Every year about this time when the days get cold and the nights longer, I wake up one morning, stretch my arms wide open, and say to the world: Let the eating begin!
The Olympics of Food is about to start. Never mind the big torch, light the ovens. Watch the parade of dishes fill the tables. All those colorful displays of food you never see any other time of the year—and thank god for that. I mean you could eat cherries in brandy anytime but, for me, it’s only at Christmas that it fits.
There will be medals for best nibbles, best entrée, best salad, best sweet potato, best cookies, best pies, best favorite whatever, most outlandish French pastry that looks like something you’d never consider eating, best wine before dinner, best wine with dinner, best wine after dinner, best wine anytime, best egg nog with rum, best egg nog with brandy, best brandy never mind the nog, and the list goes on. Instead of the 12 days of Christmas, somebody should write a song about the 75,000 calories and the 100 or so meals of Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Solstice. Thanksgiving is really just the warm up, the first course, you might say, in a month long binge of eating. And I love it.
Alright, I exaggerate. Not every morsel I consume in December is an elaborate culinary production. And not everything to do with “The Holidays” has to do with food. But the food is the key part. You go to work this month and you eat. You go to parties and you eat. You have friends over and you eat. You decorate the tree and you eat. You open presents and you eat. Maybe it’s the fright of winter. It’s cold and dark, we’d better stock up, gird our loins, put on protective layers of fat, nourish ourselves for the coming bleak days. We could end up starving as the winds of winter howl. This really is a time of primal urges.
For me, these holidays are the antidote for darkness. I hate the short days, the early nights. I love the lights and the decorations, the busy bustling about, the gift giving, the visiting, the sharing of special traditional foods. I love the sense that for this one month normal rules don’t apply. It’s a month of light and sharing, sharing around the table.
I guess that all stems from the fact that food was a central part of everything in my family as I grew up. Mom loved to bake and made special Christmas cookies that I loved as a kid and still do. But now instead of sneaking around searching out her hiding places for these treats and secretly eating a cookie or two, I use her recipes to make my own. And I get pretty close to mom’s triumphs. Of course, it’s hard to screw up any combination of sugar, butter, nuts and chocolate. And I still hide them from myself and still sneakily snitch one before company gets them.
Jamie and I have also established some of our own Christmas traditions like decorating the house with lights and garlands, filling the house with friends and—it always gets back to food—sharing a Christmas Eve dinner of prime rib and all the trimmings, maybe even some French pastry.
Christmas, they say, is really about anticipation and the birth of new life. It’s about nourishment. It’s a time to be with people and shake off the darkness while looking forward to when the days will lengthen. The dark of December is, after all, always followed by the brightness of January’s new year. Break out the champagne!
© 20 Nov 2011
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