There is no need for a calender to indicate the holiday season has arrived.

It’s not because I‘ve once again been informed that my life is incomplete without a big screen T.V., or that I should be giving like Santa, and saving like scrooge (didn’t the Canadian Tire marketing execs ever finish that book?)

It’s because CBC Radio’s Stuart McLean is once again on the radio, spinning stories of rural Canadian holiday disasters. Lost turkeys, frozen neighbours, all in pursuit of perfect holiday schmaltz. Every year, I groan at the hokey metaphors, assuring those around me I will indeed puncture my eardrums with a fork the next time he talks of ‘those White Christmas mornings, just like when you were a kid...’

Yet I can’t stop listening.

McLean was a professor at Ryerson during my time there, yet he was on leave touring with The Vinyl Cafe. I suppose I was too idealistic to figure out the only one of my profs who was cashing in was the one writing pop fiction, drenched in maple syrup and dripping with poutine, selling memories of cracked Christmas tales.

But I find it difficult to relate. My holidays were a little... (patent McLean pause for dramatic effect)... different.

Yes, my Christmases were a little... darker than most.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy being crudely chained in the basement, left with nothing but tattered rags for warmth. It’s just that when my parent finally tossed the remnants of Christmas dinner into the cellar, the rats had strength in numbers.

During the day, while others sang songs of Peace on Earth, I hauled cords of wood to feed the beastly woodstove that ‘heated’ our home. My friends feared to visit, as my dad would recruit any abled body individual over the age of three into the Dickensian work camp that was the wood shed. At times, some of the slower children in the neighbourhood, lured by a trail of stale timbits, would find themselves trapped chopping wood for days on end.

The nights were long, the gruel was thin. My brother and I were only allowed to watch Christmas specials if we goaded Tiny Tim, or cheered on Mr. Potter during It’s a Wonderful Life.

Yet I survived. My only reprieve was to volunteer to find the family Christmas tree, where I felt safer at the mercy of the animals than listening about the fascist exclusionary regime that obviously gripped Whoville with an Iron fist.

But this year, a return to the scene of the crime.

This will be my first Christmas with the parents in about five years. It won’t be easy. Throughout university, I would often attempt to visit the family, only to discover they had moved houses again. This year, they insisted I fly into Pearson airport on Dec. 24. and assured me there would be no problems. Why would there be problems at Canada’s biggest airport on the busiest day of the year?

Now that the kids are gone, they’ve supplemented wood with a gas fire place. Given my Alberta postal code, I believe they’re expecting me to sneak some natural gas through customs. Despite the memories, I’m looking forward to it this year. I’ll be sure to find a tree again this year, and I might just help Mom and Dad buy the timbits...

(Now before one alerts Children’s Services, and my parents really do try to off me, know the truth of the matter is that Christmas at the Brisbane house was always pleasant, full of happiness and presents and too much food... except for that one year...).