Last night, we gathered at my parents’ home for a Christmas eve dinner. As is the custom in our family, my dad prepared some games for us to play. Some of the games involved writing things on slips of paper, so he passed out books for us to write on. My book was a history of Yarmouth. I got distracted and started reading about this small coastal town at the south end of Nova Scotia which is best known for its lighthouse though not much else. My dad spent his childhood there.
There are two kinds of history. There’s the history you read about in books. The official history of important figures and important buildings and important events. It comes with black and white photos of stern-looking people and a dry commentary. Then there’s the history you only hear when people tell stories after a couple glasses of egg nog.
My dad pointed to a photo of a large three-story house. It had belonged to a sea captain. My dad said that the house isn’t there anymore, but when he was a kid, he used to play in the crow’s nest that looked out over the water. And the sea captain had two sisters. That’s when my dad told a story. The sort of story that never gets into the history books.
I may have got things mixed up. The two sisters may have had nothing to do with the sea captain. It doesn’t matter. Anyways, there were two sisters who lived in Yarmouth. One was missing a finger and the other had a squeaky whisper of a voice. The story goes that when they were young girls, they had a conversation that went like this:
— Can I take this axe and chop off your finger?
— Only if you promise to drink lye.
— Okay.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I have no idea what this story has to do with Christmas. Maybe the only connection is that my dad told it on Christmas eve. Maybe it has something to do with the power of keeping promises. Don’t ask me; I’m just the messenger. Have a merry Christmas, and don’t do anything stupid.