12 December, 2023.
Where you were and who you were with last Christmas? How about Thanksgiving of 1986? What gifts did you give your teenage son in 1990?
For many years my mom, sister, and I would have an inevitable discussion. Were we at our cousin’s last year for Christmas or at our house? Did we give Derek Hot Wheels or Legos? What year did he get that Walkman?
In 1981, in an attempt to resolve arguments before they started, I started to chronicle the Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas season. Now, 42 years later, it seems brilliant. My recall is not what it used to be. I still remember the events; not always the details such as precise years.
I have written about memories at this time of year twice before (see Christmas Memories from 2017 and Christmas Cards & Cookies from 2021) so it may be a blog trend.
I read through my holiday journal this year and a few more things popped out at me as fun to share.
For 4 years, while I was single and living in Minnesota, I held a Christmas Open House for friends, co-workers (some were both friends and co-workers) with a few family members for good measure. It was always the Sunday before Christmas and several dozen people visited throughout the afternoon and evening. My Christmas Chronicles detailed my menus. Here’s an example.
- Glogg, a deadly Swedish mulled wine
- Cranberry Punch, non-alcoholic
- Japanese Yakitori
- Sombrero Dip (very 80s!)
- Köttbullar (aka, Swedish Meatballs, a family recipe from my grandma)
- Terrine de Campagne
- Empaniditas
- Bond Ost and Herring (Swedish Christmas favorites)
- Wontons
- Curried Chicken Finger-Sandwiches
- Swedish Julkaka (bread) and Various Cookies
I cooked for days. It was crazy and something I would do in my twenties and thirties that I would NOT do these days. I wish I had pictures of these buffets! This was BECP: Before Everyone had Cameras in Pockets.
Christmas in Omaha, 1984. Ric and I were newly engaged. Left to right, Audrey, Anna, and Ruby. Ric’s mom, my grandma of Swedish meatball fame, and my mom. Grandmas was 87 and it was the last Christmas she traveled.
Then there was the year 7-year-old Derek knocked over two bottles of wine just as we were leaving for dinner at my cousin’s, and it was the very wine I had bought for the occasion. Luckily there were alternate wines I was able to grab, but two bottles of wine lay broken on the basement floor. Yuck!
Another Thanksgiving (1984), just as Ric and I had decided to get married the following year, we got a Siamese kitten for Derek, who was then 9. My step-daughter contributed a name for this naughty kitty, Méchante. She was cherished and with us for many years.
There were some very cold Christmases. In 1983, my final Christmas in Minnesota as we were moving to Omaha (this is pre-Ric), as of December 26 at midnight we had experienced 108 hours below zero. One day the high was only -15 degrees F. The high! That year it was so cold that on the morning of our Christmas Open House I woke to frozen pipes and no functioning toilets. Luckily they thawed by party time.
Although not so cold, we have had weather problems in Oregon, too. In 2008, the snow came and came and came in a series of storms. We lived at about 800 feet and could not get our cars out. Mine was stuck in the driveway for 8 days over Christmas. Our friends could not get to us and our neighbors could not get to their planned festivities so we invited stranded neighbors for Christmas Eve. We remember that evening fondly. There were two magnums of great Australian wine at the start of the evening. There were no leftovers.
Another year – 1987 – both holidays were overshadowed by our move from Omaha to Portland. At Halloween we found our house. Over Thanksgiving weekend we selected furniture and window coverings. December 29 we moved in. Whew! Sadly, we missed the wedding of Rick and Jane.
My sister and I had not missed one Christmas since she was born (1960) until 1985. She went to California, no doubt tired of the Upper Midwest cold. I missed her terribly that year. It wasn’t the same without her. She was co-hostess of the Christmas Open House (mostly in name as she was most assuredly not a cook) for at least two years.
Derek loved The Nutcracker. We attended, at his request, four performances, until at the age of 11 he said it was enough. Many years we went to plays and concerts during Advent. At least until he grew into a disinterested teenager.
This is about the age that Derek fell in love with The Nutcracker. Same year he killed the wine.
There were holiday trips. 1996 Thanksgiving in Texas was a favorite. Our brother-in-law built a plywood cover over their lap pool so they could set up tables for about 2-dozen people and we dined outside. That year he also built a dormitory/bunkhouse for half-a-dozen young men and boys to sleep in so everyone had a bed on the ranch. Ric and I got the room with a shotgun over the door and a gigantic Texas cockroach for a target.
When we moved to Italy, we took advantage of being there for holiday trips to London, the Dolomites, and Switzerland. When you cannot celebrate in a traditional manner, go for different. The lights in London, a concert at Royal Albert Hall, snow-hiking in the Alps, 5-course dinners you don’t have to make yourself. Somehow we always remember that at the lovely lodge where we stayed in the Dolomites they had a “butter buffet” with about 8 kinds of butter. Every morning. We were the only Americans with many Germans and Italians for our fellow guests.
One favorite Thanksgiving of all time: Ric and I cooked for 12 Italian friends on Thanksgiving Day 2013. Truly memorable! Those kids are at university by now, maybe graduated.
I was often on the road for business in the 90s and in 1995 was headed to Buffalo, NY, for a meeting on a December Monday. Derek was at Fort Drum in the Army, so on the Friday before we met in New York City to spend a festive weekend. We had a ball: Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Radio City Music Hall “Christmas Spectacular” complete with camels pooping on the stage, and the Rockettes. (They just danced.) We shopped, we ate, and we drank. Sunday at the airport our flights were in trouble: a huge lake effect snowstorm had moved in so my flight to Buffalo was cancelled and his to Syracuse delayed. I never made it to Buffalo for my meeting and Derek spent two days getting back to base as there were five feet of snow between Syracuse and the base near Watertown!
Some years Ric and I were alone in Portland. While Derek was in the Army, we spent two Christmases at a nice lodge on the Oregon Coast with our giant collie, Babe. Other years we had friends and family in large groups (I remember 13 at least once in our down-sized empty-nester condo) to dinner. Always uproariously fun with Trivial Pursuit competitions.
Jane Gray, aka Janie, at 12. She lived another 10 years.
Since we have returned from living in Italy we have spent many wonderful Christmases in Durango with Rick and Jane. Our fifth will be this year, again establishing great memories over shared meals and countless bottles of wine at high altitude. We’ve had snowy years and not-so-snowy years, big gatherings and small, cancelled flights and changes of itinerary, power outages and an intervening pandemic, of course. But we’ve always had a festive and memorable holiday.
Durango Christmas morning 2021. All fresh snow.
My brother has become the Master of making Swedish pancakes, aka plättar. Mom used to make them every year but I have not mastered the technique. A wonderful Christmas morning treat regardless of the weather.
In the end, these holidays embody time with loved ones and “home” wherever it may be. And that is what we remember. The events, the people, the problems, the victories. We forget most of the presents unless we wrote them down. (Though I’ll never forget getting my Barbie Dream House.)
As I wish you a festive and wonderful time during the year-end holidays I leave you with this lovely Italian saying:
Il Natale è un incontro con la memoria, ci porta a casa, inevitabilmente.
Christmas is an encounter with memory, it brings us home, inevitably
– Lorenzo Marone
Girovaga 