I — A Tourist’s Perspective
🎶🎶Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...🎶🎶
Welcome to Whistler. Been here before? Good. I don’t have to explain this to you, just empathize. Commiserate. Feel your pain. Can’t apologize, because it’s killin’ me as much as it’s hurtin’ you. Except for the fact I’ll be here all season.
“Where you folks from?”
“Coco Beach. That’s in Florida.”
“Was last time I looked. Been here before?”
“First time.”
“Sorry about that. But looking at the pea-soup clouds from my house, they’re pretty thin. I’m sure it’s clear up top. Should be beautiful up there... though I don’t suspect you necessarily came for the scenery.”
“No problem. You roll the dice when you book a ski vacation early in December. Besides, I hear there’s a lot to see in Vancouver.”
“Yeah. I guess you’ve had the experience of people coming down to Florida and having it rain all week. Or arrive in time for a hurricane.”
“Nope. But there were tourists gunned down on the beach last year.”
“Unlikely to happen here. Hope you enjoy your stay. Hope those are rental skis.”
We’ve seen this movie before. Maybe it’s a little worse this year. Maybe there won’t be a Hail Mary snowfall in time for Christmas; maybe there will be. Either way, be kind to tourists. It’ll make a difference.
II — A Child’s Perspective
🎶🎶 Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way... 🎶🎶
Suppose you’re a child. You once were, so unless you’re suffering from a serious loss of memory, this shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Suppose you’re a child growing up in Whistler. Until recently, this was a stretch. But with a growing inventory of employee housing, Whistler has undergone a baby boom of its own—so there are lots of children in Whistler, without even counting those of us who refuse to grow up.
Christmas here is just like Christmas everywhere. Toys, wrapping paper, empty boxes to play in, small Legos to choke on, more cookies than usual, and arguments with siblings, assuming you have any. And if you’re lucky, grandparents who visit to spoil you so much you can forgive them for thinking pyjamas are really Christmas presents.
Maybe your parents took you to see Santa. Or Santa’s helper if you’ve gotten to the age where you begin to wonder how Santa’s going to get everything done if he wastes his time in Whistler when the world is so big. So like the kid before you, you, too, crawl up on this scary, bearded stranger’s lap, tell him what you want for Christmas, and get your picture taken while you wonder how someone so fat can have such bony knees. It’s the kind of early-life experience that explains why a significant portion of the adult population embraces therapy.
But, when you get a little older, you do what kids everywhere in the civilized world do—celebrate the Christmas school break! And like kids everywhere, you celebrate by going skiing every day. What do you mean kids everywhere don’t spend Christmas break skiing? What’s the matter with them? If they don’t do that, what do they do? And why do adults keep referring to this place as a bubble?
III — A Worker Bee’s Perspective, Part I: Just Another Work Day
🎶🎶Joy to the world, the lord is come... 🎶🎶
Except the Lord is a tourist.
Because you’re special, because you’re a guest, because you are what we live for, I’m sure you’ll understand, and, because of that, I’ll share this with you. I don’t want you to feel guilty about this—and I’d be a fool to imagine you do—it’s just our reality. We’re cool with it.
Whistler never stops. And at Christmas, it particularly never stops. In fact, it hits warp speed. It’s as though the hand of Ullr, or God, or whatever power you believe in waves a magic wand and 50,000 very demanding, very stressed people suddenly appear before us... expecting us to make their beds, fix their meals, take care of their children, engineer perfect weather—apologies in advance—and make them better skiers than they are anywhere outside their fantasies.
Phrases such as “days off” suddenly disappear, and we find ourselves rolling into work in the dark, heading home 10, 11 or 12 hours later in the dark, and spending the hours in between caught in a world the only accurate metaphor for which can be found in nature. That metaphor, and I know you can all picture it, is captured perfectly if you visualize a nest full of baby birds, all chirping madly, all with their mouths wide open, all expecting you to regurgitate partially digested insects down their throats. Okay, they really only expect you to make their holiday perfect. But after a few days, a few weeks, a few years and, yes, a few decades of doing that, the distinction between making their holiday perfect and puking bugs gets a little bit blurred.
Yet, no matter how bizarre the request, you find yourself rising to the occasion and doing the nearly impossible. And so it was, one year while working the reservation centre phones, I was asked if I could arrange a 10-foot-tall, Martha Stewart-decorated Christmas tree for someone’s holiday home.
The answer was, “of course.” Unfortunately, this was followed by a request to find a Mariachi band to set the stage for a marriage proposal. “Ah, that might be a little difficult. But I can lend you a Flaco Jiménez CD if that would help.”
The only way for worker bees to survive is to remember Christmas comes but once a year... and it’ll be over soon.
IV — A Worker Bee’s Perspective, Part II: Oh my god, I’m not scheduled to work Christmas Day!
🎶🎶Rockin’ around the Christmas tree, at the Christmas party hop...🎶🎶
Somehow, a glitch in the system failed to schedule you to work Christmas Day. Don’t ask; they may change their mind. Christmas Day in Whistler is best spent doing what we live here to do: line up early and go sliding. Shred the slopes while the tourists shake themselves awake and open presents.
Between the first gondy and, oh, 10:30 or 11 o’clock, the runs are empty, as good as they’re going to be. The camaraderie is festive, the chairlifts lubricated with seasonally-appropriate cheer, and just for those couple of hours, it seems more like early December than Christmas.
It is not uncommon for the skiing to be soooo good, the runs to be soooo unpopulated and the warm friendships to be soooo gratifying that leaving becomes, well, difficult. And that’s why eating Christmas dinner in Whistler at, say, 10 p.m. is not an uncommon tradition.
Merry Christmas.
