Celebration: Christmas Memory #2: Hot Wassail, Mood Lighting and Good Friends

I met my best friend in high school and she and her family have become like a second family to me. While she was on her mission I hung out a lot with her younger sister and that winter the two of us and sometimes some other good friends of ours (or other family, which were also our friends) would make a batch of wassail and sit cross-legged next to the Christmas tree and talk with all the lights out except the ones on the tree. Probably we were mostly gossiping about boys, but the light from the tree and the warmth of that wassail in our bellies made those moments seem magical and life changing. I'll always remember that feeling at Christmas.

I wanted to find a video of steaming hot wassail to put everyone in that magical mood, but can you believe no one's posted something like that on youtube? So here's an traditional Christmas song I've never heard before, but is sung by Loreena McKennit, who generally makes really good Christmas songs. I haven't decided if I like this one that much yet, though. Note: I've noticed those old Christmas carols really acknowledged the importance of food at Christmas, sometimes in impressive detail.

Celebration: Christmas Memory #1 - Elementary School Christmas Song

(This is the meager little Christmas tree we had our first Christmas together...

and is still the only one we have.)

Whenever anyone says, "Merry Christmas," I immediately think of my elementary school Christmas song. Part of it goes like this, "Merry Christmas, Orem Elementary! May your Christmas be all that it's meant to be."  That always gets stuck in my head. 

I don't know if it's a common thing for elementary schools to have Christmas songs, like maybe you have to have a school Christmas song before you can officially function as an elementary school? But my school definitely had one. We had a Christmas assembly and all the kids in the whole school would gather in the auditorium where they had this huge Christmas tree and we would sing our Christmas song, each grade with its own special verse. I remember the first time I ever sang it; it's probably one of my first clear Christmas memories. There I was, a puny kindergartener (I've always been small, but in kindergarten I was super puny), sitting next to my friend and next door neighbor Amelia (who was taller than I was then but is smaller than I am now - I even remember the day we noticed I was taller) and staring up at the enormous tree and over that crowd of kids who were all way bigger than I was, feeling a sort of trepidatious excitement as the other kindergarteners and I got ready to belt out our verse, hoping I wouldn't get the words wrong, and wondering in a sort of vague confusion why it was we were singing a song to our school building. I thought maybe even inanimate objects needed a little Christmas cheer.

The problem with this memory is that for years I couldn't remember any other part of the song than the one I quoted above and the very end: "...a merry Christmas, Orem Elemen-ta-ry!" So this year I utilized the magical world of Facebook and asked my fellow Orem Elementary alumni to help put together all the pieces. We're not sure we've got everything right, but we're pretty sure it goes something like this (pretty sure the kindergarten line is wrong):

Merry Christmas, Orem Elementary!
May your Christmas be all that it's meant to be,
As we gather 'round the Christmas tree,
A merry Christmas Orem Elemen-ta-ry!
The kids in kindergarten are ready to get started
The children in the first, are just about to burst.
The children in the second, are hoping and expectin'.
The carols down in third are the best you've ever heard.
The children in the fourth are spreading cheer of course.
The children in the fifth are making Christmas gifts.
The kids down in sixth are playing Christmas Tricks!
Through out the school we'll have a happy yule!
A merry Christmas Orem Elemen-ta-ry!

Years later in college I reconnected with some friends from elementary school. I remember sitting with them at Wingers where we often went to eat and talk, and someone brought up the old elementary school Christmas song. Trying to remember the words and laughing over our mistakes while eating hot taco soup on a cold day - that's a good Christmas memory too.