Well, Merry Christmas, everyone.
I was going to hop on here and tell everyone that at a little more appropriate time, but I was too busy being on a short vacation and enjoying everything too much, so I never got around to it.
“Well, since you ask, I’m sitting here hitting refresh every few seconds to see if Kent ever says Merry Christmas before it turns midnight. Could you paste my toothbrush for me? I’ll be up in a minute.” – Everyone
Growing up, there were two Christmas traditions that I really, really didn’t like. The first was having my older brothers go through my whole stocking while I was still sleeping and then getting me up.* The second tradition was having lunch (lunch!) and doing the dishes (!!!) before opening presents.**
Now I have a family of my own, and since that will mean Christmas at our house at least some of the time (but we’ll get to VA as soon as we can!), it means that we get to pick out our own traditions, which is a little bit of a weird feeling of oldness, but it’s fun. I wanted to share with all of you a few traditions that we enjoyed this year, and if any of them sound fun to you, please feel free to use them yourself, except where noted.
The Christmas Concert
A couple of years ago, shortly before Greta was born, we were confined to staying in town, and since Kirsten had been on bed rest, it was wise to stay in and keep things low key. We were both getting bored, though, so we invited our friends Meghan and Ryan over for a more or less impromptu Christmas concert. We “performed” some songs together, then snacked and painted Christmas ornaments. Last year, we had just moved into our house a couple of months before, and things were still crazy and broken and smelled weird, so we expanded a little but still had a somewhat limited list of invitees (so don’t feel bad if you’re reading this and you weren’t among them!). We were a little more organized about it, though, with food and drinks and games. It was a smashing success, so we did it again this year with an open invitation. Better than ever! It’s firmly entrenched now, and I’m already looking forward to next year. The rules are simple:
- We’ll make the food. You just show up. We have to make it tasty.
- Everyone has to “perform.” Because none of us except Kirsten’s cousin Sarah is a very serious musician, our standards for what constitutes a “performance” are very, very forgiving. Songs, skits, readings, interpretive dance, you name it. We’re cool with it. We shook car keys to “Jingle Bells” the first year, so pretty much anything is OK.
- No one’s allowed to apologize for the sound of what they’re doing, the lack of practice beforehand, or anything else about their performance.
It’s a silly time, and a fun time, but it’s also a very sweet time with friends. This year, a spontaneous “O Come, All Ye Faithful” started between acts, very much in earnest, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to just sit for a minute and sing together and appreciate the holiday, the birth of a savior, the sounds of each other’s voices, and the warm company. I highly recommend this as a tradition in your own home, unless you’re one of our friends in the greater Seattle area, in which case, shame on you for competing. Just come to ours.
The Chex Mix
My grandmother smoked VERY heavily from her teens up until the last few years of her life, when she suddenly quit cold with no help, no gum, no patches, and no cheating, just like the headstrong and sassy Southern matriarch we all knew she was. It was glorious. In the years between the start and the sudden stop, though, her sense of taste was pretty much non-existent, which was sad in its own way but made various foods more delicious from her hand. Her chili was excellent and would purify your soul from the inside out. And her Chex mix, other than The Great Lemon Pepper Experiment of the Early Nineties, was just about as awesome. With eight cousins, seven aunts and uncles, three grandparents (including my mom’s grandmother while she was still with us), and various guests around, we ate Chex mix by the ton around Christmas. It’s still a very strong association, so when Kirsten asked what I wanted to eat over the holiday week this year, this was one easy answer. Here’s the official recipe, corrected appropriately (trust me on this):
- 3 cups 1 box Corn Chex
- 3 cups 1 box Rice Chex
- 3 cups 1 box Wheat Chex
- 1 cup mixed nuts distract worthlessly; everyone knows this
- 1 cup bite-size pretzels have a distracting texture and are too salty
- 1 cup garlic-flavor bite-size bagel chips
- 6 tablespoons 2 – 2 1/2 sticks of butter or margarine
- 2 tablespoons 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
- 1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt is offensively redundant when there’s Worcestershire sauce
- 3/4 teaspoon 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon 2 tablespoons onion powder
- two to three tablespoons hot pepper sauce
Melt the butter (NOT margarine; I will be disappointed and will scold you most severely donottestmeonthis), then add everything else (except the Chex) and stir. Add it to a huge container with all the Chex and do your best to shake it until everything is covered. Bake it for an hour at 200 with a good stir every fifteen minutes. Eat.
The Pull-Apart Bread
This one is from the more recent years at my parents’ house, and one tradition I was very excited to keep up from the get go after we got married.
- One stick of butter
- 1/2 cup of brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon or so of cinnamon
- A bunch of walnuts (not pecans; they’re not as good, and it’s hard to tell whether you’re eating a nut or a shell)
- Frozen, not-yet-risen dinner rolls
- One small box each of Cook & Serve (not instant) butterscotch and vanilla pudding
Right before you’re ready to go to bed on Christmas Eve, put twelve of the frozen dough balls into a Bundt pan and pour one of the puddings over them. Then add another ten or twelve and put the other pudding over that. Melt the butter and mix in the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. Pour that over the whole thing, and then cover it as tightly as you can with foil. Go to bed. When you get up the next morning, it will be all risen and huge. Poke it down until it’s roughly even with the top of the pan (but don’t be too violent with it), and bake it at 350 for a little while. Best Christmas breakfast ever.
The Miscellaneous Other Stuff
- Really dry, hard salami with great cheese (chevre!), chives if you have them, and plain (this part is important) water crackers.
- Ham from Trader Joe’s. The best ham, the easiest ham. Ours was at the Christmas Concert, and that bit in itself I think may end up its own tradition. Friends, songs, and ham? One adult for the Christmas Concert, please.
- Actual cubes of pure animal fat, refined sugar, or butter, because why not?
As we go on, I’m sure we’ll pick up more and more traditions, and I welcome them. It’s already been a ton of fun, and as a family, we’re only a few Christmases in.
I know it’s a little bit clichéd to directly ask for comments on a blog (right?), but I want to know what your traditions are, what you eat at your house around Christmas, and what your favorite parts of the experience were when you were growing up. Or this year. Speak to me, won’t you?
To the family and friends who were and are such a vital part of making the whole season merry and bright and what have you: thanks very much. We love you, and we’re so grateful to know you and have you as friends and family, which are just about the same thing anyway.
* True story: the first year that we did Christmas at home, where Scott had the room over the garage, I actually camped out on the hard laundry room floor against his outward-opening door so that this wouldn’t happen again. I managed to fall asleep just long enough for my parents to sneak stuff into the stockings. When morning came, I got my reward, which was absolutely not worth the discomfort. If I remember right, though, my brothers either got even more discreet after that or stopped the stocking shenanigans altogether.
** When I was younger, we were at my grandparents’ house in Georgia and—calling a spade a spade here—had to wait for the in-town aunt, uncle, and cousins to show up, which took FOREVER, at least to a kid. The sun was often low in the sky before the first gift wrap came off. When I was a little older, we started having Christmas at home, and things got a little better, but we still had to clean up all of a big lunch and clean up the kitchen, which was torture. Eventually, we wore my parents down and started going earlier. So by the time I exited my childhood (and I’m speaking technically/legally here; I’ll leave my childhood practically when I feel like it, thank you very much), all our Christmas traditions were lovely.
Now, obviously, having someone else look at one’s numerous gifts, or actually waiting a while (the horror!) before opening one’s numerous gifts ranks rather low on the list of unfortunate situations in which one could find oneself come Christmas morning. I can and do appreciate the reality of Christmas around the world, and I’m more grateful than I can express that my Christmas looks anything like it does each year. You understand.
