Christmas Dinner

I don’t have much of my family left. The guardians of my family Christmas traditions have left their legacy to my niece, who now lives in the Scottish Highlands with her husband and two children, a boy and a girl. She has the collection of figures that my mother used to make her famous Christmas Tree Yard. I don’t know whether my niece puts them under the tree or not, or whether she crumples up newspaper under the cotton batting to make mountains for the skiing Santas (made of pipe-cleaners and yarn) to tumble down. That used to be my job, unpacking the little Victorian painted cardboard houses; the old mirror we used to make a skating pond; the weird little Bo Peep doll with her crook and her oddly shaped sheep; the cast metal log with the two men in raincoats sitting on it, although they always fell off—so we decided they were drunk, and left them lying on their faces if they fell off more than twice. I would begin by crumpling up newspaper into a framework to lay the “snow” on top of, and earnestly attempting to achieve an illusion of distance perspective. It was an important job, and much appreciated by the whole family, except my little sister, who never got to help me as much as she wanted.

I have so many memories —of going Christmas tree shopping in the rain with my dad; of pulling the pin feathers out of the turkey carcass with a pair of pliers in my mother’s kitchen sink; of washing and drying dishes companionably with my mother and grandmother in the kitchen after dinner; of being assigned to be the “elf” who selected and presented the gifts to be opened in turn by each member of the family; of my mother playing the role of Christmas Matriarch with aplomb and grace, seated in state on the sofa and directing the placement of the lights on the Christmas tree.

This year was more wistful than usual, although some measure of melancholy is always present. I made a very rational (so I thought) decision to do without self-pity, and issue myself a waiver on nostalgia and a discount coupon redeemable for Christmas cheer.

My housemate took off on a retreat the week before Christmas, and so I firmly instructed myself to go ahead and set out the Nativity scene, plan a Christmas dinner, make sugared cranberries, bake molasses cookies, and listen to Christmas music all by myself alone in the house. Recipes I had never cooked before were daringly chosen from the Internet, laundry was done, candles were lit, flour and sugar were spilled on the floor, and decorations resolutely set out.

Christmas presents arrived in the mail from my sister, one of which was handmade and utterly stunning. It made me cry because of the love that was in it.

 In the midst of all the preparations, my mother and my grandmother quietly made their presence known: in my correct placement of the racks in the oven; in my choice of the top of the fridge as a suitable place to cool the pie, duly covered with tinfoil; in my rolling out of cookie dough between two sheets of wax paper; and in my use of the tines of a fork to decorate the edge of the pie crust.

My housemate had returned on Christmas Eve and we went to midnight Mass and sang carols by candlelight. Then we did our due diligence as sacristans, cleaning up after the Eucharist. There was a whole loaf of consecrated bread left over. I went home and took the bread out on the deck, tore it into proper-sized bits, and scattered them in the garden for the birds. The bits of bread arced out and left little dimples in the snow, and the air was very still, almost luminous. I couldn’t help feeling it as an act of prayer, and that the frozen garden took on a touch of holiness on account of it.

On Christmas Day, I put on my apron according to the way I was taught, wrapping the strings around in front of me and draping a dishtowel at my waist. We sliced and grated, sautéed and tossed, seared and roasted, and in the end we sat down to an astonishingly mouthwatering meal that was nothing like the meals I had known as a child. Instead of roast turkey, there was a venison backstrap in blueberry white pepper sauce. Instead of a green bean casserole, there were lemony haricot verts. Instead of candied yams, there were roasted sweet potatoes, rutabagas and acorn squash halves. Instead of a sweet carrot salad with raisins, we had a savory one with currants, toasted pine nuts, yoghurt, and dill. The pumpkin pie was made with coconut cream instead of evaporated milk. There was a Christmas ale instead of wine.

I took pictures of the table with all the food on it, to show it off on Facebook, and we ate this amazing dinner with a sense almost of disbelief. How could it be so incredibly good? It was as if a professional chef had snuck in when our backs were turned and substituted a genuinely gourmet meal for the food we had cooked with such nervousness. The house seemed to fill with a quiet grace, and the table somehow took on an air of elegant simplicity that echoed back to me all the Christmases I could remember.  I felt my memories being drawn steadfastly into the present, making them all the more redolent of the magic of Christmas.

It occurred to me, although I didn’t say it out loud, that this was a sort of small, down-to-earth Christmas miracle. In fact, I am sure of it.