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| A wee version of me, with my late-grandfather. |
I hope the holiday season has blessed you with much love, comfort and joy.
It's Christmas Eve and I'm blogging in an effort to keep me from obsessively checking the CSUN website to see if my final course grade has posted yet. Apparently, the deadline is 5pm today. Tick, tick, tick...
In the meantime, I found myself remembering how my family celebrated Christmas as I was growing up. Word on the street - well, at least according to my mom and my now late-grandmother - is that they grew up considering Christmas Day as the big shin-dig when the whole family came together. Not long after I bounced onto the scene in the early 70s, the eldest matriarch of the family passed away and there was a shift in holiday hosting duties. I think that's when my newly married grandmother took over. Or maybe it was her mother-in-law for a while. I don't know. I was a baby. All I know is, by the time I was old enough to remember, Christmas was at Grandma Pat and Grandpa John's house.
They always threw what felt like a massive Christmas Eve party. When I look back, I realize it was mostly Grandpa John's side of the family. He'd been married once before and had three kids and four grandkids. They'd all come... his brother and his wife would come. My great-grandparents (my grandmother's parents) were there. Me... my mom... my sister... It wasn't really that many people, but it felt massive, and I realize now, part of why it felt so "big" was because of the effort my grandmother put into planning and hosting the party.
First there was the cleaning. And lots of it. Then there was the prep work. The baking. Oh, the baking. She always made oatmeal raisin and Snickerdoodle cookies. One year her friend from Indiana gave her a recipe for Peanut Butter Buckeye candy and she made that. If you don't know what Buckeyes are, they are hand-rolled balls of peanut butter awesomeness that are hand-dipped in melted chocolate. Time consuming as hell, but wicked yummy!
The cookies complete and stored in vintage 70s Tupperware containers that were housed in the insanely freezing "middle" bedroom, she'd get to chopping vegetables for the veggie platter. Carrots, celery, jicama, zucchini... no pre-cut stuff here. She sliced and diced it all herself. And the cheese plate? Assorted cheeses, all beautifully (and freakishly uniform) cubed. Her sweet-and-sour cocktail meatballs were always a requested hit and do you think she'd use pre-cooked meatballs? Oh. Heck. No. She hand-rolled every single stinkin' meatball before plunking them into a vat of deliciously sweet and sour sauce.
When I got older ... you know, and thought I knew everything ... I used to think she was silly for not buying pre-cut veggies or pre-made meatballs or pre-cubed bits of cheese. "Nobody will know the difference," I'd say. But she'd know. And for her, making the effort to personally oversee every tiny little detail wasn't about being OCD about the holidays. It was about wanting things perfect for her family.
At least that's what I've come to believe now... as an adult... an adult who misses her grandmother, especially during the holidays when Christmas Eve rolls around and I remember the excitement I used to feel when guests would start arriving at the house. I've had this kind of creepy, funky holiday vibe workin' for a while now, and I thought it was just because I was missing my grandparents as I remembered past holiday celebrations. Then I realized that Christmas Day 2007 was the last time I saw my grandmother alive...
As a slight detour, my grandfather had his perfectionist tendencies, too. One year I talked him into hanging Christmas lights on the house - something they never did. A mechanical engineer, he wasn't about to accept "limp light syndrome" where the lights hang all sad-like from the eaves. Oh no. He took to the job with his staple gun in-hand and secured each bulb with a staple on either side to keep them all standing uniformly at attention all season long. It was beautiful.
He also took great pleasure getting a rise outta me by calling the Brazil Nuts a very.... er, um.... "colorful" name. "OHMYGAWD... STOP CALLING THEM THAT!!!" I'd wail in horrified embarrassment. Every. Stinkin'. Year.
I miss that. Okay. Not the overt racism part, but you get what I mean.
Indeed, the holidays are a time to reflect and so I am... as I ponder new holiday traditions and celebrate time with family and friends.
May your Christmas be magical and your New Year filled with love and light.
Merry Christmas!
P.S. Still. No. Grade. (Perhaps I should run and ask Santa for some patience for Christmas?!)
