Tree” we found out close to the road on our own property. I liked that. We always have a real tree. My three sons always have a real tree like God intended. That means I can’t always look for the “perfect” tree. There has to be compromise with being “from our own property” – an important part of the equation. This year’s version wasn’t a bad Christmas tree, but it wasn’t perfect. It was a bit flawed.
One year, up back of our property on what was crown land, we cut a perfectly shaped tree and hauled it back down the paths to our house. It was majestic and looked great when decorated and lit up, but the problem was that it wasn’t a fir tree. It was a spruce tree. Substantial difference. By New Years Day there was hardly a needle left. Every time the front door of our home closed a shower of needles fell to the carpet. You could HEAR them.
That was all part of Christmas, and even as I watched the first snow fly this year, my eye caught sight of a well-shaped fir tree about halfway up the path towards the field behind our house. It wasn’t big but I reminded myself that I had 11 months to cut some space around it and get some water on it so it could grow into December of 2025.
It was a nice thought but a sobering moment for me as well. I was reminded that the list of players in our Christmas play changes over the years. When my family was young, we visited the same people in the same order on Christmas Eve. There was my Aunt Madge and then Aunt Agnes at her home. Then we went to visit my brother Johnny and his family. We also on our second last stop of the evening visited by best friend from childhood and his family. I also had a schoolmate who was resident at St. Patrick’s Mercy Home, and we always visited him.
Our final stop on the way back home to the country was Midnight Mass although by the time my boys came along and were old enough to attend, Midnight Mass started at 8 p.m. or whenever St. Patrick’s Church in the west end was full. At some point it stopped being full and eventually closed and was sold. It sits silent and empty now which is part of a long and tragic story, but I think all “west-enders” in St. John’s miss the sound of St. Patrick’s bells ringing out what Leonard Cohen so beautifully called “the blessed hours chime”.
All of that now brings me to that Christmas Eve “litany” that changes from year to year but is always part of lives. Everyone on that visiting list that I have mentioned, including the church, is no more. All are gone and in there lies the ultimate lesson.
There are no guarantees for our next Christmas. No guarantees for the tree or for us for that matter. There is hope and hope in our lives matters. I have picked out next year’s tree and it is a kind of wager and a prayer that I will make it.
You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]