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I don't know yet what our Christmas Day will look like, but last year the Christmas pie didn't materialize. There was no need for it, no dinner for it to be topping off. Last year was my heart's desire of a Christmas: two loving people.
Oh, we had a family gathering on the Thursday evening before Xmas, with a lonely great—uncle, two grandmothers, one grandfather, and the Little Family of daddy, mommy, brother, and sister. Candles burned, Christmas lights blazed at the window, and the table featured a gigantic roast chicken, with two pies for dessert. Not the feast of yesteryears but more elaborate than, say, mac and cheese—though that has its place.
But on the day, the birthday that I share with the world's Christians, that day my husband and I were alone. There was much Skyping with distant relatives and a few phone calls to field, but we were alone in the house.
How did we celebrate? I slept in until 7:30. Then I got up, dressed, and performed a few rituals, including lighting my day-long birthday candle, a ceremony suggested by a friend a few years ago. Then I took from the fridge two whitefish fillets and two smoked whitefish fillets, from which I made six fish cakes, chilling them until breakfast time. I made coffee for two, then I woke up my husband so he could wish me a happy birthday.
He dressed. I fried the fishcakes in butter and oil until they were crisp on the outside. He opened the day's Champagne and then (by now it was 10 o'clock) we ate, in solitary splendour (solitary in the dual sense). Sitting at the large dining room table, alone together, we ate our delicious fishcakes and drank our brut Champagne, confident that we were the only couple in Toronto celebrating in just that way at just that time.
Then my most romantic, most practical husband offered me the first of his over-the-top expressions of love. He held out two envelopes, one in each hand, and asked me to choose one. In it was a print-out of an eighteenth century poem, which he read aloud to me. And at the top of the paper he had written "left foot boot." The other envelope held another love poem, which he read, finishing with "right foot boot." So there, in one swell foop, was the essence of my dear husband: the romantic love poems read with a catch in his voice, accompanied by the most practical of additions: a new pair of boots to be shopped for by me. (Little did he know that I'd head straight to John Fluevog for those boots. Next time he might set a limit . . . )
The day continued. Skyped serenades of the birthday song in four-part harmony, distant grandchildren and daughters checking in.
Later in the afternoon our son and his family arrived. After ten minutes or so of happy interchanges, the little three-year-old succumbed to the pressures of the day and pitched a fit. Her meltdown was finally cured when her father held and cuddled her, away from others, allowing her to calm down in her own time.
Now where was I going with all of this, beyond fishcakes and Champagne for breakfast? I heard many friends and relatives later describe their Christmas Day: one couple had breakfast at an ex-daughter-in-law's house (with small granddaughters), brunch at a daughter's, and then, at 4 p.m., a gigantic family meal that included everyone else. Another family, having hosted an annual Christmas-eve party for the neighbourhood, was preparing (even as we talked) a traditional Christmas dinner for thirteen.
Were we shirking our duty, my husband and I? Should we have been in the kitchen all day preparing for a big family do? Or am I now permitted, after years of being responsible for dinners such as others described, to celebrate in my own fashion—which is to say, in seclusion?
Oh, that's fake. I have never cooked Christmas dinners. Not for forty years, anyway. When I lived in the United States, I did the whole Thanksgiving thing for twenty people or more—chaotic and a bit show-off-y. And because that holiday was only a month from Christmas, doing it all over again would have been anti-climactic. Once I moved to Canada, I no longer had the excuse that the late-November Thanksgiving meal precluded doing one on Christmas (Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated in early October). So my new excuse for not preparing a Christmas dinner is that I don't have to cook on my birthday—an opinion in which I am supported by my indulgent husband. We share the day with whoever is in town, of course, offering sandwich makings instead of a groaning board. Last year was the most reclusive year yet, and it felt absolutely right. December 25, 2013, is still being negotiated.
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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