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A few years ago one of my daughters came up with the best idea ever for a wonderful family Christmas. I remember very clearly the moment she came up with her idea. It was a Christmas morning, Tom, myself, and whichever of our adult children and their spouses were home that year had finished our Christmas morning brunch and were sitting around the living room, where we'd spent the last hour or so opening gifts in the traditional way we'd done since my children were young - going in a circle, each person opening a gift at a time. After the last person had opened their last gift, my daughter said, "Can we not do this anymore? Can we stop giving Christmas presents from now on?" Rather than throwing a wet blanket on the moment, her suggestion was warmly welcomed. We all agreed that the chore of trying figure out what gifts to buy for all our adult relatives, then having to run around and buy them brought more physical, mental and financial stress than joy to the season. In fact I'd made the same suggestion to my parents and adult siblings the first Christmas after Tom and I were married and I still recall my brother Joe's enthusiastic response: "Now that's the best G-D idea anybody's ever come up with around here!" My brother Joe.  I'm not sure it was the best G-D idea anyone had ever come up with, but it was definitely liberating, as was my daughter's idea. At least for us. I've since observed that there are two camps in the world: To the first belong those who love Christmas gifting; to the second belong those who don't. I believe my family members are the only people in the world who belong to the second camp. Now I should clarify here that I'm talking strictly about the exchange of Christmas gifts among adults; of course, toys should be bought for children. Christmas is, after all, for children. At least the Christmas present end of it. Or so say we non-gifters. But though my family members are not Christmas gifters, we are most definitely Christmas feasters, and the feasting that began on Christmas Eve (see yesterday's post), continued yesterday with our Christmas morning brunch, the preparation of which involved all available hands,      (for us it wouldn't be Christmas morning without Pillsbury cinnamon rolls)  ...as did the eating of which. When we finished eating we stayed around the table a long time talking. With each of my children living in a different city, this was the first time in years that they'd all been home at the same time. I wondered when the next time would be that we'd all be together like this. After breakfast there was some sitting around,  ...and a visit from my good friend and Panera Posse member.  Then the youngsters settled in for an afternoon of Star Wars marathoning in preparation for seeing the newest Star Wars movie, "The Force Awakens". (I might have to see that one myself).  However, two Star Wars episodes later it was time to eat again. So we hauled ourselves up and headed out for Christmas Dinner at the Iron Chef Japanese Steak House in Pickerington,  ...where the show was fun,  ...and the food was delicious,   Though one of my sons-in-law suggested that maybe the food tasted so good this time because we were all together. This could be true.    After dinner the young'uns picked up where they'd left off on Star Wars,  It was a good Christmas.
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Last night we invited friends and neighbors to join us for a Christmas Eve of feasting and singing. On the menu were Hot turkey mini-sandwiches Hot pork mini sandwiches,  Cheese potato casserole Macaroni and cheese Green beans almondine 
Stuffed Mushrooms Shrimp Fiesta Salad Broccoli Almondine Guacamole dip  Christmas cookies Hanukkah cookies Cherry almond streusel pie Apple pie  Brownies Pumpkin roll, and a box of delicious sugared fruit jelly slices that my daughter found in a candy shop.  The morning started with a finalizing of my master list and battle plan of "to do's",  ....then we all got down to work.      By early evening all our kids had arrived and by 7 pm the feast was ready and our guests began arriving,  ...and digging in.    After the first round of feasting we all gathered in the living room where we sang Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs.   Then there was more feasting, socializing and fun.    After the last of the guests had left and the left-overs gathered up for future noshing,  ...it was nice to sit around and relax and have this Christmas Eve last a little longer.  Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone!   My daughter comes from a Christian background while her husband's family is Jewish. My daughter and son-in-law were married under a canopy in a Christian-Jewish ceremony officiated by a Lutheran pastor and a rabbi. I don't know how many times concerned acquaintances, referring to my daughter and son-in-law's different religious backgrounds, have asked me "But how will they raise their children?" My stock answer was that if they managed to raise their children to be kind to everyone and be the best persons they can be then they'd probably have all the bases covered, whatever else they did religion-wise. Often incorporated into people's concerns over the children's religious upbringing was how their parents would handle the holidays that overlap, Passover and Easter, Christmas and Hanukkah. My daughter, son-in-law and their children, now 4 and 2 years old, are visiting for the holidays. Here's what I've observed: My grandchildren love Hanukkah. And they love Christmas. They identify with the menorah, and they're fascinated by the Christmas Tree. They love to see the Hanukkah decorations,  ...the Christmas decorations,  ...and they loved the holiday lights at Easton Town Center.      They love baking Christmas cookies and Hanukkah cookies.  When we gather around the piano they know all the words to "Hanukkah, Oy Hanukkah" and "The Dreydl Song" but they'll happily segue into the Christmas carols. They know the story of how the Maccabees defeated the wicked King Antiochus while the lights miraculously burned in the temple for nine days and they know the story of how Baby Jesus was born in a stable and lay in a manger surrounded by shepherds and kings, and an angel. And though they keep misplacing Baby Jesus,  ...they move without a problem or pause from Hanukkah to Christmas and back again under a canopy where there's room for everyone and every possibility, where there are no walls between what I believe and what you believe, where there are no walls separating "us" from "them". Young children can do this effortlessly. When does it all change? And why?  Last week one of the Panera Posse members invited the Posse to her house for a little holiday party,
In the course of our discussion of the various and sundry subjects that always come up during a Posse meeting, we somehow got onto that object of Christmas folklore, mincemeat pie. Who'd ever had it? A couple of us. Who really knew what it was? None of us, it turned out. A couple members had mothers or grandmothers who used to make it but weren't sure what went into mincemeat nor could they remember what it tasted like, or if they'd ever even tried it. They only recalled that their mothers and grandmothers used store-bought mincemeat from a jar. Thus we wondered: Does "mincemeat" involve actual minced meat? Or is it a figurative term referring to the "meat" of the "minced" fruit? One of the gals grabbed her smart phone and pulled up the Martha Stewart website to put the matter to rest. It turns out that Martha Stewart's mincemeat pie recipe calls for store-bought mincemeat from a jar. We don't know what's in the jar of mincemeat Martha used, as she didn't didn't share. She probably doesn't know, either. So the mincemeat mystery goes on. But when the subject turned to fruitcake, ah there we were all of us more savvy. Amidst the laughter in response to the question of whether anybody actually likes fruitcake my hand shot up. "I like fruitcake!", I declared, "I love fruitcake!" What I meant, though, was that I love - or rather used to love - the Christmas fruitcakes that my parents used to make. But my love of my parents' fruitcake wasn't always so.
When I was growing up the making of the fruitcakes was a grand production that my parents threw themselves into every year about six weeks or so before Christmas. And though my parents considered their whiskey-infused fruitcakes their personal pieces-de-resistance, I hated the fruitcakes and somewhat resented that my parents weren't instead throwing their energies into making Christmas cookies. Thus I did not bounce with excitement like a young Truman Capote when fruitcake weather arrived at our house. Rather I gave my parents' labors barely a bored glance while passing through the kitchen where they happily cut up mounds of uninteresting and unappetizing ingredients - candied and dried fruits and nuts that they soaked in whiskey then thew into a great pot to be coated with flour then a thick heavy batter that they grappled to mix and stir until they had a pot full of dense, knobby whiskey-gloop that they'd pour into several dozen loaf pans then put into the oven for slow baking. After the cakes were baked and cooled they'd "water" (my parents' word) each cake well with whiskey before they wrapped them in cloth, plastic wrap and aluminum foil then set them aside to age for several weeks. Halfway through the aging period they'd unwrap the cakes and refresh them with a second whiskey-watering, and then they'd give them a final watering before re-wrapping them for distribution. Of the fruitcakes my father used to say, "The purpose of the batter is to hold the fruit together and the purpose of the fruit is to hold the whiskey together." Ha, ha, very funny, I used to think back in my youth of my father's bon mot. I thought the fruitcakes were flipping inedible. But then, of course, the fruitcakes weren't meant for children, a hard concept for a fairly pampered child like myself to wrap her head around. The fruitcakes were gifts for friends and neighbors and to send to out-of-town family, all of whom I assumed feigned delight at receiving these ugly, poisonous-tasting things. Years later, when Tom and I were deliriously happy young newly-weds living in Louisville Kentucky,
...around Christmas time a box arrived in the mail from my parents. I guessed right away what it was . "Wow, this smells, good," Tom said after he'd unwrapped the layers revealing the dreaded Christmas fruitcake. "It's a whiskey-brick," I, the tea-totaler, retorted dismissively . "It's delicious!" Tom exclaimed. "Like whiskey?" "No, it's really good! You gotta try this!" "Oh," said I. I cut off a small chunk and took a small bite. It was a bright burst of heavenly flavors and textures, all fruits and nuts with just enough cake to hold them together, melt-in-your-mouth moist and rich and oh, so sweet, with just the slightest aromatic tinge that made the whole confection all the more wonderful. "Oh, wow this really is good!" I cried, wondering if my parents had drastically altered their fruitcake recipe from when I was a child. "It's incredible!" But I could tell right away that this fruitcake needed one more ingredient to make it zoom straight up into the stratosphere of deliciousness. "A scoop of vanilla ice cream!" I proclaimed. How right I was. And how, from then on, did I, Tom, and eventually my children (who never shared my childhood anti-fruitcake bias) look forward to receiving our Christmas fruitcake, which we all agreed reached its true zenith when accompanied by vanilla ice cream, preferably Breyers Vanilla Bean. My father died 16 years ago, still my mother continued making the fruitcakes into her early 90's. But my mother is 95-and-a-half now,  ...and though she's still doing wonderfully well - last weekend she hosted in her home her annual Christmas carol-singing party catered by a local restaurant and attended by 60 people - she gave up her Christmas fruit-cake making several years ago.
Today I'd give $1,000 for a slice of my parents' fruitcake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. But all the money and technology in the world can't bring back a thing we long for once it's crossed over into the bitter-sweet ghost-world of our memories. At long last, the bathrooms were clean,  the vacuuming was done,  ....and the dusting.  The guest room was all set up,   ...and so were the toys.  The cookies were baked,
.....the chicken soup was made,  ...and the house was decorated.   The waiting was over,  ...and finally, our loved ones arrived, and Christmas was here.   Tom: So, what should I write in our Christmas letter this year? Patti (Shrugging): I dunno. Tom: Really, what should I write? I don't want to write the wrong thing and get people upset. Patti: Don't worry about it, just go ahead and write what you want, the Christmas letter is really your thing, after all. But then let me see it when you've finished and then send a copy to each of the kids so they can check to make sure it's okay with them. Tom: I've been burned before over things I wrote in the Christmas letter. Patti: No, really, just go ahead and write whatever you want. The kids and I will X-out the parts we don't like. Tom: So, what should I not write about? Patti: Ummm, I don't know. Just go ahead and write it and we'll let you know what's wrong with it afterwards. Tom: What should I write about? What's going on with us that our friends and family would be interested in? Patti: Not a whole lot, I guess. Besides our friends and family already know what's going on with us. Tom: I mean our Christmas card friends and family. You know, the ones who are too far away to be all up in our business. Like our old college friends. And our neighbors who moved away. And then we've got, what, twenty-five nieces and nephews? Patti: Yeah, and the old friends, neighbors, nieces and nephews are all up in our business anyway and we're all up in theirs because of Facebook. Tom: So what should I write about? Patti: Oh, I know, you could write about us going to Spain this year. Tom: Yeah, and Hawaii! And Los Angeles and Chicago, and the East Coast! Patti: No, no, no, we can't write about all that traveling. It sounds too braggy. Tom: But it's what we did that was interesting. Patti: Yeah, but it sounds just too braggy. Tom: But didn't you blog on Facebook about all our trips? Wasn't that too braggy, too? Patti: No. What I mean is, it's too braggy to talk about all the trips together in one letter. On Facebook my braggy stuff is spaced apart and so mixed in with everybody else's braggy stuff that it doesn't sound braggy, see? Tom: Uh, not really. Patti: Look, everything on Facebook is braggy, so nothing is, get it? Tom (shrugging): Uh, I guess... Patti: I know, we could write about the political scene. None of our friends are Trump fans, are they? Tom: I don't know! But anyway, we can't talk about politics in a Christmas letter! Patti: Well, it's about the only interesting thing we're into on a daily basis. Hmmm. Why don't we talk about the movies we've seen this year? Tom: Eh, that seems to be kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel. Hey, did we buy anything new this year that we could talk about? Patti (looking around the room): Nah. (Picking up their Christmas photo) Maybe we should skip the letter and just send our Christmas photo that we had taken while we were hiking through Spain. I mean, look at all this photo tells people about us: That we're still together, that we took a backpacking trip together, that we're still in good enough shape to be hiking, that you grew a beard, that I....Oh, geez, I look awful in this photo, we can't send this! Tom: What's wrong with the photo? You look good. Patti: I look old! Tom: Um, I hate to break it to you, but... Patti: Sigh. Yeah. I should've worn some make-up for that photo. Tom: Make-up?! We were hiking through the Pyrenees! We were carrying our stuff on our backs and sleeping on mattresses in dorms! We were sweaty and dirty and dog-tired! And besides, you haven't worn make-up in what, forty years? Patti: Sigh. But forty years I ago looked better. Tom: Forty years ago everybody looked better! But that doesn't stop people from sending out Christmas pictures! Patti: Let's skip the Christmas picture from now on. Or, I know, let's send one of us from ten or twenty years ago! Tom: Sigh. So, what should I write in our Christmas letter this year?.  Say, what do you think of this idea for a Christmas card?  My friend's daughter Abby, a graduate student living out of town, and her room mates came up with the idea of a photo of themselves,
...for what I'm christening this "friends as family" Christmas card.
Isn't that a really nice new concept for a contemporary holiday card? Of course maybe the "friends as family" card is actually already out there being sent by friend-families everywhere during the holidays, but the above is the first one - nay, second one - I've ever seen - my daughter and her husband years ago sent a "friends as family" Christmas card with a single friend they were temporarily apartment-sharing with - but in any case, is it not an idea whose time has come? It occurred to me that Taylor, Abby, Valerie and Clyde's card, besides expressing in more eloquent words the old truism, "friends are family without the bull****", was a in fact Christmas letter, though perhaps not of the conventional type; because instead of chronicling the past year's milestones - which I, for one, do always enjoy reading about in the holiday letters of friends and family - this letter just tells, in one picture and a few simple but beautifully-articulated words, about a family of friends who are doing well at this moment in their lives because they have each other. And what more do any of us really need over the holidays but each other?  Today is December 14 and the predicted temperature for this day in Columbus, Ohio is 61 degrees, which is around the general vicinity of where the temperature has been all month, and where it's likely to linger until Christmas. All everybody - me included - does around here is bemoan how warm and un-Christmasy it feels. We've all given up dreaming of a white Christmas. But this past Friday night Tom and I discovered the up side of a warm Christmas when we went to see the holiday lights along the Scioto Mile, the walkway that winds along the Scioto River through downtown Columbus.  We decided to first have dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse,  ...a popular Columbus eatery located in an old warehouse just west of downtown.  The Spaghetti Warehouse has an awesome interior that rambles from room to room full of pop/Tiffany glass decor,    ...one room of which is a railroad car in the middle of the restaurant that's a big hit with children.  Our meal started off with loaves of soft, hot bread, with herbed garlic butter,  .. and it took the greatest discipline not to devour the whole delicious batch before the arrival of the rest of the meal. We opted next for the endless salad, mine topped with yummy blue cheese dressing,  ...followed by the vegetable-topped Spaghetti Pomodoro for me, really good with tons of veggies,  ...and for Tom the spaghetti-lasagne combo, very meaty, very cheesy, very tasty.  On our way out of the restaurant I had stopped to take a photo of this beautiful antique organ,  ...when a young waiter came up behind me and said, "That's mine." "Oh," I said, "well, it's gorgeous. Is it alright if I take a picture?" "Sure," he said, then he cocked his head towards, I suppose, the unseen management and added, "They don't know yet that this organ is mine. But, believe me, it's mine!" As he dashed back to work I thought, maybe you ought to let them know? After we left the Spaghetti Warehouse we drove back to downtown,  ...and parked along the river then crossed the street to the Scioto Mile promenade and commenced our stroll along the festively illuminated river in the pleasantly balmy night air.    We walked until we reached Bicentennial Park,  ...which was alive with lights,   ...and people of all ages out enjoying the displays and the unseasonably fine weather.   The Scioto Mile will be beautifully twinkling every night until January 10. We may not have a white Christmas, but in downtown Columbus that won't keep anyone from walking through a winter wonderland.   Sigh. The world's full of trouble and contentiousness, but how about a two-minute happy break? Check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMbUEsUtW5k ...which is a link to the final scene of one of my favorite movies, the 1959 award-winning film "Black Orpheus", a modern re-telling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,  ...set in Rio de Janeiro at Carnival time. 
... the last scene, three children singing and dancing on a hill over-looking Rio de Janeiro, stands apart from the rest of the film as a sort of postlude, a sweet little story of joy, innocence, and the hope of a new day. And watching it is by no means a spoiler for the rest of the movie. So give this this lovely little scene a watch. It'll make you feel good. In fact you'll probably have to watch it two or three times. Then if you stay on the site, you can watch the whole movie. And if the last scene didn't hook you, the first scene surely will. 
Yesterday afternoon, as I often do when out running errands or driving from lesson to lesson, I turned my car radio to WTVN and listened to a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh. Not surprisingly, he was talking about - who else? - Donald Trump. Now, anybody who's ever listened to Rush Limbaugh knows that the guy never just states a thought or idea plainly and clearly; he embroiders, embellishes, embosses, hyperbolizes and goes round and round the dance floor with it so many times that it takes him forever to get to the point of what he's saying, and sometimes he never really does. But yesterday when he finally did get around to what he had to say about Trump it was this: The reason Donald Trump is at the top of the Republican presidential polls is because he owns the media. He's gotten more media coverage than all the other presidential candidates combined and over 800 minutes of free air time. Mon Dieu, thought I, El Rushbo is absolutely right! Now, I didn't listen long enough to hear where old Rush was going to waltz off to next with that statement, but in this much he nailed the truth squarely: Donald Trump does own the media. He owns the press. He owns the internet. He owns the airwaves. He's owned my blog for the past three days.
Donald Trump owns the media the way a chronically misbehaving, disruptive, acting-out kid owns the classroom. Did you ever see any episodes of the controversial Australian comedy TV series "Summer Heights High"?
...who is the delight of his friends but the misery of the younger, weaker students he zeros in on to victimize as well as the teachers, guidance counselor and principal whose attention he constantly monopolizes with his disruptive antics. Jonah has a gift for sowing discord and triangulation among the adults who must deal with him. Jonah's father can't control him, and would like to throttle him but has has no choice but to take his son's part, at least publicly. But nobody can control this kid because this kid doesn't care. He lives for the thrill of stirring things up and being the center of attention all the time. It's not in his psychological repertory to feel concern over the consequences of his actions. This character of the middle-school bad boy could well exemplify the id of Donald Trump, who, I'm convinced, is no more interested in being President of the United States than such a boy as Chris Lilley's character is interested in getting an education, though both might end up with those things merely by going through the motions of going to school each day or running an election campaign. But just as bad-boy Jonah came to school every day day with the purpose of grabbing attention, bad-boy Donald is running for president with the purpose of grabbing attention every day. If Donald Trump sets ground fires among the populace and harms his party, his country and his fellow human beings, it doesn't affect him because he doesn't care. He's a billionaire several times over who lives in an ivory tower high above the likes of you and me. Or so he believes. As long as Donal Trump continues to be the "It" boy, creating news so that he can be the news, he'll continue to own the media. The only thing to do about Donald Trump is to see him for what he is.  |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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