A stranger arrives in town.
That's said to be the essential plot in half the world's stories. It's a basic element of the Christmas narrative, and it's something just about everyone has experienced.
In December 1989, the stranger was me, and the town was New Orleans. I knew nothing about the city and little about the people I was meeting there - even though they were already almost family. My fiancee and I had gotten engaged a couple of months before, and I was finally meeting her parents.
It would have been understandable for my future in-laws to be a bit wary. The last guy their daughter brought home had apparently been something of a disaster. They knew as little about me as I did about them - and yet here I was, determined to marry their only daughter. Their 20-year-old daughter, who was still a college student.
Moreover, what they did know about me might not have inspired confidence. A year after graduation, I was not exactly the picture of ambition - unless working at a hippie retreat center for $300 a month and living in an unheated cabin in the woods of southern Michigan is your idea of a fast track to career success. Plus, I needed a haircut.
Such were my thoughts as I entered the house. Five minutes later, I found myself draping strands of real lead tinsel (did they still make that stuff?) and placing real, lighted candles on what was, apart from Rockefeller Center, probably the largest Christmas tree I had ever seen, with electric trains and a full Christmas village taking up half the living room floor.
The next few days were overwhelming - and exhilarating. I didn't celebrate Christmas growing up, so nothing in my experience prepared me for the parties, the church services, the parcels piled so high, they would not have been out of place at a Kwakiutl Indian potlatch. It was very strange, very foreign - and somehow, all perfectly normal. I should have felt wildly out of place. Instead, I felt totally included. When a freakish ice storm struck, bursting the water pipes, I laughed along with everyone else about eating Christmas dinner on paper plates. Welcome to the family, they said without saying it. You belong here.
I left after a week, a stranger no more.
- Michael Cross-Barnet
Ghosts of Christmas with the pack
When I think about Christmas, I remember our dogs.
