I won’t be writing on Christmas Day. And I suspect there are powers in this world, political, cultural, algorithmic, that are quietly relieved that those of us who blog, write, and try to tell the truth won’t be doing so for twenty four hours. I won’t let that deter me from taking the day as it’s meant to be taken. For myself, my family and maybe, for a moment, for everyone else too.
Yesterday afternoon, at about two o’clock, I found myself in Costco. Let’s not debate the wisdom of going to Costco the day before Christmas Eve. I needed one of their pumpkin pies, and in my world, that qualified as critically important. But this isn’t a post about Costco crowds or seasonal chaos. It’s about how it felt to be there.
I live just outside Calgary, but the Costco closest to me sits in one of the city’s most culturally diverse areas. Given the geography, the store yesterday was filled with people of many ethnicities but predominantly filled with people of South Asian descent. There families, couples, grandparents, children. I was very clearly a minority in that space.
And here’s the thing. Contrary to what JD Vance recently suggested at a Charlie Kirk event, I did not once feel like I needed to apologize for being white. No one seemed to care what colour I was at all.
What I saw were people shopping for Christmas. Food carts filled with items meant for family gatherings. Kids of many colours vibrating with excitement near the toy aisles. A South Asian woman holding up an ornament and asking for an opinion. Whether these families religiously celebrate Christmas in the Christian sense is beside the point. Most likely, many do not. But they were participating in something deeply familiar to anyone who has ever lived here. Family, food, festivity and fun. And yes, for many, faith.
This is where I struggle with the claim that newcomers “haven’t embraced our culture.” Culture isn’t a purity test. It’s lived. It’s practiced. It’s chosen, over and over again, in ordinary spaces like a Costco aisle two days before Christmas. One moment in particular stayed with me. A couple stood in the toy aisle, speaking their native language as they debated options. My cart couldn’t pass, so I waited. I wasn’t in a panic. When the woman noticed me, she turned and apologized in English with a strong accent. “We’re trying to get a Christmas present for our girl before we pick her up from school.”
I told her it was no problem at all. As they moved aside, the man looked at me, smiled, and said, “Merry Christmas.” He didn’t have to say that. He could have said Happy Holidays. Season’s Greetings. Nothing at all. It wouldn’t have mattered to me. But that small, human exchange, the instinctive shift to English, the apology, the warmth, said more about belonging than any political slogan ever could.
Christmas, at its core, is a Christian story, and for those who hold that faith, it is meant to be a reminder that Christ served the poor, the weak, the marginalized, and the stranger. Not the powerful, not the loud, nor the self-righteous. That message is worth revisiting.
And for those who experience Christmas primarily through family traditions, shared meals, laughter, and generosity, the measure still isn’t doctrine, it’s what lives in your heart and how you treat the people around you.
My own genealogy is, in many ways, unremarkable. Scottish and English. Like many Canadians, my family story is shaped by migration, but not by being the ones most visibly unwelcome. That distinction belongs historically, al least in Canada and the United States, to others. Irish, Italian, and Jewish families among them who were once told they didn’t quite belong here either.
It’s something we forget far too easily.
We also forget that humanity itself began in a cradle of civilization where people did not look like me. Over millennia, people moved, adapted, and changed with geography and climate. Migration is not an anomaly in human history, it is human history.
As I write this, I’m looking out my window at the prairie just beyond my home. Snow rests quietly on the ground. The sky is heavy with winter light. This image you see is what I see right now, in this moment, as Christmas Eve settles in. Tomorrow, my world will be smaller. It will be about my family, food on the table, familiar rituals, and deep gratitude for another year together. That’s as it should be.
I want to close with words from Arlene Dickinson, which feel especially right tonight: “… I hope that the book we are writing today, and that will be read thousands of years from now, is a story of acceptance, compassion, and love for one another.”
And I’ll add this. That is what we can all hope for. What we can wish for. What some of us will pray for. Not just at Christmas, but in the year ahead.
Nancy's Notes 