Christmas 2025: It's time for new traditions for the Hakkers family

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

For Blyth correspondent Deb Hakkers, Christmas means traditions that transcend generations. And she’s always been spoiled for choice when it comes to finding family members in any age bracket with whom to break bread. “Both my grandmothers were one of five, so there was always a big extended family,” she explained to The Citizen. To make matters merrier, her husband, Fred, also comes from a big family - he’s one of eight siblings!  

 

Having such large family trees means making time for many branches, so Christmas celebrations for the Hakkers clan tend to stretch out for more than the standard 12 days of Christmas. “At one point, it was starting the first week in December,” she recalled. “That’s when my Grandmother Johnston’s family always got together, because it was far enough away from Christmas that everybody could get there and not infringe on any immediate family plans. But that’s kind of gone by the wayside.”

 

For Deb, Christmastime celebrations casually unfold with laid-back, low-key gatherings that usually fall somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It’s an annual get-together that she organizes with her niece. “It tends to be, ‘Hey, do you want to come over for supper?’” Deb explained. “It’s just the two of us that co-ordinate it, and it’s always either here or at her place, depending. She has two kids to get here, and her husband is farming.”

 

In her family, Christmas is always more festive when food is involved - and sometimes that means that the Hakkers have hit the road with their turkey in tow, along with all the traditional trimmings. “For the last couple of years, we packed up Christmas dinner and went to a nursing home. Mom was too hard to transport, so we took it all to her, and all had Christmas dinner in the home,” Deb told The Citizen. “It’s going to be different this year, because Mom’s no longer around. We just have to carry on, make some new traditions.”

 

For many years, Deb’s mother, Marilyn Craig, served as The Citizen’s Blyth correspondent, which meant chronicling the village’s yuletide events in every December issue. Blyth is always bustling during the holidays, but Craig never failed to make sure that locals knew all about special church services, craft bazaars, caroling events, and, of course, her own family’s festive activities, like the time in 2002 when Deb directed the children’s presentation of Christmas story at Blyth United Church. When Deb officially became one of The Citizen’s Blyth correspondents earlier this year, she took up her mother’s mantle of keeping her hometown informed about its holiday comings and goings.

 

Her memories of childhood Christmas mornings remain vivid, helped by the fact that she now lives just across the street from the home where she celebrated her earliest holidays. “My grandparents would arrive way before I was ready to get up on Christmas morning,” she recollected. Her father, meanwhile, was already at work. “Dad had to always go do chores because he farmed a farm out about a [quarter-mile] outside of town.” Eventually, the family moved to that farm. Today, one of Deb’s children works there alongside her brother, while the other has recently moved from an apartment in Wingham to a house in Wroxeter.

 

Sweet treats are one of the family’s favourite ways to celebrate the festive season. “There’s lots of holiday cookies and squares and fruitcake.” While she spent her early years with an aversion to Christmas pudding, Deb did eventually learn to love the iconic dessert. “When we were little kids, we didn’t like pudding, so we got caramel sauce over ice cream,” she recalled. “Now, I’ve developed a taste for Christmas pudding. But still with caramel sauce on it - not brandy!”

 

Of course, some tasty traditions have grown into ambitious undertakings over the years. “We started doing Christmas trays, and when we got married, we started making my grandmother’s chocolates,” Deb explained. What began as a modest tradition soon turned into a marathon of confectionery. “Now, we make about six times the original recipe!” she said, laughing. “It’s a massive undertaking.” The sentimental value grows alongside the batch size. “Grandma had made them when we were kids and we decided when we got married that we were going to continue with that tradition - and we got married 32 years ago!”

 

Now that her children are grown, the family’s holiday calendar has shifted. “It used to be Christmas concerts, but now we don’t have any kids in them,” she pointed out. “If we wanted to go to a Christmas concert, I guess we could go to Listowel - my great-nephew is in shows there!” One constant, however, is their square dancing group’s annual potluck Christmas dinner. “We usually do the turkey for it,” she said, “and then everybody else brings whatever.”

 

Other festive outings she looks forward to include the many Christmas bazaars that pop up across Huron County in the weeks leading up to the holiday. “We usually go to the one that’s up in Goderich for Mothers Against Drunk Driving - the big one on the first of November.” This year, co-ordinating schedules has been especially challenging. “This year it has to work into Fred working 12-hour shifts, so he works every other weekend. Now that I work for the school board more, I do have more time at Christmas, but still - it’s a case of rushing to get it all done, ready for Christmas.”

 

The Hakkerses also make a point of spreading their abundant Christmas spirit even further. “We’ve been giving baskets to a bunch of our neighbours for quite a few years now… we recognize that there are people that don’t have a big Christmas celebration.”

 

For Deb, the secret to an extra-special Christmas is being equal parts flexible and prepared - something she learned firsthand during one especially memorable snowstorm. “The year of the storm [2022], a friend of mine couldn’t get to where she was going, so she came to our house.” Deb recalled. Soon, others arrived as well. “For some of our other friends, their kids were storm-stayed with girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever - so then they came too.” The result was an improvised Christmas Day feast, packed with all their favourite friends. Fortunately, the Hakkers family was ready for anything. “As soon as they said the storm was coming, we went and bought whatever we needed to make a turkey dinner - most of which is usually in this house… other than maybe the turkey itself!”