We’re just shy of 4 weeks from Christmas Eve. The lightly falling snow is hardly objectionable in this charismatic border of youthful imagery, planned generosity and underlying spirituality. Ask any Northerner who has had to endure the indignity of Christmas without snow – it’s always material for conflicting appeal.
I recall in particular one snowy Christmas Eve when visiting my parents. After dinner of my mother’s signature tourtière and some equally memorable dessert my father (who did not drink alcohol) sought to amuse himself out-of-doors in the accumulating snow. I suspect I instead deferred to the drawing room to sit by the fire with a pause café. Meanwhile my father, while strolling about the snowbound driveway, was drawn to the sound of a whining cat. His acute hearing located the source of the yowl across the street under a front door step of our neighbours. The house lights were out and apparently no one was at home (though he did not suspect or recollect that the feline belonged to the household).
Carefully approaching the step – and, with what I imagine was considerable difficulty in the darkness and snow – he determined the distraught animal was under the step attempting to escape the weather. Somehow he was able to grasp the animal and he carried it inside his flapping parka and returned home on the other side of the street. After removing his soiled footwear, he proceeded from the garage with the cat into the kitchen where my mother stood at the counter attending no doubt to the complicated breakfast to follow on Christmas morning (Champagne with fresh orange juice, buttery scrambled eggs with filet mignon and fresh croissant with homemade peach jam brightened with gems of Maraschino cherries).
When my father exposed the furry creature, my mother immediately arrested her wooden spoon on the kitchen counter and proclaimed uncompromisingly, “That’s not staying in here!” And that was the end of that discussion. My father was not about to enter into an argument of this contaminating character with my mother on Christmas Eve! Accordingly, in his usual concise manner, he – and the cat – removed themselves from the pristine territory and retired to the comfort of the garage where my father had already planted a lounge chair with a blanket. The garage was his chosen venue for tomorrow evening’s predicted ceremony of shucking fresh oysters from his native New Brunswick (an annual tradition).
In the meantime, urgency demanded something for the cat. He ended building a small house – which he rejoiced in calling a cat house – reminiscent of a dog house. Initially it hadn’t a door. It was more designed to be a retreat from the cold. He decided to place the cat house outside the back garage door on the garden sidewalk (now amply covered in white snow).
My father was professionally educated as an electrical engineer at the University of New Brunswick. Accordingly it was but a small leap to the installation of a lightbulb hung inside the cat house. The light was connected by an extension cord attached to a nearby outside wall outlet. The roof of the cat house opened for convenience.
That pretty much summarizes the critical detail of this account. It remains only to observe that the little cat – which my father called “Feraddy” (a play on “for rat) – became his faithful companion (in the garage). There, for example, he might on occasion be seen to be brushing the prone cat on the garage floor with an old broom.
One day many months – maybe even years – afterwards, I visited my parents as was my custom. When I met my father – secured as always in his drawing room in the garage – he announced Feraddy had “gone into space”. It was the most remorseful I had ever seen him.
Post Scriptum:
Hello, js!
Thank-you for your email. So pleased you enjoyed the “Christmas Story”. You must tell me what designated beast applied to you.
Christmas was a huge deal in our family. Not only rituals – “religiously” repeated annually – the tourtière and oysters aforementioned but also significant time thresholds, divided between my sister and I creeping down the stairs very early in the morning to collect whatever was in our hanging stockings by the fireplace; then later (when my parents had awakened) sitting together by the tree, receiving the first of a succession of gifts; then breakfast in the dining room (my introductory grace given in Latin as I had done in the Grand Hall as a Prefect at St. Andrew’s College, candelabra, crystal Champagne glasses, Lalique and Crown Derby flatware with Henry Birks sterling silver cutlery; followed by magnificent fresh coffee; then retirement to the drawing room for more presents, now some from my sister and me to our parents; my father’s sermon; then gifts and cards from non-family members. It included every year a “reading” by my father, who routinely worked late into the night on Christmas Eve preparing the epistle he would deliver to a silent family beside the glistening Christmas tree and roaring fireplace.
Afterwards snoozing in the den was normal. We had to prepare for mother’s spectacular dinner that was yet to come – the crown of which was a flaming pudding.
Billy
On Nov 23, 2025, at 4:09 PM, stephen harvey
tablerockarts@gmail.com
A lovely Christmas Story which reminded me of the Christmas song “The Friendly Beasts” and the occasions in my childhood when my whole family would gather around the fire and sing the song each family member as a designated beast. It was the only time I would hear my grandfather, a United Church Minister, sing and he would be off key.
Filet mignon for breakfast, goodness me.
just stephen