Where is Clark Griswold When You Need Him?

The movie Christmas Vacation is a holiday favorite in our house. The adventures of Clark Griswold and his family never seem to get old. With COVID making family Christmas gatherings impossible this year, I have been thinking a lot about Christmas in our house growing up and realized that we had more than a few things in common with the Griswold family.

Light Up

In the ’60s, long before energy conservation was “a thing”, it was pretty much expected that your house would have outdoor Christmas lights up. Now we are not talking a Clark Griswold type light show that could be seen from outer space, but a nice string of lights along the front of the house was the norm. Being the detail oriented fellow that our dad was, our lights were always strung along the front of the house with laser like precision. Nary a bend or dip to be seen and heaven forbid if a light would burn out. While most neighbors would put up multi colored lights or a red green combination, ours were always all green. I never did ask dad why this was but maybe he was just ahead of his time in making an environmental statement.

The lights on our Christmas tree were also strung with great precision, with dad making sure that they were perfectly distributed. Decorating the tree was one of the highlights of the season for we kids, and with five of us it was usually pandemonium. To keep things under control and decorated to dad’s standards, we were relegated to putting on the icicles which were the crowning touch on the tree. I remember very clearly, dad giving us kids directions as to how to flick our wrist when putting on the icicles so that they would hang “just so” on the tree. With five of us doing this, it usually meant that all the other tree decorations were completely covered with icicles. That was one shiny tree!

Our Favorite Things

Like Clark Griswold, dad always got a Christmas bonus. Not a swimming pool sized bonus as Clark was expecting, but one that meant special treats that we did not have any other time of year. I think I can speak for all five of us kids when I say that the case of Pop Shoppe soda that always arrived a few days before Christmas was our favorite. With seven people in the house and a total of 24 bottles, it was smart to have a strategy figured out ahead of time to ensure that you could have more than one bottle before they were all gone. Pop Shoppe was also accompanied by a treasured box of mandarin oranges that also got eaten in short order. Sadly, the Pop Shoppe soda was no more after a mysterious orange soda stain appeared on the living room carpet…..

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The other thing we always waited for with great anticipation was a box from our grandmother in Vancouver containing a big bunch of holly and a cracker box full of the best shortbread you have ever tasted. I don’t think mom really knew what to do with the holly but we all focused on the shortbread and suffice to say it was all gone in short order.

Big Sis, being the Christmas baking guru of the family, has tried more than once to recreate grandma’s shortbread but it never quite comes out the same as grandma’s even when she uses her recipe.

Relatively Speaking

One of my favorite characters from the Christmas Vacation movie is Aunt Bethany who, as my son says, is “on her own program”. I think every family has at least one relative like this and our family is no exception.

Brian was our cousin and he would from time to time spend Christmas with us. He was quite the memorable character with a big, beautiful baritone voice, a questionable toupee, and a hobby of going to Vegas to see if he could get on stage and sing with big name entertainers. I think he actually was successful once with Wayne Newton.

Brian had the physique that lent itself to playing Santa Claus and for many years he was in great demand doing this. Sometimes he would come over to a family gathering after one of his “gigs.” I remember him standing in mom and dad’s living room in his Santa suit belting out ” Sixteen Tons” (a song about the hard life of coal miners), which for some reason was his favorite song. A scenario that you don’t easily forget.

Grandma in her dotage also provided some Christmas excitement one year when she, for some unknown reason, decided to rearrange gifts tags on the presents under the tree. As you can imagine, this added a whole other level of pandemonium to present opening on Christmas day. Mom did the best she could to sort things out, but I still think this gift tag switching is the reason that Big Sis got the Chatty Cathy doll that I had asked Santa to bring me.

Fowl Ball

With the big family that we had, Christmas dinner was always a large affair with at least ten people at the table and some years closer to twenty. This meant a large turkey and also meant quite the production getting it thawed and into the oven in time to be ready for dinner.

One of the memorable scenes in Christmas Vacation is when Clark starts carving their Christmas turkey and it explodes. There were never any turkey explosions in our house but there was an ongoing debate between my parents as to whether or not the turkey was overcooked and dry. For some reason this was important to dad but for the rest of us we just poured on the gravy and enjoyed it.

The Games People Play

While the post dinner excitement in the Christmas Vacation movie involved a kidnapping, at our family gatherings a post Christmas dinner game of Charades is a tradition. But this is not just any game of Charades; we are talking “full contact, trash talking, neighbors wondering what the noise is all about” Charades. Usually it is girls against the guys with each side bending the rules as far as they can which inevitably leads to both sides accusing the other of cheating. I can’t recall a year where there was agreement on who won.

As our children got older and started bringing potential spouses to family Christmas, Charades became something of a litmus test. Were they willing to play and how loud could they yell when the winner was contested? I am happy to say that we have several who passed this test and gamely participate each year.

Merry Christmas To All and To All a Goodnight!

I know, this is from A Christmas Carol, not Christmas Vacation, but it seemed only fitting to end this way. Christmas 2020 will be very different from Christmas’ past for all of us. It will be isolating and strange but we sincerely hope you find ways to still enjoy the holiday season. For our part, we are investigating how we might have a family game of Charades over Zoom…..

Betty Would Love That!

And after such a trying year, we are in need of a “recharge,” so we are going to take a break to let our creative juices flow and come back better than ever. We plan to return in January with more delightful and thought provoking posts. In the meantime in the interests of creativity, we will be gorging ourselves on Butter Tarts, Oh Henry Balls and Three Sisters Wine.

Betty Would Love That Too!

As our last post until 2021, we three sisters of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Shoes wish you a safe, healthy Christmas season and a much, much better 2021. And in the words of Dr. Bonnie, our beloved Provincial Health Officer here in British Columbia:

Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe.