Blue lights

I have already established I am a creature of habit. A byproduct of my adherence to daily routine is that I'm a sucker for traditions. My family has historically been one of immigrants and poor people, so our traditions are few and small, but those few carry weight. Christmas is nothing if not a time for traditions, and since we've managed to stay in the same country for going on three generations, leaving poverty behind, family traditions are starting to accrete.

My father claims his father made it up out of convenience one year, and so far between Google and people I've asked, this may be so. Grandpa put only blue lights at the top of the Christmas tree. Whether he accidentally bought a string of only blue lights, a string came from the store with all the blue bulbs at one end, or he only had blue replacement bulbs one year, the reason he gave is the reason we carry on now, more than 50 years later. We put only blue lights at the top of the tree to remind us of the people who can't be with us this year.

My grandfather was born to German-speaking Mennonites in Ukraine in 1920. Stalin ruled the land, and people starved. Through a convoluted series of events I may never get sorted, the end of WWII found my grandfather in Hamburg, his parents, sister, and one brother exiled in Siberia, and one other brother in a POW camp in Holland. After my father's uncle was released from the camp, he was reunited with my grandfather through an improbable series of coincidences. They came to Canada in 1948 on the first civilian trans-Atlantic airline, arriving in Montreal for Canada's Independence Day, which they took as a welcome party. Neither of them spoke a word of English or French.

Those brothers survived starvation and war and more uncertainty than I can comprehend and never saw their parents or brother again. If he did make it up, I don't think Grandpa realized that he had the ingredients of an icon: the act and explanation are simple, the act is noticeable. Of course, he never forgot about that family in Siberia. He was able to rescue the survivors to West Germany in the 1980s via German ideas around ethnicity and citizenship that don't make sense to my Canadian mind. I met Grandpa's sister and sister-in-law before they passed away, as well as several of their children and grandchildren.

My parents' tree always has blue lights at the top, as does my sister's. My aunts and uncles and cousins put blue lights at the top of their trees. Rosie's Mama and I will be setting up our tree on Friday, blue lights on top and prayers whispered for ones who aren't with us.