Holiday Magic
Tonight’s the magical night of our family Christmas dinner. Tonight we gather with Ann and Harriet, and Tom and David for our annual evening of holiday gift giving, good food, and a lively game of Hearts. We do so in a living room lit by abundant candles and a nine foot decorated tree, a mantle filled with twinkle lights, leaves, and fruit, and snow-covered trees and angels from every culture in every corner.
The center of the dining room table is Santa’s Village where a moving train circles a North Pole scene of reindeer being readied for their flight, elves carrying gifts and candy canes, and Santa reading over his list. Snowflakes hang from the chandelier, almost touching the snow-covered trees that fill each open space. Red, handmade place cards with snowflakes designate seating. Large elves sit at the side of each plate. These will be taken home as tokens of remembrance.
We’ll start with gift-giving. Ann will have her Diet Coke and a slice of lemon. David and Harriet will each have one glass of Merlot. Tom will drink a Diet Dr. Pepper. Ray will have his Diet Pepsi, and I’ll have water without ice, but with a slice of lemon. Ann will gather all of the discarded wrapping paper as the others join me in the kitchen and dining room to serve the meal. Everyone has a task and knows it well.
This evening, we’re starting with artichokes and a wonderful dipping sauce of curry, sour cream, lemon, mayonnaise, garlic, and cumin. Cream of spinach soup is the second course. Each bowl will be garnished with slivered almonds. For the main course, we’re having tomato cheese pie, asparagus, and a sliced avocado and melon salad.
We’ll then head upstairs for a game of Hearts. In addition to the traditional rules, we play that the ten of spades is ten points against you and the jack of diamonds is ten points off your score. On the table will be jellied fruit slices and dark chocolate turtles. After a round or two of cards, Ray will serve his homemade Christmas cookies, shaped like snowflakes and covered with white icing.
The evening will end by nine. Ray and I will have little to do, because everyone stays until all of the dishes are done and the house is put back in order. In a week, we’ll do this again here on Christmas Eve with Tom and David, and Tom’s parents George and Kate. The next day, we’ll join them in their home for dinner and gift giving. Ann and Harriet will be back in Massachusetts for the holiday with their four beloved grandchildren and children.
As I write all of this, I have vivid images of Barbara Stanwyck typing her fabricated description of the make-believe Christmas she planned for her imaginary farm in Connecticut. In the next scene of Christmas in Connecticut a wounded GI in an infirmary is reading her description aloud and salivating at the thought of such a sumptuous meal being consumed in such a romantic setting. He longed to share in her dream. As anyone who has seen the holiday classic film knows, he gets his wish and she has to quickly figure out a way to find a farm in Connecticut for Christmas and create a meal she is ill-prepared to do.
When I imagine someone reading the description of my plans for tonight, I imagine them saying, “Hey, honey, read this. It’ll give you a toothache.”
I agree. The description of our magical family gathering is so sweet that unless you know it to be true, it will give you a toothache. And even trusting that it’s true, you may still feel that I and my friends are hopeless romantics caught in a time warp and out of touch with the plight of the rest of the world. You’d be wrong about most of that, but you might feel that.
I am a romantic when it comes to the holidays. Traditions hold a lot of meaning for Ray and me. We don’t cling to them but we enjoy them.
When December 26 comes, we’re very ready for the holidays to be over. In fact, Ray and I traditionally take down the tree and clean out the house and yard of all decorations that day. No more Christmas carols are allowed in our home for another 11 months. “Thank you” notes are written for gifts received, and the clean calendar for the New Year is opened with delight. But between Thanksgiving and Christmas, romance rules the day.
Every year, I make turkey soup from the carcass of the Thanksgiving bird and we have the soup the night the tree is decorated a couple of weeks later. Friends now look forward to that event.
Every year, we decorate the outside and inside of the house, tastefully I’d say, with white lights, wreaths, old fashioned Santa figures, greens, red ribbons, angels, crèches, and candles. Every year the centerpiece of the dining room table is elaborate and whimsical.
The goal is to create holiday magic so that we and everyone who enters our home has every fantasy about the holidays they’ve had since childhood fulfilled. “This is a winter wonderland,” a friend said yesterday when entering our Ft. Lauderdale home. Success!
Every year, we hang from our mantel stockings knitted by an 80-year-old Polish woman in Concord, MA, thirty years ago. We asked her to make five, one for each of us, one for our gay brothers David and Tom, and one for our Irish Setter at the time, Jeremy. Stockings are filled with small wrapped gifts, each with an obtuse description of what’s within. When I was a child, stockings were opened on Christmas Eve, along with gifts from one another. Santa’s gifts arrived on Christmas morning, and were opened quickly before we went to Mass.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we celebrate Hanukkah with Harriet and Ann. Harriet didn’t really celebrate Hanukkah as a child, but has adopted it as her gift to all of us each year. She fills the table with deli-bought corned beef, chicken salad, chopped liver, herring, potato pancakes, matzo ball soup, Koogler, and assorted other delicacies.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Ray and I also watch a series of seasonal films. Our favorite is A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim. We also love It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Scrooge, The Bishop’s Wife, and, of course Christmas in Connecticut, among others.
On Christmas Eve, we always have potato-leek soup. This year, I plan to serve George and Kate, and Tom and David, salmon, spinach-cheese pie, and beets. (You have to get red and green on the plate somehow.) We’ll play Hearts with George and Kate that evening too.
On Christmas morning, Ray and I will have a wonderful Danish kringle that we order from O and H Bakery in Wisconsin, something that I’ve had over the holidays since I was a child. Ray will make himself a large coffee and me a hot chocolate. We’ll then open our gifts to each other. We’ve cut back a bit, so it doesn’t take all morning any longer, but it’s lots of fun. We’ll then have bacon and eggs, a once-a-week treat, clean up, watch a holiday movie that makes us cry, and go to Tom and David’s festive home next door for gift giving with Kate and George and Tom and David, then a delicious ham dinner, and a great game of Hearts.
Add to those rituals weeks of packages arriving and packages being sent, wrapping each other’s gifts in secret and hiding them under designated beds, cards written and cards received, calls made and calls received, visits to friends and visits from friends, and you get the feel of the holidays at our house. It’s all lots of fun. It’s all very exciting to create. It’s all very tiring. And as much as we love it, we’re glad to put the boxes of decorations away for another year.
We have no illusions that this is how everyone celebrates Christmas. Our good friend Paul Shanley is in prison and we know he experiences the holidays very differently than we do. There are thousands of local people who can’t afford to buy gifts for their children. There are millions of gay and straight people without anyone to share a meal. So we don’t take our lives for granted nor do we take our bounty lightly. We do whatever we can to improve the conditions of those who are less fortunate than us, and we commit ourselves to enjoying each moment we have together.
Ray and I make no assumptions about the New Year. We hope to have another Christmas together and we hope our current friends stay close. But things change. They always do. That’s life. Yet, regardless of how circumstances change, we can still keep the romance of the season in our hearts. We can make turkey soup when we put up the tree or open a can of Progresso when we decorate the artificial tabletop one. We can make our potato-leek soup for Christmas Eve or rely on Campbell’s for the next best thing. And if we’re all alone, we can have that soup on a folding table in front of the television and watch Christmas in Connecticut and remember that whether it’s fantasy or reality, the joy comes in allowing the magic into your hearts and minds, if just for the moment, and even if it gives you a toothache.
From our house to yours, best wishes for a magical holiday season.
