Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

One of my favorite Christmas traditions for the past seven or eight (?) years has been the cumbersomely-named Boston Children’s Holiday Hour. It was originally scheduled as a quick one-off gathering when a few of us found ourselves in Boston on the weekend or two before Christmas. I opened up the condo for an afternoon “hour” of hot cocoa as people were winding around the city on their holiday touring. That original hour turned into several, and we ended up ordering dinner in and making night of it.

Since then, we’ve managed to make some assemblage of friends and family throughout the years, and now that we’ve reached 2024, most of these ‘children’ are teenagers and young adults. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still someone’s child, or that we need to change the premise at all. Some years simply make us work harder for it, such as this one, which found me stuck on the Mass Turnpike as a poorly-predicted snowstorm made driving hazardous. 

A major accident involving trucks and multiple vehicles occurred just before I reached Worcester, shutting down that section of the Mass Turnpike. In all these years of driving to Boston, I’ve never once driven there any other way than on that turnpike, but suddenly we were all being re-routed off  I-90. A holiday stranglehold of traffic ensued, which found us standing still for about an hour as snow piled up around the cars. I contemplated the empty bottle of Vitamin Water as a urinal should things come to that point. Eventually, things moved a bit, and after a five-and-a-half hour drive (which normally takes me two-and-a-half) I arrived in Boston, where the snowy scene was almost enough to make up for the ordeal. Almost. 

Braddock Park is magical after a snowfall, and this was one of the first holiday gatherings that had a backdrop perfectly designed for the cozy theme at hand. Chris was arriving that first night by train, and he sent me a picture of an iced-out train door straight out of the Polar Express. I looked out at the street below and watched as the light changed from hour to hour. The wind passed over us, allowing the snow to settle and stay on the tree branches.

The next morning dawned with skies of blue and sunlight to show off nature’s wonder. The day of our children’s holiday hour had arrived again, with family contingents from Suzie and Kristen due to arrive that afternoon. 

Chris and I headed out for a brunch at Metropolis and some last-minute shopping, and an impromptu holiday stroll of our own, where we happened upon some free Levain cookies at a luggage store – that alone made the chilly walk worth it. 

I headed back to the condo while Chris finished up his shopping excursion, pausing to take in this glorious sunny scene from the Southwest Corridor Park. Winter has its enchantments.

Our cozy Christmas gathering was at hand, and I got to meet George and Ruby, enlarging our happy circle. Just a few days before Christmas, I finally felt a twinge of Christmas spirit – or maybe it was just the love of lifelong friends, and is there all that much of a difference? Both are healing, both are soul-enriching, both fill the heart with warmth powerful enough to see us through the rest of the winter. 

This little family of friends, ensconced in a little pied-à-terre in one of my favorite cities, has become the saving grace of my Christmas season, always managing to turn around whatever bah-humbug mood or real family strife that may be waiting for me in my hometown. The night closed around us, but the festivities were not quite finished for the weekend…