小蓝视频

The perfect Christmas can often be difficult to pin down. You never know what would make the perfect Christmas until it's actually happening.

For me, the perfect Christmas comes from when I used to work in radio. This is going back some 30 years when I worked way up north in The Pas, Man.

I worked for a little radio station called CJAR that was affiliated with CFAR in Flin Flon. CJAR was so tiny an operation, the station would pick up feeds from Flin Flon. Naturally, at the time, the station would broadcast an end of day announcement and there would be silence until five in the morning.

The station was so tiny, we could take holidays when they'd come up, and I would take full advantage of them. Part of that included huge amounts of travel on a Grey Goose bus to Swan River and transferring to a Greyhound to make the trip to Saskatoon where I'd meet up with my parents for the last leg of the journey back home to the farm near Outlook.

But it wasn't so much the destination as it was the journey.

The time leading up to Christmas included decorating the radio station office, taking part in the many activities throughout town and watching everyone put up their Christmas lights. That last part I have fond memories of. Especially when it came to hopping on the bus at the terminal in The Pas and making the trek south to Swan River.

There's a large number of farms along that stretch south, and every single one of them was decorated in Christmas cheer, so it made the landscape this brightly coloured festival of lights that would spark up the dark night. That was the other thing. The bus didn't leave The Pas until midnight and the trip took 12 hours with a half-hour layover in Swan River, so there were lots to see on the trip to Saskatoon.

Which is the best part of Christmas for me and makes for a perfect Christmas. Seeing all the decorations that have been put up. The time and care people put into decorating their homes that gives some colour in the dark, early morning hours (and even the early evening hours). Travelling that long distance back home in the dark was made much brighter by seeing all the decorations dotting the landscape.

Even the decorations we put together in the office made the season seem brighter. Sort of a reminder that things were really going well and there were always people who were there to support you.

That's the best part of Christmas for me and makes for a perfect Christmas.