Christmas Passed (& I’m Grateful)

A lot of wonderful things happened this Christmas. We cleaned the house from top to bottom and Sean put up a shelf in the bathroom.

“It’s a Christmas miracle, bunny,” he said

And so it was.  The shelf had been sitting around for months. The drill close by. We opened the package once or twice –  admired it, worried about losing the little packet of screws – then tucked it away somewhere behind the door.

But sometime Christmas Eve Sean called me from my prone position on the couch and led me, starry eyed, into the bathroom to see his handiwork. And there it was, shiny and sparkly and new.

And Nick made Royal Icing for the fruitcake. Another Christmas miracle! His fruitcake is on the left for those who are unfamiliar with this amazing culinary accomplishment. Emma made an amazing English trifle and my friend Mark brought me a Linzer Tart.

This year we were 7 for Christmas dinner including two children, one with adulthood closing in. It is always a good idea to have children around to set the season in focus and I am always happy to be busily caught up in the tasks that a large Christmas dinner requires, details that everyone claims don’t really matter but are surely noticed when absent. One year I didn’t make gravy.  LHM (lord have mercy) that was never forgotten. And then there was the Yule twig. . .  I have never really lived that one down. It was supposed to be a yule log and anyone who knows me knows that I am vain about my baking so that was a natural for ridicule.

Our festive little group.

The bird that made it possible. This one is 23.68lbs

A month or so before Christmas I begin to hear it in voices of friends – anxiety, sometimes guilt about having to be somewhere unpleasant,  or worse, having nowhere to go and no one to share it with.  This season shines a cool light on relationships, reveals the bones sometimes surprising us with strong connections, new bonds – but often I get the sense of people huddling to weather a family storm. Christmas is a weird time. Filled with expectations and (grim) determination to see it through.

This year even Mr Surly had a rough time. A few days ago I found him at my doorstep covered in mud that was as tough to remove as plaster.

He had been in a fight and didn’t want to be touched and tried to walk away.

But I could tell that his heart wasn’t in it so I corralled him in and he slept like the dead on a soft comfy bed for about 8 hours straight. Periodically Sean or I would remove a clump of mud until he threatened to wake. By morning he was mostly picked clean.

Over the years I have embraced Christmas, sometimes because I am genuinely thrilled with the prospect of getting together with family and friends – other times because it is futile to resist.  Everything stops for Christmas so any attempt to escape carries the inherent risk of lapsing into morbid reflection. Better to invite friends over, cook like the devil, bend with the wind. Get on with it.

In the determined Christmas spirit there is a small furious voice that knows if we just put enough into it, if we are generous, industrious and kind we will break the ancestral curse, the ennui, the stony eyed no to the world.

This morning I found Mr Surly, curled up in his chair outside. He had slept in most of the night and then clamored to get out in the wee hours. I was sleeping when he left so I was happy to meet him in the morning. When Mr Surly wakes up happy, his eyes are big and slanted. I love his not-human self, his big blinking eyes, his furious optimism, happy to greet the new day.