Christmas 2009 was a Christmas I will never forget. Just finishing college, I decided to take Christmastime to go home, and spend plenty of needed time with my parents in Winterton, Trinity Bay. Being hearty Newfoundlanders there is always plenty of food, and let's just call it “eggnog” around for the Christmas visitors, as well as us, who take the time to relax our diets and indulge in “Christmas spirit”.

On Christmas Eve as I do every year I attended the Candle Light service with my grandmother. When it was over, I surely knew that a special little shed in my community would be full of folk and laughter. So with my grandmother in tow, we headed for the shed named infamously “The Reagle Beagle.” When I walked in I saw him - Stephen, a fellow a bit older than I was, and who grew up next door. He had been gone away with the military for the last decade, so I hadn’t ever met him. I plopped my little self right down next to him making small talk. In fact I hadn’t known he existed until a few weeks before Christmas. He wasn’t there long, and had to leave.

Christmas day came and he wrote me asking to see me again before he returned to Nova Scotia where he had been serving in the Navy, and I told him I was seeing someone. He told me he’d expect to see me out mummering with the Winterton folk the next day- Boxing day. On Boxing day as I do every year I visited family, and when I got home I say half the town was in my parents' Kitchen, and Stephen amongst them all, grinning. I'm not the kind of person who gets anxious, but this fellow had me all nervous. So off we went, every house getting closer and closer together, as we mummered our way in and out. I remember him taking hold of my hand in the last house we visited, and I just knew at that moment, I found that one man who I would spend the rest of my life with.

Stephen proposed in July, and we have a wedding planned of course in Winterton for September 2011. And to think it all started with Christmas at home, the best Christmas of my life. We are both incredibly excited as I now have also joined him in Nova Scotia, and this year we will be going home for Christmas - together, and I am sure it won't be any less exciting or amazing as last year's. I mean it is Christmas on the Rock, and there's no Christmas like a Christmas Downhome.

Merry Christmas!
  Submitted By: Sara Green