The Christmas traditions of my childhood are long gone. There is no longer one place where Christmas happens on a regular rotation; there isn’t even one family it’s spent with. The cookies of Christmas Eve sometimes happen; sometimes they don’t. The friends I used to play pond hockey with until the wee hours of the morning now live in different cities or states, or they have families of their own now. One of my siblings doesn’t return home from the military every year, and I don’t even go to church every holiday anymore. The Cleveland Browns are even suddenly competing for a playoff spot in late December rather than eyeing the top spots in the draft. The Christmas of my youth is dead.
That’s just adulthood, I suppose.
My parents got divorced and I got married. I’ve relocated states several times and spent much of the time around the holidays traveling by car back home to Ohio, to Maryland for my wife’s family, or sometimes both (don’t recommend). Even when I’m back home, with the family via marriage and my parents separated, Christmas calls for visits to a minimum of three separate households. Day jobs inevitably provide less time off than the typical winter break, an adjustment that crunches preparation time into the impossible holiday prep of Christmas movies.
Through it all, one Christmas tradition has prevailed…and it doesn’t even begin until the 26th. I’m talking about watching the men’s International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Junior Championship, or as it’s colloquially called, the World Juniors.
Every year, the best hockey players in the world under twenty years of age compete for their countries in the last remaining best-on-best tournament in the men’s sport. (The NHL hasn’t sent players to the Olympics since 2014). Because of the Canadian dominance of the tournament and its yearly Dec. 26th start time, the World Juniors is basically a national holiday in Canada. The 26th, of course, is Boxing Day in the Commonwealth countries—and the actual holiday lends some of its significance to the annual sporting day it shares. The post-Christmas start date prolongs the Christmas experience like a proper liturgical calendar. Christmas proper turns into a three-day venture: Christmas Eve (especially as someone married to a Latina), Christmas, and Boxing Day.
As an American, I typically cheer for Team USA. I also root for smaller hockey nations like Austria, Latvia, and Slovenia when the opportunity arises. (That will be Norway this year.) Usually, I just root against Canada—a personal flavor to the holiday tradition. This year’s a little different though. A shadow darkens Hockey Canada, the country’s governing hockey body, and their World Juniors team: the 2018 sexual assault scandal. Since it’s Christmas Eve, I won’t say much more. It suffices to know three facts: 1) as many as eight players were involved, some of whom currently play in the NHL, 2) the team won gold, and 3) the governing body has got off scot-free and we still know almost nothing from the investigations, whose results keep getting delayed. It won’t do justice to the victim(s), of course, but the tragedy just makes it all that much easier to root for the collapse of the Canadian team again this year.
My life may be different—and Christmas may be a more complex day than it once was—but, on December 26th, I will feel like a child for at least one more year.
Joshua Polanski (’20) is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and has contributed to the Bay Area Reporter, In Review Online, and Off Screen amongst other places. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking and exhibition, slow and digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Eastern and Northern European, East Asian, and Middle Eastern film.
