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Illustration by Beck Deresse
My 7-year-old son Nezih wants to go to Canada for Christmas. He announces this in his usual matter-of-fact way, blue eyes wide, as if simply declaring something is enough to make it happen.
Immediately, I’m overcome with guilt and anxiety. I cannot give my boys the Baltic German-Canadian family Christmas experience with grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins; the carol services; the colourfully decorated neighbourhood streets; my father’s fudge.
Luckily, a few follow-up questions from me quickly reveal what lies beneath Nezih’s wish – he wants to see snow. And for a moment I’m relieved, because I can give him snow. An hour’s drive north of our Mediterranean city in the south of Turkey lie the Taurus mountains which, in the winter, are covered in the white stuff.
Still, my son has touched a nerve. As a Canadian living abroad, December is the one time each year I feel homesick. It’s when I’m painfully reminded of what I’ve given up by choosing to live in a foreign country.
Leaving Toronto in 2006 was relatively easy. The promise of adventure was quickly followed by exciting career developments, love and a few years later, babies. Life was good.
But as any newcomer to Canada will know, for everything you gain in a new country, there are elements of the old one you lose. It just took me a few years to realize it.
My first few Christmases away were satisfactory enough. Someone cooked a turkey, somebody else organized a Secret Santa gift exchange. As foreign teachers at a Turkish school, we only got one day off and worked through December. But without all the cultural reminders, it was easy to forget that back in Canada, people were getting swept up in the holiday spirit.
Motherhood changed things. My first Christmas with a baby, I bought a small artificial tree and a string of white twinkle lights. The following year, I wrapped a few presents for him and put them under the tree. As my baby became a toddler and was joined by a younger brother, I sang carols and streamed choral music from Spotify.
But instead of feeling joyful, I felt anxious. Each year, around mid-November I began to feel a kind of dread. I knew that despite the energy I would inevitably expend to “put on Christmas” in a Muslim country where no one else seemed to be celebrating, it would still feel incomplete and hollow. I blamed my circumstances, blamed the lack of holiday scaffolding to prop me up and support my family Christmas.
But would television specials and a Santa Claus parade, Christmas-blend coffee and candy canes really make everything better?
Neither of my parents were born in Canada, and on my paternal grandparents’ side, I am the first in three generations to grow up on the continent I was born in. Carrying on traditions without society’s cultural support is not my unique problem.
My father’s fudge, which he and his sisters learned from my Grossmama, was a fixture of my childhood Christmases so much so that in my memories it’s as prominent as the tree with its candles and heavy silver tinsel. More importantly, though, it was a connection to times and places and people I would never see.
He would make his first batch weeks ahead of time, on a Sunday afternoon. I’d know he had started when the warm creamy caramel aroma found me in my bedroom doing homework or in the basement watching TV. I’d go straight to the kitchen where he’d be patiently stirring the condensed milk and sugar until the exact moment it reached the right consistency. He’d make several more batches over the coming weeks, enough that we never seemed to run out.
My children have never tasted my father’s fudge, and it hasn’t been part of my Christmas for 15 years. Our infrequent trips to Canada are in the summer when schools are out; and I have never tried to make it myself.
Over the years, I have tried to enrich my family’s Turkish Christmas in other ways. When I couldn’t find Advent calendars, I made my own. One chilly November afternoon, I trudged out to the fir trees near our house and cut off a few boughs with the intention of making a wreath. Back in my kitchen, I used thread to roughly tie everything together into a circular shape and placed candles around it for an Advent wreath. It would do.
Another year my brother and a friend came to stay over Christmas and I upgraded my holiday further, deciding to make eggnog from scratch.
Now I can’t help but think that it’s only because I’m in Turkey that I’ve been forced to celebrate a pared-down, essentialist Christmas, one that is true to the essence of my family’s own traditions. Had I stayed in Canada, I would have no doubt been more influenced by commercial influences, which would have diluted our celebrations.
This year I’ll be making my father’s fudge for the first time. Two cans of condensed milk (not available in Turkey) have been sitting in my pantry for two years now, causing pangs of guilt every time I happen upon them while rummaging for something else. While I cannot know if my sons will find it as magical as I did growing up, at least they too will have the image of me standing over the stove, wooden spoon in hand, filling the house with wonderful aromas.
Oh, and we’ll be driving to the mountains for a snow day.
Cecile Popp Mangtay lives in Adana, Turkey