Christmas Traditions

We just had a very fine dinner, The Man, The Boy, Mom and I. Without knowing it, we've been building our own Christmas traditions over the years. Each time, it's The Boy who signals a tradition to me with, Mom, you have to do it; it's tradition.

Our Christmas traditions unfold as follows:

In the morning, The Man gets out of bed first. He gives The Boy's stocking to him in bed. We stay in our pajamas and organize ourselves with coffee and juice. I put on Christmas music. The Man and I open our stockings while drinking our coffees.

In each of our stockings, I put a clementine in the toe. That's one of the traditions The Boy insists on. He says, It wouldn't be Christmas morning if I don't find a clementine there.

When The Boy comes downstairs, we open our presents. Each year, I give him a joke present. It's been a roll of toilet paper for a few years. He loves it. This year, I gave him a squeegie. He loved that too. At the end of the day, I say to him, Be honest, which was your favourite present? He makes like he's thinking and weighing his choices, then always says, It's the toilet paper. This year, it was the squeegie of course.

After the presents, we get breakfast on the table.

I make two small pitchers of freshly squeezed orange juice. The Boy, still in his PJs, runs next door with a pitcher and a present for our neighbour. He comes back to set the table. Meanwhile, I heat up croissants and cut up melons. That's the tradition I insist on, having freshly squeezed orange juice, croissant, and melon in the morning.

This whole time, The Man shucks oysters. That's tradition The Man introduced for our family, having oysters for Christmas breakfast. We sit down content, eating our breakfast and examining some of our presents.

After breakfast, there is a flurry of activity as we shower and dress. A friend usually drops by. This year, a dear friend dropped off a Christmas pudding.

I make sure the turkey goes in the oven by 2 PM and cook the rest of the Christmas dinner. The Man and The Boy clean up the house and play with their presents. Around 3:30 PM, The Man goes to pick up Mom.

Even when it's just the four of us for dinner, I set the table with table cloth, table runner, linen placemats and napkins. There is lots of room around the table and no one is crammed. We are very relaxed.

In the late afternoon and early evening, we give mom her presents. There are also phone calls, both placed and received, as we connect with friends and family who aren't in the city.

After dinner, we laze about. The meal is effortless, abundant, and delicious, the clean up easy and unhurried. I like these Christmas dinners best.

Mom then goes to bed and I prepare food for the next day. That's when my side of the extended family get together and practise gluttony. I don't know if that's tradition or religion. Sometimes I think if my brothers, sister and I hated each other, we would still get together because a higher authority compels us to make pigs of ourselves. That higher authority would be Mom. That's how she raised us; being gluttons is part of our identity. We even keep a fat blog about it.

Abundance at the table is an understatement. Obscene excess is closer to the quantity of food we serve. Some years, we barely touch a quarter of what we put out. A few days later, I throw out a lot of the food from these obscene dinners. That is tradition. The line about the starving children in China doesn't work in our family. Mom and especially dad were those starving children in China. They escaped death by starvation. Now we have to compensate for them having gone hungry.

It's tradition that we rotate the hosting of Christmas dinner. Tomorrow, we are deep frying a turkey at Sis'. While the deep fryer is on, we will deep fry Scotch Eggs, French Fries, and Yam Frites. And I started out with such a simple menu plan. This is also tradition - each year, I make simple plans, then crazy takes over, and we end up with at least three times more food than we can eat.

I am part of that crazy. That too is tradition.