Edmonton Journal - Christmas Time in the City: An Edmonton Journal Holiday Anthology

Christmas. Its the season of love and giving and peace and hope. Yet its also a season of stresses and challenges, when people can be driven to distraction by pressure to buy the right gift, cook the right meal, attend the right party, sing the right songs, give the right holiday greeting.

In 2010, we first compiled and edited a collection of essays and stories by Edmonton Journal writers, exploring the perils, pitfalls, sorrows, fears and great redemptive joys of the harried, happy holiday season.

For 2012, weve completely revamped the collection. The project started off rather like checking the bulbs on a string of Christmas tree lightsmaking sure we kept the best and brightest, adding new ones for a bit more dazzle. But weve had so many staff changes at the Journal in the last three years, and welcomed so many wonderful new writers to our newsroom, that most of the material in this book wasnt published in our first onethough we have kept about a dozen old favourites, like cherished heirloom decorations.

Think of this as the Edmonton Journals downloadable holiday gift to youthe best of the season, and the best of our city, reflected in the best of our seasonal stories, old and new.

May your days be merry and bright!

Paula Simons

In 1900, New Jersey rector Robert Seton told the New York Times he was offended by a variety of new Christmas entertainments, which included going to the theatre, attending parties and reading novels.

But Seton was most deeply perturbed by a tradition involving a green plant with little white berries.

I am particularly opposed to kissing parties when males and females kiss each other under the mistletoe, he said.

As he noted, kissing is the beginning of a notorious ending.

From ancient roots, the parasitic and poisonous mistletoe plant has grown to be an important part of the romance of the season.

Why should men kiss girls who stand under the mistletoe? asked one newspaper story in 1921. Because they like it and because custom allows it. Every kiss under the mistletoe is a kiss which celebrates one of the most charming events in Christmas traditions.

According to mistletoe lore, one is entitled to as many kisses as there are berries on the sprig. A woman who does not get kissed under the mistletoe will not get married during the coming year, and anyone who keeps mistletoe in their house past New Years Day will have bad luck throughout the year.

Despite the New Jersey rectors early objections, mistletoes popularity continued to blossom through-out the modern ageso much so that increased demand for the plant provided a significant boost to the struggling American economy in the 1930s.

A story in the Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash., at that time said a holiday boom in convivial kisses stolen under the alluring influence of Christmas mistletoe had created work for 400 to 500 people harvesting the plants in the mountains of southern California. The story ran with the headline, Kiss a Maiden, Provide a Job.

Unfortunately, high demand for the plant in turn drove up the cost of a Christmas kiss. Sprigs that previously cost a dime increased to a quarter.

The Chicago Tribune even proclaimed a Kissing Crisis, because there was not enough mistletoe to go around.

But it hasnt always been a perfect romance, and mistletoe has had its share of controversy.

In 1938, a British union official suggested banning the plant in pubs, saying that many a good, honest woman behind a bar is dragged forward to be kissed under the mistletoe by some stupid, drunken man.

Barmaids themselves stood up against the proposed ban and the move was promptly abandoned.

Whats wrong with it? one of the barmaids was quoted as saying. Christmas is supposed to be a time of goodwill, isnt it?

The Second World War brought other challenges. In 1944, as the war raged in Europe, mistletoe sales in the United States plummeted.

Early reports from the mistletoe trade forecast an extremely slack Christmas market because of the shortage of eligible men in the United States, noted one story in Floridas Daytona Beach Morning Journal.

I guess theres nobody left around worth kissing, one woman said. We might as well give the stuff back to the birds.

Mistletoe has also been at the heart of no small amount of discord through the years.

An angry woman once wrote a letter to the popular Dear Abby advice column, asking how to deal with an old-maid neighbour who had mistletoe hanging over her door well after Christmas and was kissing men who passed through. Abby advised the woman to introduce her neighbour to a man who wouldnt mind playing Santa.

In 1929, Coeur dAlene, Idaho, police Chief Michael Roche re-counted seeing a girl slap a young Beau Brummel after a smooch on the street.

Roche said the man had approached the girl with some green foliage in his hand, saying: Its mistletoe and I claim a kiss.

After the kiss, the young woman realized she had kissed a man holding a sprig of spinach.

Im not the type that can be misled with spinach, she told the police officer.

The chief didnt arrest the man. Spinach does resemble mistletoe, he said.

I learned how to find the perfect Christmas tree around the same time I learned that wet snow makes the best snowman, fluffy snow makes for the best tobogganing, and your tongue really will stick to a metal light post in winter.

My mother would tuck our corduroy pants into our socks and wrestle us into snowsuits, thread mitten strings through our coat sleeves and pull tuques down over our ears, then the whole family would trundle out to the tree farm to find the best one.

Many families have their own rituals for finding the perfect tree.

On Monday morning, six-year-old Willow Winiewski and her parents, Neil and Jodi, were hunting for theirs at the Kiwanis Christmas Tree Lot near 65 th Avenue and 113 th Street.

Ever since I was a kid we always got a real one, mom Jodi Badger said. My dad would be trucking one home even if he had to walk with it.

The kids make decorations every yearI have all the decorations my son has made since he was in kindergarten, she said of her 17-year-old. Its about the memories.