Welcome Christmas

Christmas Day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be,
Just so long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas as we stand,
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Return to the Nest

Noah came home from his week in London on the second Wednesday in December. He’d been to a concert and a play (it was a play about a play, an ill-fated production of A Christmas Carol). He visited the British Library and the British Museum, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. Beth and I went to meet him at the airport. BWI was all decked out for Christmas, “merry and bright,” I said. There was a big tree where you wait for international arrivals with flags from all the states, so Beth had to go inspect it to find the West Virginia flag. We had to wait there a while as Noah went through customs, but finally he emerged. It was the wee hours of the morning London time, but he was hungry, so we took him to eat dinner at Chipotle (we’d already eaten).

North flew home from Cleveland the next day, and we went from a week-long empty nest to a full one in the space of less than a day. I couldn’t go to the airport this time because I had book club that night—we were discussing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—and I needed to get dinner on the table in time to leave for that. But we were able to have dinner all together. I made black bean tostadas and put red and green salsa on the table so people could make them Christmassy if they were so inclined and I put on the Roches’ We Three Kings, in an attempt to make the dinner festive. Beth had finished the outside lights a few days before North got home and we had the Christmas cards we’d received on a string in the living room, with a garland of pine rope and a string of colored light above them. We never did any more inside decorating than that. There are whole unopened boxes in the basement. I feel a little bad about that, but there’s always next year.

Second to Last Weekend Before Christmas

North had left school right after classes ended and had three short papers to write at home, for Psychology, Sociology, and Nutrition. They did one a day until they finished on Sunday, four days before the last one was due. In between finals, they found time to go to Butler’s with us on Saturday to get a Christmas tree. We took pictures of ourselves in different combinations with the 5-to-6-foot sign because we are all between five and six feet tall. Around the field were decorations made from a wagon wheel and a tractor wheel (wreaths), and piles of tires painted green to form a Christmas tree, plus wooden cutouts of penguins and gingerbread men. (At the market later, we saw a snowman made of hay bales and a wooden sleigh.) It was very festive and whimsical.

After we picked out a tree, we visited the snack bar where we got hot chocolate, hot cider, and two apple hand pies to share, and then the farm market where we got smoked cheddar, pasta, and some treats (chocolate-covered cherries, candied pecans, orange-cranberry bread). I picked up ginger cookies for my friend Megan (whom I was going to see the next day), because I know she likes molasses cookies, and they looked similar. We browsed the market’s selection of ornaments, even though we’d decided we really didn’t need any more. We stayed strong and did not buy any.

I met Megan the next morning for coffee. Megan and I have been friends since her oldest and my youngest were in preschool together and we have not seen each other in ages, probably over a year. We talked for two hours and managed to touch on all eight members of our two families, and work, and the dark political times in which we find ourselves, all the important things. I felt like we could have talked another two hours.

While I was gone, Noah raked leaves for the leaf truck that was due to come the next day, Beth did a big grocery shop for the now full house and made black bean soup for dinner. Noah went out to his weekly Sunday afternoon board game group and the rest of us addressed nearly all the Christmas cards and then watched Last Exmas. We’d been watching Christmas specials (Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Frosty, and several Rankin-Bass specials) prior to this and after this, but we thought we’d watch something Noah wouldn’t mind missing. To clarify, he’s not opposed to watching bad gay and lesbian Christmas romances (and in fact he would the following weekend) but he does not feel left out if we do it without him.

Last Work Week

Beth and I were working and North’s friends from high school (who are mostly a year younger) were still in school, so during the week they had plenty of time to bake. They made an apple crumb cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce, almond butter chocolate chip cookies, and pinwheels. We got this recipe from the program at the White House Christmas tour last year and they made them, and they were a big hit. So, I found the recipe and left it at their place at the dining room table and they got the hint and made another batch.

North and I went out for coffee twice that week. They had a psychiatrist appointment one day and I met them at a coffeeshop we like near there and then another day I had to get yard waste bags at the hardware store and I hadn’t had a gingerbread latte at Starbucks even though they brought them back this year after a hiatus of several years and they were always a favorite of mine, so we walked down there together.

On Friday afternoon North met up at a mall with several of their high school friends who were fresh out of school for winter break, and they had a not-so-secret-Santa gift exchange. They drew names and then went around the mall buying presents for each other right in front of each other. North came home with a smiling plush jar of strawberry jam and a small, round stuffed T-Rex. That night we watched Season’s Greeting from Cherry Lane.

Solstice/Last Weekend Before Christmas

This weekend was really packed. We went to see an early afternoon showing of The Muppet Christmas Carol at the American Film Institute. It’s fun to see a movie like that on a big screen, with an audience laughing at the funny parts. Noah objected to the applause at the end “because the people who made the movie are not there” but despite that, it was a very satisfactory outing.

As we left, I opined to the family that the movie is “a masterpiece” and no one contradicted me.

Later that afternoon Beth made buckeyes, and Noah and I made white beans in a tomato-cream sauce with arugula for dinner and afterward we opened presents from my extended family and Beth’s mom. We do this when we’re traveling over Christmas to make room in the car and to have a little Solstice celebration. Often, it’s a little more ceremonial. We’ll light candles and I might buy cookies in snowflake or tree shapes to go with the nature theme. But we had so many sweets in the house that seemed unnecessary this year. I ate a buckeye and told Beth it was “a religious experience.”

“Well, then I’m glad I made them,” she said. We each read a poem about winter from this book. Then we called my mom and sister and niece to thank them for the gifts.

I didn’t even have time to finish the dinner dishes before it was time for our next activity. We had eight p.m. tickets for the Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens. We didn’t spend as long wandering through the lights as we might have because North had turned their ankle earlier in the weekend and it was quite cold—in the high twenties and windy. (I will pause while my hardy Canadian readers do the temperature conversion and laugh at us.)

We got hot chocolate and funnel cake fries to warm us up before we started and then we walked along the familiar paths. It was mostly the same as always—I saw some of my favorites like the dragon that breathes fog and the frog whose throat lights up when it croaks—but there were some new displays, notably a flamboyance of flamingoes by the pond, reflected in the water. There was also a Christmas tree that for some reason was flashing its lights to the rhythm of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Later we heard “Magic” by the Cars playing. I’m honestly not sure what accounts for these musical selections, but as we left, I said the lights were “magical” and then remembering the song, started to sing it.

That night when we went to bed, I told Beth it had been the happiest day I could remember since the election. So, apparently what I need is multiple outings, a beloved story well told, poetry, pretty lights, presents, and sugar.

Sunday morning Beth made pizzelles in two flavors (vanilla and anise) and then I made gingerbread dough. I saved most of it to take with us on our travels, but I baked a few to put on a cookie plate for Becky. Becky is another family friend. We met when she was North’s Kindermusik teacher and then the music teacher at their preschool and then her daughter babysat for us, and by that point we’d become friends. I piled a plate with pinwheels, pizzelles, gingerbread, and buckeyes, while North filled a tin for their friends Maddie and Miles to deliver after Christmas. Beth, North, and I went to visit with Becky that afternoon. She was delighted to sample a buckeye and served us tea and pepparkakor, her own Christmas specialty. Her daughter Eleanor was driving home from Philadelphia for the holiday, and we hoped to see her, too, but we needed to leave before she arrived.

Beth and I took separate walks, she cooked dinner, I blogged, Noah returned from his games, and we all began packing for our drive tomorrow morning, which will take us to the beach, where we will soon be ensconced in the house where are welcoming Christmas, heart to heart and hand in hand.