I suppose part of Christmas to me will always be a big church choir singing Handel's "Messiah," reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales," hand bells chiming "Silent Night," and a flaming plum pudding. I have other ghosts of Christmas past, like my mother's live fir trees -- root balls and all, flowering paper whites, and a wooden box of Swiss chocolates shaped like watches. (My father is in the watch business.)

Also, there were cousins and grandparents and white linen tablecloths set with matching silver and sweet pickles in crystal dishes.

There was a service of Lessons and Carols at five o'clock Christmas Eve in an old timber-framed church that smelled like incense and wool. My mother sang in the Senior Choir, my sisters and I in the Junior Choir. On Christmas morning we ate my grandmother's sour cream cake.

But for more than half my life now, those New York Christmases past have been a memory. Which is why Christmas present is a small church that meets in the lobby of the Chilkat Center for the Arts, whose congregation belts out carols before our only service Christmas Eve, which is midnight mass. That means little children sleep on their coats on the floor.

Christmas in Haines also means a snow dragon, the school concert, lights on the old Fort Seward houses, and the alumni basketball game. There is just about always snow at Christmastime, and a ferry that breaks down, or fog in Juneau that grounds the jets and prevents friends or family from arriving (or departing) on time, but folks here adjust.

There's Solstice yoga, bonfires and Christmas bird counts too. This year there were real hand bells in the community Nativity play, and an elaborate puppet theater production, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." There are so many kids home from college you cannot make a quick trip to the grocery store because of all the visiting.

At our house, we cut a tree off the beach, and hang it with mostly homemade ornaments, from the lumpy pre-school made dough-salmon to a high-schooler's ceramic halibuts. A friend made the wire cyclists with pistachio nut helmets.

Before church Christmas Eve we eat the same meal every year: smoked salmon fettuccine. While this dinner is just for family, we dress and set the table as if there were company.

On Christmas Day we have a party, with the same friends who come every year and are now like aunts and uncles and cousins. We use the plastic Christmas plates our children made in elementary school, the regular plates, and some of my mother's good China, all mostly balanced on our laps. There is more beer than wine and rarely a plum pudding. Once, an Aussie friend made one. When the woodstove gets too warm we crack open a window, and when anyone bumps the tree its needles fall off.

The stockings, filled with oranges and chocolate, are not hung by the chimney since they'd catch on fire. Instead, they are looped over the bedposts of sleeping children. That way the dogs can't steal them, and we parents can stay in bed a little longer while they awake and discover their contents.

These days the kids sleep later than we do, so that is not an issue, but it is a tradition. Music is too. I have a recording of Handel's "Messiah," and when I listen to it, I remember past Christmases, far-away family, my long-gone grandparents, and especially my mother, who died three years ago.

This year the daughter I named her for is in Juneau with her husband waiting for the birth of our first granddaughter (There is no hospital in Haines.) It all makes the Christmas story about Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus more appealing, and my faith in good tidings of great joy even stronger.

But right now the guitar and ukulele are strumming, and I hear my son and daughters and their friends singing -- and it's not "O Come All Ye Faithful" -- It's that John Prine tune about an illegal smile, so I should wrap this up and see what's going on downstairs.

Here's your gift, the recipe for that smoked salmon fettuccine: