Enough of all that Christmas spirit and being charitable. Let’s talk about the girl – now identified as Annie Wagner – sitting in the bleachers at the Bears vs. Packers Christmas Day football game. My husband was on the sofa in a post-turkey torpor as I walked in to hand him a Christmas beer. The camera just happened to zoom in on a girl in the crowd grinning ear to ear and madly waving a sign that read: “My cheating EX-boyfriend is watching from his couch instead!” Woe betide a woman scorned at Christmas-time, but especially a Green Bay Packers fan with playoff tickets. Apparently her boyfriend learned the hard way and hadn’t managed to postpone his dalliances until after the drafts. Now here she was at the Christmas Day game, a beaming little slip of a thing, all fired up with the pleasure of Christmas revenge and the national outing of a two-timing cad. I’m sure we’ve all harboured such a wicked thought, so let me just say: ‘Merry Christmas, Annie Wagner! You go girl!’
My parents joined us from the UK for the holidays and after discussing Annie Wagner’s tale of recompense at the dinner table, my mother revealed a friend of hers once chopped all the sleeves off her gambling husband’s expensive suits in a furious attempt to break him of his casino habit. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this stroke of genius applied in a movie. Perhaps it’s a common knee-jerk reaction. Another of her friends tired of her husband spending excessively on (and no doubt drinking) expensive wine. When her patience finally ran out she drove around the neighbourhood leaving bottles of wine next to the milk delivery on every doorstep. Seems a lot more charitable than pouring it down the drain. And what colourful friends to keep you company. The third tale was of a woman who caught her philandering husband in flagrante in the their marital home. After he agreed to leave for the night, she rounded up all his televisions, expensive electronics and gadgets and left them on the front lawn with a helpful sign saying, “Free”. Surely nothing says Christmas like giving away all your earthly possessions, voluntarily or not. He must still be reaping the karmic rewards to this day.
With Christmas now behind us, we have less than a week to ready ourselves for the New Year and host of life-improving resolutions we’re supposed to make publicly and privately. It’s like a perverse two-finger salute to the gluttony of Christmas: the heedless over-eating, the demolition of boxed chocolates one soft center at a time, and all those glasses of pinot noir and prosecco. Perhaps New Year’s resolutions are not so much about purifying and bettering ourselves for an ever fitter, healthier and over-productive year ahead, but a sort of Victorian horrified flashback to a week of over-indulgent sins of the palate.
For me, my most successful resolution ever was a commitment several years ago to Wear More Hats. And I have. Frankly, anything that adds to your life and happiness rather than eliminating and mandating, is going to be a more efficient arbiter of change in my book. So what if I have a pathetic weakness for my secret stash of Cadbury’s chocolate buttons? There are beneficiaries to the mood-restoring power of half-a-dozen little buttons stuffed in my mouth during the daily 4 o’clock meltdown. If two pre-schoolers and a husband can be saved daily by my personal failing (and simultaneously protect me from booze, Valium and therapy), then it’s a crutch I’m willing to hang on to, size 2 pants be damned.
On that note, with 2012 nipping at our heels, may I wish you, and Annie Wagner, the very best for the New Year. May you eat delicious things, drink whatever takes your fancy, be merry and in good company. Rejoice if you’re gleefully leaving a cheating Green Bay Packers fan in your wake. Failing that, dig into a copy of Gretchen Rubin’s amusing book, The Happiness Project, and hunt down your own brand of zen-happy. And if nothing else: Wear More Hats.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Forget the pudding, it's Christmas crumble
It started when the babysitter told our children she talks to Santa on her way home. I understood the ploy; nothing is more attractive at this time of year than reminding wide-eyed children that Santa and his army of tattle-tale elves are watching, no matter how sinister the implication. (Frankly it’s a wonder more children don’t have nightmares about this. As a child I distinctly remember worrying that every deceased relative was not merely sitting on a cloud playing a harp but also capable of watching me while I changed in my bedroom.) You have to choose wisely since that tangled web of lies we weave can be treacherous. Like all deviations from the truth, once a story line has been set in motion it’s hard to undo. And inquisitive five year olds weren’t born yesterday.
After the sitter left, my daughter began her inquisition. “How come Kay can talk to Santa? Does she call him? Do you believe she really can talk to him? Why don’t you talk to him?” -- and so on, ad infinitum.
With her ears newly attuned to changes in a previously well-oiled story, the five year old started looking for more cracks in our testimony. The next morning I found her sitting under her Elf on the Shelf who was, that particular morning, hanging from the woodstove chimney flue. Her face looked grave. “Mummy, does Small Paul have a tag on his bottom? Is it sewn onto him? What does it say?” Like Adam’s godforsaken apple, this tag threatened to single handedly expose the thundering machine that keeps secular Christmas reinventing itself, even with such madcap new “traditions” as mobile elves. Now she wanted to be picked up to look at the tag. I could hardly refuse. Peering at it together she wanted to know what it said. And suddenly I found myself adding to Original Sin with an elaborate embellishment: this jumble of letters and numbers must be written in Elvish! Perhaps his address - or ours - in case he got lost on his nightly trips to the North Pole? The answer stymied the flow of questions but still had to be shared with the rest of the household, including the sitter, least discrepancies arose.
I wasn’t expecting to be tripped up by the flurry of Christmas shorts hitting the television. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is normally our safe bet, even if Santa seems uncharacteristically grouchy in the first half. Then came the Elf on the Shelf television movie. The collaboration between the Elf book’s creators and the film directors was as symbiotic as a product hawker and an infomercial. For forty minutes, we were treated to thinly veiled explanations of how Santa’s Workshop ships out the boxed sets of books and elves to households around the world. Despite the effort, our children became fixated on the revelation of talking elves that cease to talk once boxed and are revived once named by a family. To even a two and five year old, something didn’t add up. I have now spent the better part of a week trying to change the conversation.
With Christmas Eve approaching, the excitement has been growing with our imminent ride on the Polar Express only adding to the fever pitch. I’m trying to hide the news that another (ostensibly magic) upstate NY Polar Express train recently derailed with children rescued by firefighters and transported back by bus. I didn’t fancy getting into a discussion of why a bunch of flying elves and reindeer didn’t come to the rescue.
In case you think that’s it, there is now genuine concern over Santa’s arrival. Why does he have to come down the chimney? Why doesn’t he come through the door? Does he come upstairs? Can anyone come into our house through the chimney? If so, shouldn’t we leave a fire burning when we turn on the house alarm? So while I prepare myself for the battery of questions that peppers this house from dawn to dusk, I welcome both the arrival and departure of Santa. We have the reindeer food (oatmeal and gold glitter) to sprinkle on the lawn, reindeer moss (which helps them fly), cookies and milk (for American Santa), mince pies and sherry (for British Father Christmas), and carrots for good measure. Letters were sent to the North Pole, the live reindeer camera checked, and Santa’s Christmas video personalized and viewed. So this morning’s revelation came out of nowhere. “Mummy, I don’t think I believe in the Easter bunny anymore.”
After the sitter left, my daughter began her inquisition. “How come Kay can talk to Santa? Does she call him? Do you believe she really can talk to him? Why don’t you talk to him?” -- and so on, ad infinitum.
With her ears newly attuned to changes in a previously well-oiled story, the five year old started looking for more cracks in our testimony. The next morning I found her sitting under her Elf on the Shelf who was, that particular morning, hanging from the woodstove chimney flue. Her face looked grave. “Mummy, does Small Paul have a tag on his bottom? Is it sewn onto him? What does it say?” Like Adam’s godforsaken apple, this tag threatened to single handedly expose the thundering machine that keeps secular Christmas reinventing itself, even with such madcap new “traditions” as mobile elves. Now she wanted to be picked up to look at the tag. I could hardly refuse. Peering at it together she wanted to know what it said. And suddenly I found myself adding to Original Sin with an elaborate embellishment: this jumble of letters and numbers must be written in Elvish! Perhaps his address - or ours - in case he got lost on his nightly trips to the North Pole? The answer stymied the flow of questions but still had to be shared with the rest of the household, including the sitter, least discrepancies arose.
I wasn’t expecting to be tripped up by the flurry of Christmas shorts hitting the television. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is normally our safe bet, even if Santa seems uncharacteristically grouchy in the first half. Then came the Elf on the Shelf television movie. The collaboration between the Elf book’s creators and the film directors was as symbiotic as a product hawker and an infomercial. For forty minutes, we were treated to thinly veiled explanations of how Santa’s Workshop ships out the boxed sets of books and elves to households around the world. Despite the effort, our children became fixated on the revelation of talking elves that cease to talk once boxed and are revived once named by a family. To even a two and five year old, something didn’t add up. I have now spent the better part of a week trying to change the conversation.
With Christmas Eve approaching, the excitement has been growing with our imminent ride on the Polar Express only adding to the fever pitch. I’m trying to hide the news that another (ostensibly magic) upstate NY Polar Express train recently derailed with children rescued by firefighters and transported back by bus. I didn’t fancy getting into a discussion of why a bunch of flying elves and reindeer didn’t come to the rescue.
In case you think that’s it, there is now genuine concern over Santa’s arrival. Why does he have to come down the chimney? Why doesn’t he come through the door? Does he come upstairs? Can anyone come into our house through the chimney? If so, shouldn’t we leave a fire burning when we turn on the house alarm? So while I prepare myself for the battery of questions that peppers this house from dawn to dusk, I welcome both the arrival and departure of Santa. We have the reindeer food (oatmeal and gold glitter) to sprinkle on the lawn, reindeer moss (which helps them fly), cookies and milk (for American Santa), mince pies and sherry (for British Father Christmas), and carrots for good measure. Letters were sent to the North Pole, the live reindeer camera checked, and Santa’s Christmas video personalized and viewed. So this morning’s revelation came out of nowhere. “Mummy, I don’t think I believe in the Easter bunny anymore.”
Thursday, December 15, 2011
One month of Christmas, gift wrapped, please.
Even if you’re busy rolling your eyes and sighing morosely over the inescapable crush of Christmas commercialism, you have to admire the galvanizing effect of the festive season. Whatever holiday you are celebrating, (and I’ll bet my red-hot credit card you’re celebrating something), it still manages to whip us into a froth to rival any Starbucks’ barista.
This time it’s not only about marketing ploys and product placement. This time we do it to ourselves; and I’m beginning to suspect it’s a sort of hanging chad of childhood excitement where, given enough glitter, twinkly lights, and looped Frank Sinatra hits, we gladly saddle up with the rest of the herd. You wouldn’t think there were eleven other months of the year where we could legally shop for holiday gifts. When summer ends, early autumn merely serves as the elastic in a figurative festive slingshot. We carb-load on Thanksgiving, falling asleep on tryptophan by 7pm, before Black Friday catapults us into the buying frenzy that has only a tiny head start on the twelve days of Christmas. It’s a wonder we don’t skip the partridge part and start at ten lords a’leaping.
It’s not just presents. Once the D-month arrives, we’re suddenly gripped with the need not only to buy festive but also to experience festive. Houses are wired up, trees drip with tiny lights, and we book up our remaining days madly. There are the holiday lights in the park, photo ops with Santa, cookies and gingerbread baking, the ubiquitous pilgrimage to a Nutcracker ballet, and now, (as if watching the movie isn’t enough), scheduling a real live Polar Express train ride. After the steady stream of crafting and cooking that has possessed every week since Hallowe’en, I decided it was fully within my rights to abandon a family trip into the city for the Radio City Christmas show and redefine it as an overnight getaway.
The beauty of train travel into Manhattan is freedom. Freedom to read, snooze, or watch the scenic Hudson River skim by. And freedom to smile indulgently at other people’s children while temporarily unhinged from our own. Having snagged a “quiet” carriage for the ride in, a chatty woman was impaled on daggers thrown by twenty sets of eyes for her heavy cell-phone use. But while the quiet car was busy trying to be quiet, the rest of the train seemed to be jigging around in a fit of excitement, gaggles of children practically mugging outnumbered parent-chaperones for morsels of Doritos and juice.
In town, we tapped into our inner tourist on a wave of city-nostalgia and in twenty-four hours we’d strolled Fifth Ave, pored over window displays, checked out the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, walked in Central Park, dined out and taken in a Broadway show. All while doing battle with the floods of tourists – both foreign and domestic. When the hordes were literally flooding one way there was no choice but to dodge down a cross street and choose a new avenue with a more helpful ebb and flow. At the Majestic Theatre, we stood with a well behaved mob that could easily have stormed the building had it wanted but was was too busy flailing its arms and talking in tongues. ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ – (“New York’s longest running Broadway show!”) clearly still has the power to pull. And the gall to fleece its captive audience. A beer, a soda water, and a packet of M&Ms cost $27. Just try and do the math, it’s fun. We must have smirked because the bartender just shook jazz hands and sang, “It’s Broadway!”
The return train ride was similarly beatific for the two hours of forced relaxation. Sadly, the returning parent-chaperones were anything but relaxed. While the same excited children giggled, squealed, and fought over iPhone games, their frazzled mothers slowly unraveled. One woman was lacing her remonstrations with pretty stiffly worded threats, which sort of detracted from any greater sympathy we may have had. Still, it certainly appeared her 24 hours in the city with three children, had not been restorative. One performance of the Rockettes at Radio City, five meals out, a museum trip, and shopping had left her bereft of Christmas spirit. The children really weren’t too bad but she squawked mercilessly all the way home. And she still has ten shopping days ‘til Christmas.
This time it’s not only about marketing ploys and product placement. This time we do it to ourselves; and I’m beginning to suspect it’s a sort of hanging chad of childhood excitement where, given enough glitter, twinkly lights, and looped Frank Sinatra hits, we gladly saddle up with the rest of the herd. You wouldn’t think there were eleven other months of the year where we could legally shop for holiday gifts. When summer ends, early autumn merely serves as the elastic in a figurative festive slingshot. We carb-load on Thanksgiving, falling asleep on tryptophan by 7pm, before Black Friday catapults us into the buying frenzy that has only a tiny head start on the twelve days of Christmas. It’s a wonder we don’t skip the partridge part and start at ten lords a’leaping.
It’s not just presents. Once the D-month arrives, we’re suddenly gripped with the need not only to buy festive but also to experience festive. Houses are wired up, trees drip with tiny lights, and we book up our remaining days madly. There are the holiday lights in the park, photo ops with Santa, cookies and gingerbread baking, the ubiquitous pilgrimage to a Nutcracker ballet, and now, (as if watching the movie isn’t enough), scheduling a real live Polar Express train ride. After the steady stream of crafting and cooking that has possessed every week since Hallowe’en, I decided it was fully within my rights to abandon a family trip into the city for the Radio City Christmas show and redefine it as an overnight getaway.
The beauty of train travel into Manhattan is freedom. Freedom to read, snooze, or watch the scenic Hudson River skim by. And freedom to smile indulgently at other people’s children while temporarily unhinged from our own. Having snagged a “quiet” carriage for the ride in, a chatty woman was impaled on daggers thrown by twenty sets of eyes for her heavy cell-phone use. But while the quiet car was busy trying to be quiet, the rest of the train seemed to be jigging around in a fit of excitement, gaggles of children practically mugging outnumbered parent-chaperones for morsels of Doritos and juice.
In town, we tapped into our inner tourist on a wave of city-nostalgia and in twenty-four hours we’d strolled Fifth Ave, pored over window displays, checked out the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, walked in Central Park, dined out and taken in a Broadway show. All while doing battle with the floods of tourists – both foreign and domestic. When the hordes were literally flooding one way there was no choice but to dodge down a cross street and choose a new avenue with a more helpful ebb and flow. At the Majestic Theatre, we stood with a well behaved mob that could easily have stormed the building had it wanted but was was too busy flailing its arms and talking in tongues. ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ – (“New York’s longest running Broadway show!”) clearly still has the power to pull. And the gall to fleece its captive audience. A beer, a soda water, and a packet of M&Ms cost $27. Just try and do the math, it’s fun. We must have smirked because the bartender just shook jazz hands and sang, “It’s Broadway!”
The return train ride was similarly beatific for the two hours of forced relaxation. Sadly, the returning parent-chaperones were anything but relaxed. While the same excited children giggled, squealed, and fought over iPhone games, their frazzled mothers slowly unraveled. One woman was lacing her remonstrations with pretty stiffly worded threats, which sort of detracted from any greater sympathy we may have had. Still, it certainly appeared her 24 hours in the city with three children, had not been restorative. One performance of the Rockettes at Radio City, five meals out, a museum trip, and shopping had left her bereft of Christmas spirit. The children really weren’t too bad but she squawked mercilessly all the way home. And she still has ten shopping days ‘til Christmas.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Shelve the Elf
If you’ve been living under a festively painted rock you may have escaped hearing about the Elf on the Shelf, Santa’s cute little plastic-faced, red felt-bodied emissary. Catapulted to national fame after Pottery Barn picked it up as a box set, the Elf on the Shelf is no longer the quiet staple of grandma’s sleepy craft boutique. Instead, the stealthy little elf that resides in American houses by day and flits back to the North Pole to report to Santa by night was interviewed at the 2011 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and, now starring in his first movie, will shortly be coming to a cinema near you.
The proliferation of Christmas elves has all the hallmarks of an alien invasion. First, the accompanying book creates a plausible back-story to maximize human buy-in. Next, the elf bestows power on its new owners: children get to name it, love it and keep it, safe in the knowledge their personal elf will return each year. The more insidious concept of being constantly watched, analyzed, and judged as naughty or nice by a sort of ten-inch elfin child psychologist is not yet viewed by young children as creepy or tattle tale. Similarly, they overlook the clear double-agent role of elves working as an extension of the long arm of the parental law: “Remember, your elf is listening…”
Just as the Elf on the Shelf is becoming a mandatory purchase (“Mummy, why do all my friends have an elf that comes to live with them before Christmas, except me?”), no-one thinks to share the pressure that accompanies his arrival. Once you have an Elf, there’s no ditching him. You can’t just pack it in and tell the children that their elf (Small Paul for us) can’t be bothered to change location every night and has gone back to Santa to cool his heels in the lead up to Christmas. No. Every morning the children rush into our bedroom chomping at the bit to run downstairs and see where our elf has landed.
This means that at least twice a week I awake in a panic realizing I didn’t move our elf. I nudge my comatose husband. “Did you remember to move Small Paul?” “No”, he groans. If I’m lucky I can slip downstairs and swiftly change his location; if not I might find a small slippered child sitting on the floor beneath him worrying why he hasn’t moved.
This is where powers of parental creativity must not be underestimated. The addition of a cookie next to the elf guarantees he must have jumped down and helped himself to a cookie but forgotten to find a new spot. (Perhaps he was tired and hungry.) After a late return from date night, perhaps he had been nervous to fly home with a babysitter still awake in the sitting room. (Perhaps it left insufficient time to make the trip back to the North Pole between our arrival and the morning.) On very rare occasions, our elf has even been known to add to the mystery with a location change during breakfast. How he did it, we’ll never tell.
The elf book is a critical piece of packaging. Not only does it provide the essential back-story and explain the elf’s role in advising Santa, it reinforces the Big Guy’s omniscience. It also establishes the ground rules: 1. Your elf can’t talk to you (but you can talk to him). 2. You can’t touch your elf (or he’ll lose his magic and ability to fly). 3. Your elf can’t move while you’re there. In other words, your elf has a job to do, and even if you’re pounding the heck out of your little brother the elf’s only there to observe, not intervene. Sort of like a professional journalist.
Either as a demonstration of the total power over elf-hosting parents (remember the alien analogy?), or as an online aid to their frantic relocation efforts, Mission Elf grows every year. The craft website, Pinterest, has hundred of photos of creatively hidden elves absailing down cabinets, drinking maple syrup through straws, and toasting S’mores over a tea light. If you’ve been tearing your hair out over elf hiding places, this site will put a little sparkle back in your strategic repositioning.
The nocturnal pressures of relocating your elf can be tough, but now entering any big box store presents its own danger. The imminent Elf on the Shelf movie means shelves are now jam-packed with swag. Since you can’t touch the real elf, there’s a plush cuddle version (handy since that’s been on our daughter’s wish list since August). The androgyny of the original elf has been clarified: girl elves have long eyelashes, pom-poms and skirts; boy elves don’t. Though if you fancy modifying the gender of your existing elf you can buy a couture skirt for $6.95.
Lucky us. Now we can be fearful of (a.) forgetting to move the elf, (b.) getting caught moving the elf, or (c.) bumping into a display unit packed with a bunch of elves on sale. Roll on Christmas! It’s time to shelve the elf.
The proliferation of Christmas elves has all the hallmarks of an alien invasion. First, the accompanying book creates a plausible back-story to maximize human buy-in. Next, the elf bestows power on its new owners: children get to name it, love it and keep it, safe in the knowledge their personal elf will return each year. The more insidious concept of being constantly watched, analyzed, and judged as naughty or nice by a sort of ten-inch elfin child psychologist is not yet viewed by young children as creepy or tattle tale. Similarly, they overlook the clear double-agent role of elves working as an extension of the long arm of the parental law: “Remember, your elf is listening…”
Just as the Elf on the Shelf is becoming a mandatory purchase (“Mummy, why do all my friends have an elf that comes to live with them before Christmas, except me?”), no-one thinks to share the pressure that accompanies his arrival. Once you have an Elf, there’s no ditching him. You can’t just pack it in and tell the children that their elf (Small Paul for us) can’t be bothered to change location every night and has gone back to Santa to cool his heels in the lead up to Christmas. No. Every morning the children rush into our bedroom chomping at the bit to run downstairs and see where our elf has landed.
This means that at least twice a week I awake in a panic realizing I didn’t move our elf. I nudge my comatose husband. “Did you remember to move Small Paul?” “No”, he groans. If I’m lucky I can slip downstairs and swiftly change his location; if not I might find a small slippered child sitting on the floor beneath him worrying why he hasn’t moved.
This is where powers of parental creativity must not be underestimated. The addition of a cookie next to the elf guarantees he must have jumped down and helped himself to a cookie but forgotten to find a new spot. (Perhaps he was tired and hungry.) After a late return from date night, perhaps he had been nervous to fly home with a babysitter still awake in the sitting room. (Perhaps it left insufficient time to make the trip back to the North Pole between our arrival and the morning.) On very rare occasions, our elf has even been known to add to the mystery with a location change during breakfast. How he did it, we’ll never tell.
The elf book is a critical piece of packaging. Not only does it provide the essential back-story and explain the elf’s role in advising Santa, it reinforces the Big Guy’s omniscience. It also establishes the ground rules: 1. Your elf can’t talk to you (but you can talk to him). 2. You can’t touch your elf (or he’ll lose his magic and ability to fly). 3. Your elf can’t move while you’re there. In other words, your elf has a job to do, and even if you’re pounding the heck out of your little brother the elf’s only there to observe, not intervene. Sort of like a professional journalist.
Either as a demonstration of the total power over elf-hosting parents (remember the alien analogy?), or as an online aid to their frantic relocation efforts, Mission Elf grows every year. The craft website, Pinterest, has hundred of photos of creatively hidden elves absailing down cabinets, drinking maple syrup through straws, and toasting S’mores over a tea light. If you’ve been tearing your hair out over elf hiding places, this site will put a little sparkle back in your strategic repositioning.
The nocturnal pressures of relocating your elf can be tough, but now entering any big box store presents its own danger. The imminent Elf on the Shelf movie means shelves are now jam-packed with swag. Since you can’t touch the real elf, there’s a plush cuddle version (handy since that’s been on our daughter’s wish list since August). The androgyny of the original elf has been clarified: girl elves have long eyelashes, pom-poms and skirts; boy elves don’t. Though if you fancy modifying the gender of your existing elf you can buy a couture skirt for $6.95.
Lucky us. Now we can be fearful of (a.) forgetting to move the elf, (b.) getting caught moving the elf, or (c.) bumping into a display unit packed with a bunch of elves on sale. Roll on Christmas! It’s time to shelve the elf.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Thanksgiving, How I Love Thee
I sometimes bemoan the vanilla nature of my Anglo culture. We don’t have any Day of the Dead with prancing skeletons in diorama; the ghoulishness of Halloween has been hi-jacked by sweet furry animal costumes and scantily clad Disney princesses. We don’t typically fast, except for a few weeks pre-bikini season. Arguably, we have little in the way of ceremony beyond marriage and death. We don’t even put hexes on people or issue fatwahs. But we do flip pancakes and roll large cheeses down hills, and we do burn effigies of treasonous Guy Fawkes on bonfires, which is perhaps gruesome enough. All in all, we have a pretty interesting history of torture and conquest but it’s not really something that we bring up over dinner.
So, Brits and Americans have something in common: Our high days and holidays, at least in their secular rendition, are now 90% about food. Whether it’s because we spend the rest of the year being bombarded with healthy eating trends, gym membership specials and weight loss success stories, along comes a holiday we go hog wild. Fat Tuesday is at least unapologetic about it. Easter should be renamed Chocolate Fest. Christmas might deservedly be Cocktail Carumba, and Thanksgiving just gives us free license for third helpings when we wouldn’t normally have seconds. Take eggnog, when else would we freely and willingly drink high balls of sweetened heavy cream? It’s as if my free will and mental faculties have been replaced with nothing but desire every time I open the fridge door.
Thanksgiving morning in our house resembles the day after a keg party. Young houseguests are randomly littered about on sofas like rag dolls fired out of a cannon. The giant turkey that has dominated the fridge for days is suddenly the star of the show as its legs are unceremoniously stuffed in its neck and its innards are swapped out with an autumn medley of apples, onions and garlic. I manage to feel bad for him whether it’s the glorious fulfillment of his destiny or his darkest hour. But payback is sweet, so this year he kept us waiting a full extra hour before his popper popped.
Thanksgiving is one of those occasions when the hour or two spent eating doesn’t seem to justify the hours spent in preparation. I tried to quantify it for analysis:
3 hours grocery shopping and unpacking
4 hours cleaning the house and making guest beds
1 hour comprised of 2 last minute trips back to the supermarket
4 hours baking cookies and mince pies
5 hours dressing the turkey, peeling and cooking the vegetables, and making green bean casserole and firecracker cornbread from scratch.
That’s seventeen hours of labor swiftly dispatched for 2 hours of non-stop grazing time. And then we all sat around like a bunch of heavily pregnant women groaning about how much we had eaten. I could probably add in 2 hours of clean up, if, like us, you used your Kate Spade wedding china, which is all hand wash.
Among holidays, Thanksgiving takes the biscuit in its extraordinary homage to food. The inclusion of mandatory traditional dishes is only half the battle; gluttony and over-abundance also taxes the load-bearing capacity of any dining room table. And so the days following Thanksgiving are nothing short of an Ode to the Great Gastronomic Spread. Oh, Thanksgiving, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways you that will be reincarnated and re-served. I’d have rustled up a turkey pot pie or bubble and squeak but this year my husband took charge of the leftovers with a personal reinterpretation of a friend’s recipe. The result? The ultimate cross between a cottage pie and lasagna: a base of pie crust layered with stuffing, turkey, roasted vegetables, gravy and cranberry sauce topped off with smashed potatoes and baked. Don’t turn your nose up, it was practically Biblical.
That’s where we could leave things, plump and heavily satiated for another year. The trouble is Christmas, now a mere four weeks away. If Thanksgiving is our annual shout out to American holiday tradition, Christmas is when I bust out the best of British with Yorkshire pudding, bread sauce, crispy roast spuds, and a beautifully trussed turkey gracing the table. And with my parents hopping the pond to join the feast, the pressure’s on. After going PC with the addition of Pilgrims and Native American Indians to the children’s Little People play set, we decided to up the ante. I’m not quite sure what the neighbours will make of the Union Jack now gracing the doorway along side the Colonial American flag, but it does make for a doubly festive statement.
(Updated from 2008)
So, Brits and Americans have something in common: Our high days and holidays, at least in their secular rendition, are now 90% about food. Whether it’s because we spend the rest of the year being bombarded with healthy eating trends, gym membership specials and weight loss success stories, along comes a holiday we go hog wild. Fat Tuesday is at least unapologetic about it. Easter should be renamed Chocolate Fest. Christmas might deservedly be Cocktail Carumba, and Thanksgiving just gives us free license for third helpings when we wouldn’t normally have seconds. Take eggnog, when else would we freely and willingly drink high balls of sweetened heavy cream? It’s as if my free will and mental faculties have been replaced with nothing but desire every time I open the fridge door.
Thanksgiving morning in our house resembles the day after a keg party. Young houseguests are randomly littered about on sofas like rag dolls fired out of a cannon. The giant turkey that has dominated the fridge for days is suddenly the star of the show as its legs are unceremoniously stuffed in its neck and its innards are swapped out with an autumn medley of apples, onions and garlic. I manage to feel bad for him whether it’s the glorious fulfillment of his destiny or his darkest hour. But payback is sweet, so this year he kept us waiting a full extra hour before his popper popped.
Thanksgiving is one of those occasions when the hour or two spent eating doesn’t seem to justify the hours spent in preparation. I tried to quantify it for analysis:
3 hours grocery shopping and unpacking
4 hours cleaning the house and making guest beds
1 hour comprised of 2 last minute trips back to the supermarket
4 hours baking cookies and mince pies
5 hours dressing the turkey, peeling and cooking the vegetables, and making green bean casserole and firecracker cornbread from scratch.
That’s seventeen hours of labor swiftly dispatched for 2 hours of non-stop grazing time. And then we all sat around like a bunch of heavily pregnant women groaning about how much we had eaten. I could probably add in 2 hours of clean up, if, like us, you used your Kate Spade wedding china, which is all hand wash.
Among holidays, Thanksgiving takes the biscuit in its extraordinary homage to food. The inclusion of mandatory traditional dishes is only half the battle; gluttony and over-abundance also taxes the load-bearing capacity of any dining room table. And so the days following Thanksgiving are nothing short of an Ode to the Great Gastronomic Spread. Oh, Thanksgiving, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways you that will be reincarnated and re-served. I’d have rustled up a turkey pot pie or bubble and squeak but this year my husband took charge of the leftovers with a personal reinterpretation of a friend’s recipe. The result? The ultimate cross between a cottage pie and lasagna: a base of pie crust layered with stuffing, turkey, roasted vegetables, gravy and cranberry sauce topped off with smashed potatoes and baked. Don’t turn your nose up, it was practically Biblical.
That’s where we could leave things, plump and heavily satiated for another year. The trouble is Christmas, now a mere four weeks away. If Thanksgiving is our annual shout out to American holiday tradition, Christmas is when I bust out the best of British with Yorkshire pudding, bread sauce, crispy roast spuds, and a beautifully trussed turkey gracing the table. And with my parents hopping the pond to join the feast, the pressure’s on. After going PC with the addition of Pilgrims and Native American Indians to the children’s Little People play set, we decided to up the ante. I’m not quite sure what the neighbours will make of the Union Jack now gracing the doorway along side the Colonial American flag, but it does make for a doubly festive statement.
(Updated from 2008)
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