Don't get me wrong - I still love the festive food, wine and music, but if I had to choose one thing to splurge on - it would be to stay warm. We are fortunate to have four kinds of heat in our house - electric baseboards, a heat pump, a gas fireplace upstairs and a wood fireplace downstairs. And despite this sometimes I am still cold! I love to turn the thermostat up as high as it will go and just bake in the heat. And if it gets too warm - you can always open a window.
I grew up being cold - my sisters and brothers will vouch for that. We lived in many houses that were chilly and uninsulated and only partially heated. We relied on oil fired space heaters and ancient inefficient wood furnaces - one place even had coal fireplaces in several rooms although as I recall they gave minimal heat if any.
We spent many a winter's night under piles of blankets and Dad's old army "great" coats. On really cold nights Mom used to boil glass milk bottles for us to take to bed as sort of makeshift hot water bottles. I am not sure why we didn't have hot water bottles although my wife says it was because we were poor - I guess nobody told me. On even colder nights we used to fight over who got to take 'Lady' to bed with them. Lady was our Collie and she was the best bed warmer I ever had until I got married - and discovered the joy of homemade woolen socks.
Some of my fondest and warmest memories of those days are when Dad would stoke the furnace on Christmas Day. Even an old inefficient furnace could throw plenty of heat with enough logs piled in. And our heating system was pretty basic - a big open pipe passed directly through the middle bedroom, with shutters that opened and closed to control the heat; kind of a low-tech thermostat, but it did the job.
There is a lot of controversy in this province over fracking for shale oil and drilling for natural gas. And they even argue over pipelines pumping oil from the Alberta tar sands to the east coast. Well all I have to say is "bring it on" and they can pipe it right into my furnace thank you very much - this eastern bastard has frozen in the dark for long enough!
Of course there is the other kind of warmth too. The warmth of family and friends - the warmth that comes from within. The best combination of course is when you have both at the same time and that usually happens on Christmas Eve. We may have lived in a lot of "rustic" places but I don't think I have ever been cold on Christmas Eve.
So drink a toast, throw another log on the fire and turn that thermostat up a notch or two. Have a Merry Christmas and stay warm - inside and out!
