The Christmas Diaries, Part 9

A merry, and very white, Christmas!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!  What fun to have it be a snow-filled white Christmas, the first we’ve had together, and the first for me in a long, long time.  We watched the sun hit the mountain across the valley, coffee in had, fire roaring.  We tossed an extra ration of seed out to supplement the feeders for the cold and hungry birds.  It was a bright clear day and we had a piece of the Cranberry-Orange Walnut bread to hold out for a big brunch later in the morning -- a big scramble of potatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, olives, tofu, and spinach...well seasoned and very welcome.

Around 1 PM our newly arrived neighbor buzzed over on his ATV to invite us over, their present opening session and lunch finished.  They have family with them, their daughter and her husband and two grandchildren -- all of whom we’ve known for some time now.  Just before leaving the phone rang and it was my daughter, calling to wish us a Happy Christmas from her husband’s family home in San Luis Obispo.  After a good long and cheerful conversation we headed down the hill and past the lake and headed up their steep drive to their cabin.  The drive was being plowed by none other than Santa!  Or at least it was being cleared by a guy driving a tractor with a plow who was wearing a Santa Hat.  

What sleigh?  What reindeer?

Margaret and Harry’s cabin is one of my favorite places to be, and nothing is better than coming in out of the cold to their enchanting space with a fire roaring in a  big stone fireplace.  There was a real Christmas tree decorated with flickering lights, incredible German decorations and music boxes, and a huge spread of homemade traditional Christmas cookies, some from recipes over 100 years old.  I’m always grateful to be in these friends’ presence.  Soon we were joined by “Santa” and his Dad, visiting from Texas.  Conversations swirled in the cosy cabin, sugar cookies were washed down with hot tea, and every where you turned there was someone else you were anxious to talk to.  Margaret encouraged us to stay for dinner, but she already had a houseful and we made a plan for them to pop over to see us in the next day or two, and made a date for them to have dinner with us late in the week.  It was a bit of a shock to step out into the late afternoon cold, the sun close to setting, but we had our own warm cabin to return to, and a dinner already prepped to finish up and pop in the oven.

Holidays are a bit of a test with our newish vegan diet.  I make the rare exception for desserts or dishes that I figure contain some butter, eggs, or milk.  And it can be challenging to come up with something fun and satisfying when tradition dictates a roast turkey or beef occupy center stage.  We had all the sides instead -- roasted acorn squash with a maple syrup glaze, a truly delicious vegan bread stuffing baked in a pan, homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce, and steamed broccoli.  We ate a little too much, out of obligation, and passed on dessert after having had our fill of Margaret’s wonderful cookies.  

Just before 9 PM, our usual bedtime (if we last that long), the phone rang and it was my husband’s grandsons.  Sitting next to him on the couch I could hear their excited voices, but not every word.  An animated discussion about glow-in-the-dark dinosaur puzzles and rocket ship PJ’s followed.  Snow levels of here and Denver where compared, and sledding possibilities in both locations discussed.  Tentative plans were made for a quick trip to Denver to see them before heading back south to Tucson.  For my husband especially, a perfect end to an otherwise very special Christmas.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 8

Late afternoon sun streams in on Christmas baking fresh from the oven

Christmas Eve, December 24th

Christmas Eve.  Baking.  Obviously.

We’re hoping to get some company during the next several days, both the just-dropping-by variety and friends for dinner.  Christmas is tomorrow and I was feeling festive and decided to lean into a bit of vegan baking, something new for me.  I made Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Spice Cookies from Vegan Planet...pretty tasty through they didn’t flatten out like cookies.  I use a cookie scoop and the second two dozen I flattened with a wet hand before baking and they looked more like you would expect of cookies, though they make me want a cup of tea when I eat them.  In keeping with the cranberry theme, and much more successful, was a Cranberry-Orange Walnut bread -- almost as wonderful as the Silver Palate’s recipe (though that one had a lot of eggs and an embarrassing amount of butter).  

On Santa Watch

Christmas is sort of soft-pedaled at our house.  I love to decorate, but don’t go crazy.  We enjoy the Christmas lights on the front porch at least as much as the few folks that will see them.  I love the music we listen to for only a couple of weeks a year.  It’s fun to be with family and friends at this festive time, be we also enjoy some solitude during these longest nights.  We’re living in our forever-more Christmas present to ourselves, the cabin, so there is (at least currently) nothing under the tree for either of us.  And that’s fine, especially since we recently gifted ourselves with a new iMac and Kindles.  We buy presents for my husband’s elementary school-aged grandsons and shoot for something that strikes us as just right, without going consumer mad.  This year it was space-themed pajamas, jigsaw puzzles, and games.  I like to think of them opening the presents from us with all the excitement Christmas morning brings to children, and hope they like what’s under the wrapping.  We also hope that before too many more Christmases have passed they’ll have opened at least the gifts from us here at the cabin.

Snow angel -- next year I'll work on technique

This afternoon we took a walk towards the meadow on the plowed dirt road.  At our turn-around point my gaze fell on an almost pristine expanse of snow, untouched except for what looked like the faint track of some small rodent.  Something from long ago triggered a memory of making snow angels.  I couldn’t quite remember exactly how to get down in the snow to create the perfect impression, but after careful consideration I decided my falling-backwards days were over, at least in snow less than three feet deep and this was half that much.  I lowered myself down, stretched out tall...feeling how strange it felt to voluntarily lay down in the snow (actually not bad at all)...and moved my arms up and down to create my wings.  It’s certainly been over 50 years since I last did that.  Some things are worth repeating as an adult; I think we appreciate their particular fun more that when all the world was nothing more than our playground.

We’d left shovels at the bottom of the drive and collected them on the way to our friends’ cabin across the lake.  They were coming in late that evening after a big family dinner and we wanted to at least break through the three foot snow berm at the foot of their driveway that the plow had kicked up.  We went on to clear enough space for them to park a car before hiking up to their cabin, which was going to be anything but easy.

Over a simple dinner of our favorite vegan chili and some yummy pumpkin biscuits (Vegan Planet), we talked about Christmases past.  We’ve the last nine of them together, but both of us have memories of Christmases when we were kids, and when our children were kids.  It was odd how little we remembered about the gifts themselves...it was so much more about the experiences -- where we were living, who was with us, family and friends.  Later we settled down in front of the radio to listen to NPR’s A Christmas Carol, narrated by Jonathan Winters.   I never get tired of that story, and never give up hope that we can all learn the important lessons of kindness and caring, and remember them all year long.

We no longer have to go through the motions of leaving cookies and milk for Santa (no wonder he’s so chubby!), but we did decide to leave our outdoor lights on for our late-arriving neighbors...a little cheer before they reached their cabin after a cold, dark hike up a steep hill in two feet of snow.