Christmas

Christmas

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For 35 years Chris and I have celebrated Christmas with the same friends on Christmas day. One year quite by accident a tradition was born of writing a poem on Christmas Eve.

I have over 30 of these poems, some funny, some reflective, and some downright Scrooge-ish. In 2017, compiled all these poems into a book that I had printed and gave to some friends and family.

Over 20 years ago, I gave up all the traditional wrappings of Christmas, no tree, no lights, no cards, and no frantic preparations. However, I still find meaning and reflecting on the end of the year and the season of peace and hope. 

Sharing this poem from 2007 and wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and happy holiday season in whatever way you choose to celebrate. May you have joy, faith, hope, love and most of all Peace.

Exploring Comfort Food: My Favorite Meals

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All you have to do is look at me and know that I love food. There are some foods that I can bring to memory that I imagine I will never have the opportunity to savor again.

When I lived in Korea there was a dish called Bulgogi, meaning “fired meat.” It is thinly sliced marinated meat then grilled or stir-fried. It was so tender and sweet yet spicy.

In Florida, I loved the boiled peanuts you could buy at the roadside fruit stands. They were boiled in a huge kettle and the stand owner would scoop them out with a strainer and put them in a triple lined paper bag. I know it was not really a meal but after eating nearly the whole bag it felt like a meal.

Finally, I love Mediterranean food. One of the things to look forward to when traveling to Israel is the food. Especially shawarma, which is marinated roasted meat, a variety of picked or chopped veggies topped with garlic or tahini sauce all wrapped in a warm pita.

However, overall the best meal I have ever eaten is a combination of many meals I’ve had on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. Roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and yeast rolls loaded with butter. My mother would make southern cornbread dressing and celery stuffed with cream cheese and olives. She also made ambrosia, supposedly the food of the gods, made with many layers of sliced oranges, sugar, shredded coconut, and maraschino cherries. All this was topped off with sweet potato pie.

Maybe because we only had this meal a couple of times a year it made it special and highly anticipated. Unfortunately, the only thing that is low-calorie in this meal is maybe, the turkey!

I have never been able to duplicate my mother’s cornbread dressing but might have come close. In the past thirty plus years we have had a British Christmas dinner with friends. Still with roast turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and yeast rolls loaded with butter, but the cornbread dressing has been replaced with Chris’s chestnut stuffing. Different, but awesome in its own way.

I have also experienced a new side dish, new to me anyway, it is called bread sauce. It is made with white bread, milk and spices. It sounds strange but is so good with turkey and gravy. The sweet potato pie is replaced with plum pudding, also known as Christmas pudding. Not a creamy pudding we think of but a combination of dried fruit (raisins, prunes, apricots, currants), suet, bread crumbs, eggs and spice all mixed together, aged and then cooked in a sealed container in a water bath. Plum pudding is something I have never acquired a taste for… It comes out looking like a dark brown to black fruit cake. It is doused in brandy and set afire then served with rum sauce. I do eat it though. I get a very small amount, drench it in the rum sauce and hold my breath and eat. I don’t let my lack of love for plum pudding spoil the day. It is all part of the tradition.

The thing that makes the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals taste even more awesome, if that is even possible, is the fact that over the years I have enjoyed it with many people I love. Everyone knows that everything’s better with loved ones beside you.

The Star

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After the star has fallen on Christmas night
And the Christmas trimmings have left our sight,

Try to hold onto the joy and love
Like peace that flows from the wings of a dove.

When the world gets crazy at the turn of the year,
And dissent and anger brings doubt and fear,

Draw from the well where peace imparts
A peace that lingers in your heart.

Be jolly and lighthearted come what may…
Fight despair and stay out of the fray.

Hold tight to the spirit joyous
Otherwise bitterness will surely destroy us.

Recall the serenity the season brings,
Where eternal hope always springs.

Because the star came with a promise true,
That peace on earth is possible too.

© Trish B. 2017

A Special Holiday Memory

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When I was young many Christmases and Thanksgivings were spent at my maternal Grandfather’s house. His name was Wallace Van Houten, and I affectionately called him Grandpa Van. Grandpa Van’s house was at 3102 Glen Haven in Houston, was a special place because in the back bedroom they had a dresser full of little toys. My favorite were the ones that you wound up and they would toddle across the floor.

I also loved the bathroom at his house. Really, I would spend an hour in there. It was so clean and covered in sparkling white tiles. His wife, Omeda who was called Mama Meda, had a built-in vanity, with a three large mirrors that went from the vanity top to the ceiling, and a golden ornate seat with a pink velvet cushion. The mirrors were held in place with crystal mirror rosettes and on the vanity was a mirrored vanity tray with gold trim. It was filled with perfumes and a silver trimmed brush, comb and mirror set. It felt like I was in a palace.

From as long as I can remember and until the last time I saw him when I was in my 40’s, his pet name for me was Patty-Watty. I have a photo album that was his and in all the pictures of me, he labeled them Patty-Watty. Seeing those in his handwriting makes me smile.

He had many southwestern bolo ties made of silver and inlaid with turquoise, coral, onyx and mother of pearl. One of my favorites was about 5” long and it was a elaborate grizzly bear. One very fond memory is of sitting in my grandfathers lap in the living room while the men watched football. I was cuddled in his lap admiring the bear and outlining every stone and line on it. During the commercial, he got up and went in his room. He came back with a pin shaped like a Thunderbird and gave it to me. That day, I felt very special and loved.

Above, my Thunderbird gift from 1960’s and below is one of the last Christmases that I sat in my Grandpa Van’s lap ( Christmas 1982).

Trish B – January 15, 2023

Spirit of the Season

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Merry Christmas
Happy Holidays
Season’s Greetings
What is best
To express good will and glad tidings
To all during the holiday fest?

All a cordial sentiment
Extended with kindness and delight,
Delivered with a smile,
A gesture that seems lost these days
One many have not seen in a while.

Nothing appears beyond critique,
Not even a gentle heartfelt wish.
It seems every spoken thought or word
Is analyzed and torn apart
Before its even heard.

Divisiveness and discord
Are hijacking every joy and tradition
From the soul of the season,
This time of fellowship and wonder,
For really no good reason.

So tell me Merry Christmas
No matter my beliefs,
I smile and accept your salutation
Knowing the spirit in which it was sent,
Was not meant as intimidation.

Wish me Happy Holidays
Throughout this time of year,
I will wish you well as I go my way.
Please know that your kind thoughts
Will help me make it through the day.

And if you say Season’s Greetings
I perceive it in peace and unity;
Not animosity and strife.
For it is the season of love and harmony
That helps get us through this life.

Merry Christmas
Happy Holidays
Season Greetings
Say them all with a heart that’s joyous,
For if we’re forced to monitor every word
We let the quibblers destroy us.

© Trish B 2019
Photo courtesy of Unsplash – Inna Skosyreva

Christmas Spirit

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Most of this twenty-first century and the last few years of the twentieth, I wrote an annual Christmas poem. Some were better than others and some possibly down right corny however, it was part of a tradition that was expected on Christmas day.

For 33 years, minus the past two when ‘the virus’ interrupted many traditions, we have celebrated Christmas with our British friends, Tony and Jen. Jen always made the traditional Christmas meal with all the British favorites turkey, fresh-made rolls, roasted potatoes, bread sauce, Christmas plum pudding which was doused in brandy and set ablaze.

One year, Jen wrote ditty and by coincidence I did too; they were just short little poems about the Christmas season. So for the next few years it was a challenge to produce a new one. Year after year the poems became longer and more elaborate. After a few years Jen bowed out, saying she would leave the tradition to me. So I continued.

Every year a poem would start brewing in my heart somewhere around Thanksgiving. I would start gathering thoughts in my mind and occasionally write down snippets, but the actual assembly of those thoughts came together on Christmas Eve when my poems were actually written. I would be in a rush to finish them; they were often typed and printed just minutes before we had to leave.

The first ‘virus year’ even though we did not gather to celebrate, I still wrote a poem. Last year I had nothing to give and this year it appears the prose in my heart have gone cold once again.

Twenty twenty-two was a tough year for many close to me. Tough is really an understatement for the tragedies they have endured. So with that in mind, I am sharing my poem from 2013 (a tough year for me) and hope that whatever is going on in your life, you can look around you and still find the joy and blessings this season brings.

Christmas Spirit

Another year is at it’s end,
For Christmas time is here again.

Can’t grasp that Christmas spirit thing;
Jolly men, sparkling lights, carols and bells that ring.

No can’t grasp it, but what appears as this year slowly ends…
Is a greater appreciation for loved ones and friends.

They are life and joy, they are the gifts with no costs;
Yet remembering with sadness those that we lost.

Some far too soon approached heaven’s gate;
Others are treasures, as heaven can wait.

And if one Christmas Day, so far off, or very near,
We gather to celebrate, and one of us is not here;

Remember the joy that was shared each year, by each one,
And know that our Christmas’s were about loved ones and fun.

Remember the warmth, the love and the laughter,
Because after all, that’s what we were after.

Christmas Spirit where are you this year?
You’re in my heart and with memories I hold dear ❤️

© Trish B 2013

December Down

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Portions of this may sound like a bit of a rant but bear with me as I reflect on the past month — its joys and frustrations.

December, the last month of the year. Work is winding down but keeping track of the past year and all the accounting that goes with year end, is just gearing up. Looking around at the piles of filing and stacks of unrecorded transactions, I try to assess how much I can get done before my December schedule takes hold.

Ahh yes, this place I call home is a beautiful place but for all its beauty it has its downfalls. Home is located at the foot of the Cascade range in direct line with the opening of the Snoqualmie Pass, when the weather comes and the wind blows … the power goes out. I really don’t like the wind, I don’t mind breezes but the wind, with fearsome 50-70 mile an hour gusts, is terrifying. This year “the weather” really started at Thanksgiving and it came with great force. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you may look at it, the wind is usually the most fierce at night.

Fortunate, because you can’t see the 150 foot trees bowing against the force of the wind doing pirouettes in the sky. Unfortunate, because the big branches break off the trees, hit the house and leave me to wonder what is next as I lie in the dark and listen to the carnage. Then it happens, the power flickers once and comes back on, the adjustable bed deflates. I re-adjust the bed, the power flickers again and comes back on. Then it is off for the count, the power company estimates 8 hours. At dawn it is all over and a peek outside reveals what it looks like a war zone. Although, having never seen a war zone, it is really unfitting to use that comparison. Really I know how blessed I am to live in a land where war is not an evil we have at a our doorsteps.

No power, no catching up work today.

Continue December, granddaughter arrives for 4 day visit with sweet little great-granddaughter, Lily. Nine months old she is delighted as we the tour of the Lights of Christmas at Warm Beach (although not warm). I enjoyed the sweet cuddles, listening to her jabbering about everything that catches her eyes and staring at this new life that is a small part of me, the wonder of it all and the realization that I am now, however impossible it seems, the older generation.

I would have like to jump right back into work but was delayed by yet another storm and power outage. Well, life and plans go on. Next stop Hawaii, and sunshine.

Hawaii, lush green landscapes, beaches, the rhythmic white cap waves methodically rolling to shore and the roaring sound as they crash against the rocks. This particular place we stay is a waterfront condo and from the balcony, I look down and see turtles swimming among the rocks. I find the sound of the surf so calming and relaxing that I am up every morning at four to listen to peaceful swooshing of the waves washing to and fro. A few days in, the local reports are that there is a storm rolling in. After seeing their storm, I find I like Hawaii storms better than Washington storms.

The pièce de résistance of the Hawaii trip was the reunion I had with my lifelong friend. This reunion was neither planned nor orchestrated but a serendipitous event that reassured me that there are powers in control that love me and take joy in making me happy. No amount of planning could have created a better scenario. See my post “Old Friends.”.

Good things only last so long. We return home to Washington to freshly fallen snow. I spend three quick days at the office where a large amount of time is spent opening a mountain of mail, paying bills and payroll —- still no progress on those previously noted tasks and I still have not completed this month’s invoicing.

Not to be defeated yet, I package up all the files and my laptop and head home for Christmas break thinking I will get it done over the long weekend. I started off with very good intentions but the cold and continuing rain dampen my enthusiasm. Oh, I forgot to mention amid the storms and wind, it had been raining constantly since the end of October.

Christmas day came without much fanfare. The “virus,” with variants old and new, has kept caution at a never-ending level. Plus an overnight snow and freezing temperatures made the roads hazardous. Dear hubby smoked a turkey on his Traeger and we had a feast fit for an entire royal court, not just the King. It was, the first time in forty years, Chris and I had Christmas dinner just the two of us, alone.

Six days left until the end if the year and the Christmas snow just kept falling. Over the next 36 hours it fell until more than a foot of snow was on the ground. Amazon cancelled my Fresh grocery delivery (no way they’re gonna navigate these treacherous roads for my $75 worth of groceries). Not a problem as we have enough leftovers to last for many days.

Monday, December 27, not going into the office, I finally organize myself enough in my big nest to complete the first draft of the invoices with only short breaks to go out and take pictures of the snow. So beautiful and peaceful. Peaceful in a different way than the waves. Looking out over the pure white blanket of snow on the ground and the thick layers hanging in the trees coating each branch it seems all should be right in the world… no disease, no war, no sorrow.

More snow Tuesday morning and more expected Wednesday the 29th. Right, now I’m thinking what’s the bother of going in on Thursday because Friday the 31st is the final holiday of the season.

So there you have it, December Down. The year is quickly approaching its end and all those work things I had planned for December can now wait. They will still be here in 2022.

Finally, as I look out and admire the new snow on top of the old snow… as if it perfectly arranged by fate, the power flicks off again.

Christmas Memories

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This sweet memory of my mom when I surprised her on Christmas day 2016 made me smile today. She didn’t recognize me at first… it was the first of many times over the next five years.

The more I watch it, the sweeter it becomes. It just shows you what a value you are to your aging parents and how seeing you is the joy of their lives.

The fact she didn’t recognize me, not even my voice, was a little sad but when she realizes it is me, it made the all night trip worth it. She laughed and laughed about it later that day. There is more video where we are talking through the door. She thought I was some church lady!!!

I love how prominent her Texas accent is when she says, “Oh my Lord! What are you doing here?” Then I hear her crying and it breaks my heart now although I know they were tears of joy.

In the new year remember if you have older parents that the roles in life have flipped. To world you may be somebody but somebody (your parents) you are their whole world.

Merry Christmas Mother. You always made the most decadent ambrosia at Christmas… oranges, cherries, coconut, and sugar. You always said it was the food of the gods. I wonder if you are enjoying it today with God, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.