Christmas Eve

Before We Start

Every Christmas, whether I want it to or not, memory comes rushing in. Some of it I welcome. Some of it still knocks the wind out of me. This year, instead of pushing it aside, I decided to sit with it and write.

What follows is personal, a little messy, and rooted in gratitude. If you’ve ever found yourself measuring your life by the rooms you’ve lived in, the people who showed up, or the music that got you through, you may recognize a bit of yourself in this too.

-Mick

 

As Christmas of 2025 quietly slips into memory, I find myself doing what I always do at this time of year – looking backward.

Christmas Eve has never really been about the day itself for me. It’s about what gathers around it: memory, loss, resilience, laughter, noise, exhaustion, hope. It’s about people who show up. And sometimes, people who don’t.

Back in another lifetime, there were the Dalla-Vee Christmas Eve parties.

They began almost accidentally, in South Vancouver, when we noticed that a number of regulars at the pub up the street (many of them elderly) had no family left. December would arrive, decorations would go up, and yet these folks would quietly mention that Christmas would be just another night alone.

That didn’t sit well with us.

Our condo wasn’t big. It was modest, a little cramped once winter coats piled up. But one Christmas Eve, we opened the door anyway. We cooked too much food. People arrived unsure if they were imposing. By the end of the night, no one wanted to leave.

So we did it again the next year.

At that time, I was deep in the life of a working musician. December was always relentless – corporate gigs, private parties, packed clubs, endless load-ins and load-outs. But Christmas Eve was sacred. I protected it fiercely. No matter how tired I was, no matter how thin the finances were stretched, that night belonged to reflection and connection.

It became a kind of annual reckoning:

What went right this year?

What went wrong?

What did we survive?

And through it all, a steady feeling of gratitude – for a roof, for music, for family, and for the ability to offer warmth to those who had none on that night.

A House Full of People

Carolyn and Carman were little when it started. The first year would have been 1986 – Carolyn twelve, Carman seven. They didn’t just tolerate the parties; they thrived in them. Eventually they invited school friends, kids who might otherwise have been home alone or bouncing between divorced parents’ houses.

By seven o’clock the place would start filling up. By midnight, it was chaos in the best possible way. Laughter, clinking glasses, spontaneous singing, people sitting on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit.

What started with four guests turned into dozens drifting in and out all night, making their rounds across the Lower Mainland before settling somewhere to wake up Christmas morning.

It cost money. It took planning. It took emotional energy I sometimes wasn’t sure I had.

But it gave something back that money never could.

Earlier Homes, Earlier Lessons

By the early 1990s, I was once again trying to convince myself that this time home ownership would stick.

My first attempt had been Calgary, 1978 – a duplex I barely qualified for. I wanted Carolyn to have a yard. I wanted stability. What I got was debt, exhaustion, and a crash course in reality.

The house needed everything. When I wasn’t on the road with Shama, I worked on it… fixing floors with credit cards, painting walls myself, doing the best I could with what little I had. We never did fix the purple master bedroom or the pink third bedroom. Some things just stayed broken.

Laundry happened in the basement with an old wringer washer and a dryer that worked when it felt like it.

Then Bruce Allen entered the picture.

Sitting in his Gastown office beside the infamous punching bag, he laid it out plainly: if he was going to manage us, we had to move to Vancouver. No debate.

I’d just bought the house months earlier. Selling that quickly meant losing everything I’d put into it. Calgary was a buyer’s market. We walked away with enough for a used car – nothing more.

We landed in a two-bedroom apartment in Surrey, across from a park and a school. Carolyn started kindergarten at Holly Elementary. I still have cassette tapes of us singing carols together, her proudly announcing she now lived in “Ban-Coove-Ooo-Ah.”

She was a magical kid, but I worried. She couldn’t pronounce “ER.” Her hair was so thin Joanne made tiny pigtails barely half an inch long. I feared kindergarten would be cruel.

Then, without warning, both worries vanished. By the summer of 1979, her hair came in thick and beautiful. The “ERs” appeared overnight. Suddenly she spoke perfect Canadian English, as if she always had.

Parenthood teaches you that panic is often temporary.

Abbotsford, Hope, and Collapse

In 1980, we tried again – this time Abbotsford. Nothing closer to Vancouver was affordable. Carman had just been born, and I wanted the kids in a real neighbourhood with bikes, schools, and other kids.

The house cost $47,900. We assumed a 10¼% mortgage. Payments were around $450 a month – tight, but survivable.

Then Shama broke up.

I lost my income almost overnight, right as I took possession of the house. I scrambled – worked as a doorman at a club where we’d recently been headliners, played solo lounge gigs, and took a sales job at Toews Music.

But it was recession time. Interest rates were climbing. Sales were terrible.

Some months I made less than $650.

I remember worrying – not about myself – but about how to give my kids a Christmas.

I mentioned this casually to a music teacher at the store.

A week later, an envelope appeared through the mail slot with my name on it. Inside was $50.

Then another. And another.

I eventually realized it was her and her pastor husband. She never admitted it. I never forgot it.

A Christmas angel, plain and simple.

Losing Everything (Again)

Things stabilized briefly when I joined Trama. Night gigs plus the store job allowed me to pay down debt – until the mortgage term ended.

Remember those high interest rates I mentioned? TD Bank “encouraged” me to sign a five-year term at 19½%. My payments doubled. I had no choice but to sell.

Then as I put the house on the market rates dropped.

Buyers vanished.

I sold the house for $59,900, but had to buy down the mortgage just to move it. I lost everything. Again.

We moved into a small South Vancouver townhouse. Credit cards disappeared. The car was repossessed. I lived cash-only for years.

And yet, we still felt lucky.

The Parties Return, Then Stop

By 1993, I barely squeaked into another home – 5% down, greenbelt out back, salmon stream, everything within walking distance. I worked constantly: bands, solo gigs, piano bars, house bands.

The Christmas Eve parties returned and grew again.

Carolyn lived for Christmas. She sometimes decorated her room in midsummer when she felt low.

Then, on November 17, 1999, we lost her.

Suddenly. Tragically.

Christmas disappeared.

Music as Medicine

In 2000 after Carolyn passed , I built a studio in the garage. I decided to reboot Christmas Eve – but differently.

Each year, I wrote a brand-new song on Christmas Eve itself. No shortcuts. Carman sang the first verse. Other singers the other verses and bridge. Guests sang the chorus in small groups. I played every instrument. I mixed it fast, designed a cover, burned CDs.

Everyone went home with a CD of a song they’d helped create.

We did it three years in a row. It helped us survive.

Eventually, it became too much work for me. I wasn’t able to enjoy the parties. After 2003, I let it go.

Coming Home

Life changed. Divorce. Touring. Renting out the house. Then in 2012, I moved back in.

The unease lifted.

So did the Christmas Eve parties al- now split into two Sundays, two full dinners, two packed houses.

The last ones there were in 2016.

By 2018, Kelly and I were now married and had moved to Glen Lake in Langford a full forty years after that U-Haul drive from Calgary to Surrey.

What Remains

Times change.

Christmas still brings floods of memory – joy, loss, resilience, gratitude.

I’ve been knocked down hard. I’ve lost more than most should have to. But I’ve always found a way forward.

Most of us do.

Do what you have to do.

It is what it is.

Simple words. Powerful truths.

I’m a lucky guy.

And I’m forever grateful.

 

December 2025