The Tin Foil Fairy

I was six the Christmas that the tin foil fairy appeared in my life. Other people will tell you that she wasn’t real, they’ll insist that it was all an elaborate hoax, and that they regret it.

People who were actually there that night, people who should know better, will deny that she ever existed, but I can tell you that she WAS there under the kitchen spotlight in the snow of our enormous, wooded backyard. And that she was real, in every sense of the word.

It began simply enough.

I was sitting in my bedroom colouring in a Peter Pan book (I remember this so well), when my older brother came into my room and slipped out again. Had I been an older child (although I can’t say exactly how much older), or even a tiny bit more suspicious of my brother, I might have guessed something was up. But I wasn’t older, or suspicious. I was a totally innocent six-year-old.

Then my much older cousin came into the room, looked around, smiled brightly, and also left without saying anything. But had I been more observant, or wily, I might have noticed someone was missing from my doll collection.

I went back to my colouring book, oblivious.

How was I to know that my life was about to change forever?

While I coloured in my bedroom and events were set in place that would permanently change my life, I knew that my mother was wearing an apron, as was my aunt, and that they were both in the kitchen preparing Christmas dinner. I remember the aprons, matching red-and-green wreaths.

It was snowing gently outside, and our deeply wooded backyard ended where the green, silent, glowering acres of Carolinian oak forest began. The woods at the back of our property were old and dark and very silent. The trees housed eagle and deer and pheasant when we moved into that house in the late '60s. It was a beautiful, wild and slightly magical place.

Who knew what other creatures lived in its depths?

As I coloured in my bedroom, and turkey was basted and gravy was carefully stirred, a roll of tin foil vanished from the kitchen drawer where it lived, then was quietly returned. No one would notice a small piece was gone, as tin foil is much used on Christmas Day, coverer of turkeys and warmer of dishes of root vegetables. Tin foil holds its shape around a pot, over the breast of a big bird, or clutched in a tiny hand in the snow.

Then she came.

There was an urgent call from my brother at the back door, not too loud, not so loud as to alert the adults.

“Pip! Pip! Come quick!”

My brother is six years older than I, twice my age on that day. Our worlds rarely collided, so the urgency in his voice drew me to him immediately. I dropped my crayon. I raced down the stairs and into the back hall where my brother was waiting, pointing into the backyard…

“It’s a fairy, Pip! A Christmas fairy!”

There WAS a fairy in my backyard!

The spotlight by the back door shone on the falling snow and glinted off the fairy standing at the very edge of the soft light. I could just make out her wings and in her hand … a perfect wand. She was caught in the deep snow, struggling and shaking the falling flakes from her hair. She turned her head, and smiled at me…

…then the spotlight went out. 

I RACED into the group of surprised adults: fairy! fairy in the backyard! I shouted, dragging my mother in her Christmas wreath apron to the back door. My brother (and cousin who had mysteriously reappeared) turned on the spotlight again, but she was gone.

Was I disappointed that the fairy had vanished? Yes. Did I notice my mother later talking quietly to my brother and cousin about teasing me? Maybe. Did I care? No.

A fairy was stuck in the snow of my backyard on Christmas day. I didn’t care what anyone said about a toy doll and tin foil and elaborate plots. The fairy shook snow from her hair then turned and smiled at me before the spotlight went out. I believed it with every inch of my six-year-old soul.

All these years later when I remember that Christmas day I know this too: your heart’s desire is a magical thing. It was without a doubt the best gift anyone ever gave me.

The Tale of the Christmas Bonus

Gather 'round my friends, and let me tell you a tale from my corporate life long ago: the Tale of the Christmas bonus.

The year was 1987, and I was a production manager at the Financial Post in downtown Toronto. I was just out of university, it was my first real job.

Every year, the Christmas party took place the Friday payday before December 25th. I had only been in the job a few months, so I had no idea what to expect, or why everyone was so excited. I was soon to discover why.

Throughout the day, employees were asked to leave their desks, department by department, and gather in the corporate boardroom. All morning giddy people from marketing and editorial filed past our office, giggling and quite uncharacteristically jovial. Then it was my turn to walk down the deeply carpeted halls.

My co-workers and I were met at the boardroom door by well-paid carol singers (from the local opera company) and two elves (from accounting), who handed us crystal goblets of very rum-laden eggnog. We sipped away as we lined up with our co-workers in an orderly but increasingly chatty and rosy-cheeked rhumba line that criss-crossed the boardroom and spilled out into the hall. I peeked into the room over everyone's heads, and who did I see off in the distance, sitting at the head of the boardroom table? Santa of course (the CEO), and on either side of him were two more elves (Toronto police officers).

On the table in front of them were our gifts, in two large cloth sacks! But there weren't any bows or ribbons. No. Our gifts were in orderly, crisp white envelopes labelled with each of our names. And what was inside each of those envelopes, my friends? Our Christmas bonuses: one week's pay, in cash. You heard me. In cash.

Legend has it that there was over $250,000 cash in those bags that day, which I guess would explain the Christmas Police Officer Elves.

I approached Santa, managed a rum-soaked "thank you, Merry Christmas" as I staggered back to my desk with my bonus. Did I mention that it was in cash? I sipped my eggnog and got nothing done for the rest of the afternoon, like everyone else. In fact, most of us left work early that day, slightly hungover by mid-afternoon.

And that my friends, is the tale of my first and last Christmas Bonus, which I experienced only once and at the beginning of my career, since the next year they were cut. But they had been a long-standing tradition up until then, a holiday tradition at the company since the 1950s. I know it's hard to imagine in these meager times, where jobs are hard to find and the idea of a Christmas bonus of any kind may seem like the stuff of legend, but I assure you, it was real. It's hard to imagine that kind of corporate generosity now, but it meant a lot to the staff, to morale, to loyalty. It certainly meant a great deal to me and is one of the reasons that I'll always look back fondly at my days working for the Financial Post.

It was 1987, not so very long ago, and a tradition sadly lost to the mists of time. Luckily the tradition of eggnog survives, think I'll have one now!