Ghosts of Christmas Past

I hope you’re spending Christmas with people you love.  I hope you’ll be eating good food, and singing and generally enjoying the day.  Even if you don’t celebrate in the traditional fashion, I hope you will be merry.

I have always loved Christmas, throughout my childhood my family (despite being Jewish) had a tree.  We called it a Christmas tree, we put gifts under it, and opened them on Christmas Day.  It didn’t feel strange until as teenagers, with the indoctrination of our Hebrew School education we (the kids) decided we really shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas.  Though we got rid of the tree, and subsequently all the beautiful glass ornaments, we continued to gather on Christmas for many years.  

Christmas dinner was a time we would all be available, no one had work or school. or any other obligations.  I’m not sure when these Christmas dinners ended.  It might have been when my parents left Long Island to move to the Berkshires in Massachusetts…  There were some memorable dinners including the goose dinner, which I talked about Monday.  There was the year I brought someone home with me who I didn’t know very well; my friend Dan had a friend visiting from London, and asked if I would entertain Carol for Christmas.  It turned out to be quite a scene as my mother and I had a major fight, and Carol and I left mid-dinner in a cab to the LIRR to go back to NYC.  My mom and I didn’t speak for three months.  I’m sorry to admit that I recall precisely what the fight was about…  I think I might have been in the wrong. One year my parents and my brother came to have Christmas dinner at my small NYC apartment.  That was a quieter event, with no drama, and of course the food was excellent!  

Then there were years I went with various friends and sweethearts to visit their families for Christmas.  One year I went with a friend to her father’ s house in Brooklyn.  He was quite a character; right out of a Francis Ford Coppola movie, and my friend and her brother we carrying on about their dad making pig’s feet in the gravy.  (This was the first time I’d ever heard red sauce called gravy.)  I had never had pig’s feet, but I’ll try almost anything, and based on their enthusiasm I was getting pretty excited myself.  I’m sorry if you are a pig’s feet fan, but I found them awful.  They had a strange gelatinous texture, and I just couldn’t stand them.  The worst part was there weren’t a lot of them, and I felt really bad that these were being wasted on me, and I didn’t feel like I could say I didn’t like them.

I shudder to think how many Christmastimes I have lived through.  This year I am lucky to be spending Christmas with a family who are among my oldest and dearest friends.  Although I have known them for over twenty years I’ve never spent Christmas with them.  We are in the Berkshires, but the recent warm spell has left the landscape sadly devoid of snow…  Snow or not, I am happy to be with my friends and their now grown children whom I have loved since they were little girls.  No matter what Christmas means to you, I wish you a celebration that warms your heart, your soul and your belly.

Merry Christmas