Christmas around the world 5

Christmas with the Grit

Right off, you need to know that I am another one of those people who would have every available surface of our house covered completely in Christmas decorations, preferably sparkle lights. This, I believe, stems from my Mother marring Scrooge during my formative years. Until I left home, Christmas consisted of opening up the Xmas Tree Kit, assembling the horrid thing, hanging the 12 identical ball decorations, and turning on the illumination. The Tree Kit tree was metallic silver, and consisted of a trunk with a folding tripod stand and 24 branches that were test tube cleaners spray painted silver. The illumination was a 100 watt bulb in a holder with a plastic disk, colored red, green, and blue, that slowly rotated to change the color. This was placed at the base of the tree. Whee!

Thus, I do tend to go a bit overboard with Christmas stuff. At one point, I owned 20 50 foot strings of chaser lights, 500 feet of red and green tinsel garland, and too many regular Christmas lights to count. Those were my office decorations. Fortunately, with counseling, some minor drug therapy, and a firm "I'll decorate from now on" by my wife, that phase of my life is past. Now, I concentrate on the cooking.

Of which there is a lot to do, this time of year. When we first moved here, my wife's parents, her Uncle, and her Aunt lived within walking distance. That solved many of the problems associated with Christmas. Since there was such a concentration of family here, no one expected the festivities to be held anywhere else. Unfortunately, those people have passed on.

Now, our remaining family is so scattered and with competing obligations from their spouses' families, we rarely get together. So, we throw parties. Some people go on vacation to distant places; we have Christmas parties. Heck, I generally hate traveling anyway :)

The weekend before Christmas, we host two large gatherings. There is a pot luck dinner for the church my wife attends on Friday. On Saturday, we have our party for friends, special clients, and family. That one is usually more fun, and I get to do all the cooking. Last year there were 40 for the church party, and 70 for ours. Fortunately, the winery down the road cuts us a good price on bulk purchases, and we have 60 acres of field for parking.

After that, we wind down with a formal dinner on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we have out of town family, sometimes not. Usually, we know enough people without family to fill up the table, which seats twelve. Actually, comparing Xmas dinners of old with what we have now, I like the variety of guests we get these days.

A side benefit of all that cooking is I rarely have to touch a pan until New Years. That makes Christmas day very relaxed. Just us - immediate family, 4 dogs, 3 cats - enjoying some peace and quiet, and lots of left overs.

Merry Christmas,
the Grit