School ended with a special event, as if to fuel the excitement even more. We got to enjoy a special evening with our teachers; I even won a big gift once in second grade. I have specific memories that are different for each year, but some of them blur together, and I can’t remember exactly which year they were from.
One thing that never failed to happen was when my mom would play her Beau Dommage album while cooking. To the tune of “December 23,” I experienced the feverish anticipation—that moment just before Christmas—which, over time, became just as important as Christmas itself. Years later, it’s as if my Christmas couldn’t begin unless I’d heard that song on the 23rd while making the final preparations, just like Mom… It’s become a tradition: my kids know it by heart and know—just as I did—that it’s the signal!
December 23rd at our house is the day we finish everything… Wrapping paper swirls about, the aroma of the final dishes fills the air, the icing for the Christmas cookies flows freely, and the final cleanup takes place amid joyful chaos… It’s like a dance, a more or less well-rehearsed routine that ultimately brings us all together just in time for the big day… My children get to experience a reenactment of my childhood days, and the same pre-Christmas frenzy fills the house to the same tunes…
I no longer decorate at the last minute like Mom used to. We have our own traditions too—the ones I wanted for the kids. We have our rituals and some old ones too, but basically, there’s that same excitement, that nervous energy, and for me, that nostalgia… There are all these little things we do that, over the years, end up creating a sort of countdown—a countdown of wonderful little moments repeated year after year between the end of school and that famous evening.
“In my mind’s eye, there’s an old Christmas tree with a nativity scene beneath it,” for my kids, there’s no nativity scene and no rubber Saint Joseph, but some traditions are harder to shake than others, and we’ll keep singing “Joyeux Noël à monsieur Côté” on December 23 for a long time to come, because it’s rooted in our hearts and minds and it ignites that Christmas magic within us just in time for Christmas Eve!
Sometimes the anticipation is better than the moment itself, snuggled up under blankets watching an old Christmas movie. The 23rd comes to an end; we’ve gone through the same routine as every year, with just a few small variations… Mom must have danced the same steps, all alone at home…One day, this “two-day-before” won’t have the same resonance, when my children teach the dance to my grandchildren—hoping they’ll still sing just like I do: “December 23rd, Merry Christmas, Mr. Côté, bye-bye, little one—see you again on January 7th!!” so that some of that excitement I love so much remains in their own “day before the day before”—and plenty of nostalgia in my own…
“Sometimes I’m tempted to go see her and talk to her
Star Fairy, I wasn’t ready—could I start over…?”