I’ve been waffling between staying home for Christmas or breaking the guidelines to spend it with family. After watching tonight’s news I think I’ve made up my mind: numbers are increasing in Ottawa and even more concerning also in our area. It no longer looks like it will be free and clear by Christmas (quite the opposite), so to keep everyone safe we’ll stay home. I am reminded many times a day by what I read in news articles and comments, that this is for only one year and staying distant might save the lives of those in my family that are vulnerable.
So, to keep my mood positive, I’ve making plans to fully immerse us into Christmas, embracing old traditions but also adding some new ones. Except for last year, I’ve been kind of over Christmas, doing the absolute minimum. We’d visit Mom and Dad and Carm’s sister, but other than that didn’t do much. We certainly didn’t have ‘spirit’.
I have only old photos to include. This one is from Norway 1973, That’s me standing on the back of the dog sled.
One year we had some of our single friends over for a nice Christmas Eve dinner but generally we’d have some sort of easy supper and watch ‘Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer’. Christmas morning we’d do our visiting, getting home late afternoon. So for supper we’d have a bag of chips and watch ‘the Sound of Music’. No wonder I was perpetually gloomy!
Since this year we’ll be staying home because of COVID, we are going to go full-on Christmas with old family traditions and a few new ones. I read an article about Norwegian Christmases and a few things caught my fancy.
In Norway on December 23rd everyone would get together and get a bunch of cooking and prep done for the next few days. Well, there will only be Carm and I but we’ll make the lefse and I’ll make a tourtiere. We’ll get some of the other prep for Christmas dinner done. I’ll play Christmas music for a sing-along.
Christmas Eve day Norwegians stay in their pajamas and watch some beloved shows. We’ll watch our favorite programs and movies and get tummy aches from eggnog and cookies. At supper we’ll have some semblance of Norwegian Christmas Eve… lefse, cheeses, meats. We’ll have the touriere to round out the meal.
(Bjorn - you’ll have to set me straight where necessary!)
It sounds fun! And I’ll remind myself over and over again how happy I am… and that next year it will be different. And ‘God willing’ everyone will still be here.
Who could resist a ‘Juicy Ass’ IPA? We both enjoyed it and have put it on the list of favorites, although asking for it at the liquor store is slightly embarrassing… We had it with ‘pasta w sun-dried tomato and mushrooms’.
“Nothing ever seems too bad, too hard or too sad when you've got a Christmas tree in the living room. All those presents under it, all that anticipation. Just a way of saying there's always light and hope in the world.”
~J.D. Robb
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