Holidays 2024: Christmas is eclectic for the Field/Barnett family
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy once wrote that all happy families are alike. And perhaps that was true of families living in Russia circa 1875. But in modern-day Goderich, there’s a one-of-a-kind happy family quite unlike any other, and they celebrate Christmas in such a super-specific, joyous way that it might even be enough to make Tolstoy change his tune entirely.
Warning: while The Field/Barnett Family Christmas is much more light-hearted than a Russian novel, it has nearly as many characters. Don’t get bogged down in the details - rather, think of the house in this story as an invented reality or pocket universe capable of taking us to a place we’ve never been before.
Rosanne Field and Ross Barnett bought the house on Victoria Street in 2013. The two-and-half-storey red brick Queen Ann was constructed in 1906. It’s a heritage home, so the family needs to seek approval before making any changes to the living room fireplace - it was made by somebody significant. In early summer, it is the conduit that the June bugs use to infiltrate the house.
At last count, the house was inhabited by a total of four humans and three cats.
Nathanya is a writer, lives in the attic, and is married to Frankie
Frankie is a visual artist, lives in the attic, and is married to Nathanya.
Vila is one of the two cats residing in the attic. She is bonded with Victor.
Victor, the second cat, resides in the attic with Vila.
Rosanne is massively allergic to cats.
Ross set this whole story into motion on one fateful New Year’s Eve, almost 40 years ago, by jumping over a bar to steal a kiss from Rosanne. Six weeks later, they were married.
Azula the cat walks alone on the main floor of the Hunter House. Her original owner moved to Taiwan for work.
Nathanya is the official tour guide of the house, but each member of the family carries their own fragments of the holiday history. There is no single story. “My mom loves Christmas, and so do the rest of us,” Nathanya intoned.
The Field Family Holiday House Tour starts at the very top, which requires winding one’s way through the entire house, past all the as yet unexplained trees, nativities and bric-a-brac, up some narrow stairs, down halls, beyond craft closets and up more narrow stairs until only those who know the way could navigate their way back down to the starting point. The attic had been just as it had ever been from 1906 to 2020, at which point it was converted to an apartment. Space is in short supply, so Nathanya and Frankie have to be selective when choosing which ornaments from their collection will score a spot on their little tree. “A lot of them are the ones we made, or somebody made for us,” Nathanya explained. There’s also a little spot carved out for Frankie’s grandmother’s vintage Christmas village, which is now populated by a community of Dungeons and Dragons figurines. Their apartment is equipped with a kitchenette, but, more often than not, they end up in the main kitchen, helping Rosanne with whatever culinary excursion is currently occupying her time.
After a round of coffee and cookies for all, it was time to start exploring the main floor - aka Planet Christmas. “This is the Nativity scene we’ve had since we were children. My dad painted everybody. Well, almost everybody. Except the hippo. My parents have a lot of knick knacks regularly, including this hippo and that elephant. So she’ll just add them to the Nativity scene, because they’re animals,” Nathanya explains. Rosanne wants to add an orphaned gorilla to the manger’s menagerie, but Nathanya vetoes the idea before moving on with the tour. “We’re not putting the gorilla in the Nativity scene,” she says with certitude. “Behind you is the Angel Tree. It is all angels.” However, it’s not a holy free-for-all - there is a hierarchy in Heaven. “On the back side are all, like, the ugly angels I made mom as a child, and the front side is the pretty ones. And that’s the Angel Tree.”
After that comes the most diminutive tree on the tour. “The little ceramic one is the first Christmas tree my parents ever had - they lived in a tiny apartment in Toronto, and it was a wedding gift. It’s, like, very from the 80s,” Nathanya states. Rosanne has one small adjustment to that timeline. “It was in Kingston, because I was doing my PhD. I was still a student.”
The next Nativity is sheltered in the space under the stairs, at the perfect height for Azula to contemplate its majesty. “I don’t know where that one came from,” Nathanya admitted. A right turn leads into the Nautical Pachyderm Room, which now holds Ross and Frankie’s Christmas village in progress, snowman-themed decorations, and the Vintage Ornament Tree. “All of these ornaments are from one side of the family or the other, like, great-grandmothers. There’s two boxes of these inherited ornaments and they get their own tree,” Nathanya explains.
This particular sort of vintage ornaments is sometimes known as “Shiny Brites,” after the company that once popularized them. These silvery glass baubles come in shapes that simultaneously evoke Turkish lamps and atomic isotopes, and were once a subconscious signal of a far more singular celebration than Christmas. To a whole generation of people, seeing this style of ornament back in stores meant that World War II was finally over. Every single scrap of metal had been needed for the war effort, and that included the metal that would otherwise have gone into the paint that gave Shiny Brites their distinctive reflective shimmer. During the war years, clear glass ornaments with non-reflective paint were still produced.
The next stop brings us to the belly of the Jingle Bell Beast, the Festive Forest Primeval - the Main Christmas Tree. “It has, like, all of the ornaments ever. We’re not allowed to buy my parents Christmas ornaments anymore - the tree is pretty full,” our tour guide offers.
Frankie wants to set the collective-mind mood with some musical mentions. “One thing that y’all haven’t mentioned is listening to that hyper-specific album while decorating.” That album is It’s Christmas by Quartette. The whole family loves it. Nathanya elucidates further. “The reason this is a tradition is because it was the only Christmas album my parents had when we were kids. So we listen to Quartette’s Christmas album as we decorate. Literally anything on that Quartette album is my favourite. Luckily, it’s on Spotify because we have no idea where that CD is.” Rosanne reminds her that it was stolen from their car years ago. Ross actually acquired the unusual album when he did the lights for a show Quartette performed in Blyth. “I don’t know if I was actually paid, but they signed the CD. We still have the cover, because the CD was in a sleeve in the van for some reason.”
Growing up, Frankie couldn’t get enough Christmas music. “In Detroit, there is a station, 100.3 WNIC Dearborn, that is 24/7 Christmas music, starting Nov. 1. That was, like, a hallmark of my childhood. I was listening to whatever Christmas songs I could download off the Limewire in August. I love Christmas music,” they explained. “And then I remember slowly, as I got older, more and more people were like, ‘No! It shouldn’t be played until after Thanksgiving! And slowly, WNIC just started pushing it back further and further. I don’t even think they do it anymore.”
Without the hook of their house to hang their holiday history on, the Field family narrative expands out infinitely from the molten core of their shared memories, sprawling in every direction at once. And contained within one will find all the variety, all the charm, and all the beauty of Christmas, in all its light and shadows.
Nathanya loves how open their annual holiday celebration is. “We usually have an exchange student,” she said. “Christmas is peak homesickness time for exchange kids. Like, they are struggling, and so mom has always tried to really integrate them into the family at that time and to share our Christmas celebrations with them. But also to ask them to share with us.”
In 2019, a Polish exchange student named Nico shared a Christmas Eve tradition with the Field family. “You would break a piece of bread and then say something you were grateful for,” Nathanya recalls. Frankie corrects the recollection. “No, it’s a wish for the next person.”
An exchange student from Thailand once impressed all with hand-painted Christmas cards featuring portraits of each family member, and Ross fondly remembers one thing they didn’t. “We decided not to do the Danish, jumping-off-the-furniture thing - too many people get hurt.”
Traditionally, they’ve held an open house for family, friends, co-workers and neighbours on Christmas Eve. There’s a big buffet with so many things that you can eat. The family’s collective list of beloved holiday foods is an eclectic one. They’ve done vegetarian dinners, lamb, chicken, turkey - you name it. Mussels, artichokes, tourtiere, homemade ramen, bread gnocchi, and, of course, Aiden’s sweet potato casserole.
Konafa is a Syrian cheesecake. Rosanne, Ross and Nathanya all think of Russian Cream with Strawberries Romanov as one of the newest additions to their pantheon of desserts, but it predates Frankie’s time, which means Rosanne has been making it for at least 10 years. “I had strawberries Romanov in a restaurant 40 years ago.” So I looked it up, and the only recipes I could find also had Russian cream with it, so I tried it.”
An aside erupts. Ross, apropos of nothing, turns to Nathanya, and asks her to give Ashley a heads-up. Nathanya asks, “For the rum balls?” and he says, “Yeah! No rum balls, and that girl is going to the store!”
As a child, Frankie fixated on NORAD’s Santa-tracking system. “I was always sitting at the computer while everybody else was drinking champagne and having fun. I was like, ‘Aunt Wendy! What is the website?! I need to see where Santa is right now!”
There also may or may not have been some French boys in attendance at some point. Nathanya’s not sure, but Rosanne distinctly recalls a couple of couquets engaging in a festive fight about champagne.
Rosanne is the secret source of this family’s festive spirit. “When I was at university, it started because I didn’t have somewhere to go home for Christmas. I had ‘Orphan Christmas.’ For anybody who was a foreign student, or lived in Vancouver, I made Christmas. It’s about choosing to have a type of Christmas that didn’t involve a lot of alcohol, and didn’t involve all the things that go with that… There are a lot of chaotic things in my Christmas history. And there is a very chaotic family history in my life. In choosing Christmas, I have focused on traditions and family activities. I have focused on cooking and baking and doing things together. We usually make gingerbread houses. Christmas is supposed to be a time of calm, and peace, and happiness, and openness, and acceptance. I have a complicated version of faith, but I would say it is believing that someone can make a difference in the world and that we can make the world a better place, even if it’s just one person at a time. And believing in the values of taking care of others: love one another, do unto others as you’d have them do unto yourselves. It’s a day where we remember that that’s what we’re supposed to be aspiring to. That’s why my Christmas has always been open,” xe concludes.
Regardless of all that may happen at the Field Family Christmas this holiday season, every minute of it will have the unquestionable meaning of the good which they’ve put in it.