Tag Archives: holidays

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No Holiday Prep Here–And It’s Divine

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Any other year I would have purchased my turkey by now.  Would have fretted over it, the size, the brand, frozen or fresh?  Would have wondered if you had already beat me to the best turkeys, the most favored size.  Too small and you run out, too big and risk setting the oven of fire, which I did, three years ago.

The canned pumpkin would have been bought, also my favorite pecans, possibly the yams.  There would be a notation in my calendar indicating what date to buy bread so it can get properly stale.  One year I bought my bread too early, thinking, stale bread is stale bread.  No, my friends, it is not. 

On these errands I would be thinking of how I drove my grandmother around to gather all the staples for Thanksgiving.  The bread from the discount bread place.  Celery from Wetzel’s.  Maybe the turkey from there, too. 

This year, I will prepare pies, and only pies.  And even that isn’t a requirement, but a suggestion if I feel like it. 

For the first time in decades, decades, I tell you, I am not fixing a turkey, nor dressing, nor yams nor cranberries, nor nuthin’. Except maybe those pies. 

When my brother-in-law’s daughter floated the idea of hosting Thanksgiving at theirs, he laughed and said, well,  good luck getting Kathy and Greta to let loose of doing the dinner. He honestly thinks we enjoy it. And now I wonder if my Granny Opal loved all the preparation and work as much as I assumed she did. 

Kathy and I jumped, or would have if either of us were able, at the idea of showing up, eating, and going home.  That we had to drive to do it, a nice little hour and half jaunt through Indiana, well, that was even better.  An adventure, an “over the river and through the woods” sort of thing.  

It must be said, I pride myself on doing the Thanksgiving food, but I have grown weary of it.  Kathy, less enamored with cooking than I, prides herself on her house, big enough for us all and comfortable, well-appointed with centerpieces and decoration that have required thought and artistic expression. 

She can cook, but the aggravation of preparing the meal while trying to feed kids who mess up the kitchen and get in her way, well, it’s been a nice set up.  I cook, she cleans and decorates, and the kids, if they can be bothered, drag out to my car to help carry in the bird, the dressing and various pots and pans full of food.

But this year.  This year!  We have accepted Mandi and Chuck’s kind offer and we will turn up on the day to feast and feast and feast some more. Spend the night if we want.  Spend two.

Here is the other thing.  We will not even have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving.  We will gather on Friday to accommodate a couple of conflicting schedules, and that is just fine, too. 

Never did my family do this.  There wasn’t a pressing need, really, but even if there might have been, my mother was not one to flex.  

We were lucky as a family that we all lived close enough to see each other often, so it didn’t seem a tragedy if a few were missing from the table. We would see them on Saturday. 

But nor did my mother guilt my married siblings when they spent a holiday with the in-laws.  She insisted they do, sometimes, if a set of parents were aging and and she felt like she would have years with her children they would not. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture in her matter-of-fact way. 

Although I worry sometimes we blow off too many family obligations–any kind of obligation–these days.  Attending the funeral, choosing skiing over the holiday with family.  Just not showing up, however that may look.  This new bunch of people we have about us — notorious for not showing up.  The ones aggrieved at going to the office three days a week–how cruel! Never mind an entire workweek. 

But this year, I see how this easing of tradition has suited me just fine.  Better than fine. I see how it reduces stress for my niece and her husband with the three little ones.  They can be with his family on Thursday, all relaxed and happy.  Then with us, in Indiana, also relaxed and happy. 

How surprisingly easy it has been to let some things go. 

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Holiday Movies to Get You Through

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One of my childhood chums loves her some Hallmark Christmas movies. She watches them on a loop this time of year. She is comforted, she says, by the predictable plots, the sparkly sets, the pretty people. Even the fake snow pleases her. She only half-way watches them, instead has them setting the mood for her holiday preparations. I don’t like them.

Here’s the plot I could get behind. The handsome or beautiful New York attorney or hedge fund manager returns home for the holidays, only to find their handsome or beautiful high school sweetheart in desperate straits trying to save the Christmas town, the family Christmas Inn or their Christmas tree farm. The successful big city sweetheart arrives and the old flame grabs them by the lapels and says, “Thank goodness you’re here. Get me outta this one-horse town, and I mean, PRONTO!”


Until the day that movie lands, here are some of my favorite holiday flicks, the old ones, and perhaps as sappy in their way as a Hallmark movie, but different. I can’t explain it. In the “Miracle at Christmas” vein, let me recommend “The Lemon Drop Kid.” Bob Hope at his best, a snowy New York with a cadre of characters all conspiring to pay off gambling debts while saving their skins, they come up with a plan to bilk the city out of charity funds by creating the Nellie Thursday Home for Old Dolls. But then, hearts change, fortunes change, and it is funny and sweet and thoroughly watchable.


“It Happened on Fifth Avenue” is a similar movie, and also full of improbable shenanigans that, in black and white is a delight to watch. It is hard to find out there, but worth watching if you come across it.


A couple of oldies to sit with when you plop down on the couch to take a rest, are “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” with a young Bette Davis, and “Christmas in Connecticut,” with Barbara Stanwyck, of undetermined age. Barbara plays a columnist who specializes in homemaking, kind of an early day Martha Stewart. Except, she has no homemaking skills at all, nor does she have the baby and husband that she writes about frequently.


A fancy magazine gets the big idea to highlight her home and hearth at Christmas and hilarity ensues. I mean, it is a farce of a movie but in the right frame of mind, it really is funny.


“The Man Who Came to Dinner” is performed as a farce, too, and you can imagine it performed as a stage play, which it first was.. Monty Woolley plays an obnoxious and arrogant radio personality who takes a tumble on some icy steps when dining with a hapless family in Ohio during a cross-country lecture tour. He sets up shop, receiving calls, well wishes for the good and great. Someone sends him a crate of penguins for Christmas, or maybe it is an otter. Could be a swan. He barks orders and commandeers the whole house. There are laughs, a love interest, and Jimmy Durante.


I am a sucker for anything William Powell played in, and I pretty much adore that old Myrna Loy, so “The Thin Man” makes my list because it is set at Christmas, there is a mystery, a wire fox terrier named Asta, bad guys, worse guys, and lots and lots of cocktails, all to remind us how sophisticated life in New York can be. Black and white as it should be.


 I wrapped presents to “Meet Me In St. Louis,” and I didn’t even have to watch the screen. I listened to the dialogue and recalled the whole movie in vivid detail, I’ve seen it so often. And I make no apologies for it. If Judy Garland bores you, or you don’t hold a special place in your heart for Marjorie Main, then watch it for the very young Margaret O’Bryan. She plays Tootie, the youngest Smith sister, and she steals every scene she is in.


Perhaps my favorite Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn movie is “Desk Set.” The action takes place almost exclusively at 30 Rock in New York, just a few days before Christmas. One of the first IBM computers makes a guest appearance as Tracy shows up to streamline the workings of the reference department, the one Hepburn heads.


Hepburn and her staff are the clearinghouse for facts and figures for the a nation-wide television outfit. They pull data from books, magazines and their own heads. They think that old computer will replace them. In these early days, it will not, not quite yet. Hilarity ensues.


And romance. And not a single Christmas tree farm to be saved.

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Thanksgiving, My Way

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The week has arrived, the time I can see my sweet family gathered around the groaning table, all sharp angled elbows and knees, girls in stiff blonde pigtails and patterned dresses, little boys with freckles and gap-toothed grins, as we admire the golden bird, mama in her cocktail apron and papa in a suit, a suit, mind you, big smiles all around, for Thanksgiving is HERE!


Someone ought to smack Norman Rockwell in the face.

No one’s Thanksgiving looks like that.


I have gone from nostalgic, warm-hearted, expectant, aggravated, downright mad, exhausted, and back again. I am hosting and the list of things to do has been long, with incessant trips to the grocery, the hardware store, the on-line stores, and still I realize I have nary a decorative pumpkin to grace the dining table.


And right about now, I don’t care.


My sister sets an impossibly high standard with her home decor. Her house would be festooned with tiny pumpkins, exquisite turkey figurines, and other things I can’t name but find beautiful…the first five minutes I am there. Then the babies arrive, and I intend to hog them, and nephews and nieces arrive, and I want to hog them, too, but they are adults now and they no longer get the appeal of putting fat cardboard puzzles together.


So, my lovely guests will only have the struggling amaryllis on the counter to gaze upon. But the little ones will know right where to find the toys, and will make a beeline for them. From where I sit right this minute I spy two toy trucks, purposely placed by my nephew, Cy, “charging,” just like the Roomba he is obsessed with. I debate moving them. He will look for them as soon as he hits the door.


There has been more to pulling the house together than I anticipated. Fortunately, I have my pal, Ruth, who was here two days in a row and worked me like a dog. She worked, too, and honestly, I would be in a weeping, wobbly mess right now if it hadn’t been for her. She should be around my table on Thursday, too, come to think of it, so grateful am I for her help and friendship.


As I write this I am in the early stages of making Chef Jean Pierre’s turkey gravy. It will take hours. But gravy is my spirit animal and I could eat it with a spoon, and have. That I can make it early and reheat it on Thanksgiving with no ill effects, well. I’m pretty grateful for him, too.
Early this morning and driving to get the last of my cooking supplies, I worked myself up into a right state. So put upon, so taken for granted, what was I thinking? But then a checkout person was kind and helpful, and I felt–begrudgingly–my mood lift a bit. Still not done with it I called an old childhood friend, and she finished lifting my mood the rest of the way.


In my snit it occurred to me I might ask for help from my dear hearts. What a concept. They are not mind-readers, after all, and then I thought of my Granny Opal, a widow who didn’t drive, spending a solid week preparing for our Thanksgivings. I always helped in the kitchen the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but that was about it. Her table would already be set, the house warm and inviting. I honestly used to think she loved preparing for us, all of it, the cooking, the cleaning. But, did she? Who knows? I am sure no one ever asked her.


So, I sent out the word: I need someone to bring me two large bags of ice. Go get the dishes and silverware from Kathy and bring them over here. Here is what I will have around here to drink, feel free to bring whatever libation you might enjoy. Come early if you want, and I would love that. Appetizers at one. We will eat at two.


Watch out for Cy’s trucks tucked under end tables. And please leave them alone. They’re charging.

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A Slothful New Year

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For as long as I can remember the week between Christmas and New Year’s was its own thing, suspended in a weird time space continuum, where, about mid-week, we awoke, all fuzzy and confused, not knowing the day, much less the time.


Then COVID, and we spent almost two years suspended and unaware of the calendars growing cobwebs on our walls and desks and in our purses. It robbed us of a great deal, but especially that delicious sense of floating through a day, a week, innocent as babes. We COVID we floated a lot longer.


It is my favorite post-Christmas activity–falling asleep sitting up, at nine, at noon, at three. To fall asleep at the drop of a hat is charming, especially after all the activity and stress of holiday preparations, the buzzing of chores banging around your brain just as you lie down for the night, the hectic activity to make things perfect, although the slobs for whom the effort is made never notice, and certainly never toss a compliment your way.


My niece, the young mother of a two-year old and ten-month old twins couldn’t believe how tired she was, how much she craved sleep two days after she threw a family celebration for thirty people. There were kids running everywhere, games going on, food to be refreshed, toys to corral and corral again. And please don’t step on the babies.


Two days later, nestled in a corner of the couch, she thought she was coming down with something. Well, yes, she was coming down, but not with a virus. She was coming down from the holidays. I think she hadn’t experienced it before. I get it. When I was younger, the week between the holidays was dedicated to meeting up with friends, sleeping late and making excuses to avoid lesser family obligations. About the only thing I had to do was laundry, and that was so I would look cute when I went out–every night.


I am in awe of how she and her husband do it. This year they have moved, worked on the house, with three children two and under, kept that house tidy and inviting. They speak sweetly to the babies, work hard all the time.


But, eventually, everyone’s energy runs out, and for the first time ever, you don’t know what day of the week it is. And that was Kate on Monday. While she took a bath, I played with Gretchen, who is named for my mother, but I pretend she is named for me, too. We have fun, old Gretch and I, when she isn’t glued to Miss Rachel.


Katie seemed genuinely surprised to learn that sleepy feeling after the holiday was perfectly normal. That some of those yawns signaled a state of relaxation, not just exhaustion. She hadn’t connected those dots, but it’s true.


I’m not very good about knowing what I am feeling from one moment to the next. I’ve trained myself to take a moment, check in with myself, but I’m not always successful at it. But I have nailed, absolutely nailed, a high level of sloth between Christmas and New Year. It rejuvenates me.


Then, in these first gray days of January, I keep the feeling going. Gently. I get moving a bit more, take down the tree, organize a closet, or at the very least, my purse. But what else should we do in these first weeks of January? Nothing, I tell ya. I watched several documentaries about medieval Christmases, where no one worked at all between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, which is January 6, Epiphany. It surely kept the letdown at bay. And the holiday was given so much space and attention, with a new feast or celebration on almost every single day.


Such a contrast to the way we run around, shop, wrap, bake, decorate for a month or more, all frazzled and cranky, culminating in a twenty minute meal and a short frenzy of flying wrapping paper and spilled eggnog. In the absence of a medieval celebration, I think I will keep the holiday going in my own little way. Ease into the New Year, nothing much doing until the day after Epiphany. Join me.

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Thanksgiving 2016

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For the first time since my college days, I will be traveling for Thanksgiving.  I won’t be gone for long and I won’t go far, but far enough.

From the time I was barely able to see over the rim of my grandmother’s kitchen table, Thanksgiving has been mine.  First, mine and my Granny Opal’s, and then, when she left us, mine alone. I spent every Wednesday before the day with her, helping her, spending the night so I could rise early when she put the bird in the oven. 

It is hard to imagine how much help I was at four, five, or six, but my grandmother would sit at her formica table, reviewing pages of notes on her steno pad, and discuss with me the timing of things—when to peel the potatoes, when to wash the cranberries, when to assemble the pies. I had opinions on these matters. We negotiated.

The last thing I asked before sleep was to be awakened to help put the bird in the oven,  always received the promise that she would comply. I awoke to the aroma of roasting turkey, never too disappointed with the turn of events, because there was still plenty to do.  I was convinced at a tender age that I was the linchpin to our successful celebrations, and I still think so, even though our family is diminished and far-flung this year.

Even though I won’t be making the turkey, the cranberry salad, the gravy.

I will, however, be in charge of dressing. I have my shopping list compiled and at the ready, for I have committed to bringing everything we will need for the dish that has graced our family’s table, going back to the last century, and maybe beyond.

It is the one thing my niece, Alex, has asked that I prepare. She will be hosting her family and her fellow’s family in Louisiville this year, a celebration of her new home, her new job, a new life starting out.  I am included, too, and could I help out with the dressing?

My contribution to Thanksgiving has been reduced to this, dressing, and I have attacked it with a battle plan worthy of a White House State dinner.  I assured her I would bring every thing we will need.  The stale bread,  onion and celery, but also butter, chicken stock, and just in case, the eggs.

I do not trust her to have eggs.

It is her first Thanksgiving, after all, and we all know how hard it is to have everything you need on hand.  Or perhaps I am motivated by something else.

Perhaps the dressing must be all mine, my contribution, my small but perfect gift to the Thanksgiving table. 

This new Thanksgiving table, in this new millennium with this new family configured from remnants of several old ones.

Tonight I will sit at an unfamiliar kitchen table, chopping onions with Alex. She has been working on Thanksgiving dinner for days…thinking, planning, shopping, and thinking some more.  I am sure she will have questions.  I hope she will have questions. 

I’m bringing some other things she might need, a meat thermometer, coffee, extra aluminum foil.   I won’t foist these things on her, but will have them waiting, just in case, my version of promising to wake her up for the turkey but letting her sleep a bit more.

I am proud of this young woman, proud to be her aunt.  I can’t wait to see her life unfold, and to be a part of it.  And, if I am honest, I am grateful for the invitation for Thanksgiving, grateful to only have dressing to prepare.  I am thankful for a sense of peace and acceptance as tradition passes from aging hands to new ones.