matching tracksuits

Lights are an integral part of Christmas. Certainly everyone breathed a Christmas sigh of relief with the proliferation of electricity: no more candles on dried firs. And outdoor displays enter the realm of possibility.

Add the invention of the airplane, digital cameras, powerful flashes, and unleaded fuel and you get the perfect Christmas image — post-Christmas, of course.

Most of the Christmas exhibition at Roper Mountain was open to cars only, though — how thoroughly American.

We walked through the small pedestrian portion,

took some pictures, and still more

before getting back in the car and continuing on the winding road through the lights. Stopping was prohibited, as was exiting the car, so the pictures end here.

What a shame we couldn’t have the option of exploring it all on foot. Then again, much of that would have entailed L in arms, so perhaps it’s for the best.

More pictures from Christmas Eve dinner and festivities

Everyone began preparing in the morning. Truth be told, K started weeks ago: making pierogi and uszki (two different types of dumplings) and freezing them. Still, with two soups, dumplings, kraut with wild mushrooms, and a main course (accompanying salads and such not counted) on the menu, we had to get a quick start.

There was a salad to make, beginning with boiling veggies and eggs — lots of this. And sauteing onions on a cosmic scale.

There was chopping galore: before and after the boiling; during this; before that. “Click, click, click,” was the soundtrack of the morning.

And there was ironing and setting of places.

In the end, it was the common lament: all the time spent cooking, and the food disappeared so relatively quickly. There’s the eternal entertaining conflict: one wants them to savor everything, yet while everything is warm and the fish is still moist, one wants everyone just to hurry up and get to the next course.

It was a special wigilia for us because it was a special Christmas Eve for L: the first one she knew what was going on, possibly the first one in her memory for some time. She ate the barszcz; she devoured the mushroom soup; and she sat calmly as the rest of us ate. Afterward, Nana and Papa successfully spoiled her with their generosity (not to mention us: as I write, I’m listening to Madeline Peyroux’s excellent new album, Bare Bones, on a new iPod — the woman is incapable of making a bad album). With guests, gifts, and attention, the Girl danced, sang, smiled, laughed, and was the center of the evening. It’s likely to be that way for, well, the foreseeable future.

Some friends were over for Christmas dinner; the conversation turned to Santa. The husband of the family — I’ll call him Jim — asked whether or not we were going to tell our daughter the truth about Santa at an early age. Jim’s contention was it that the belief in Santa is good for the imagination and that it does no harm.

I’m not sure where I stand. Certainly we create alternative little universes for our daughter in the spirit of entertainment, and I’m not so sure telling our daughter that Santa has brought this or that present is all that different.

Jim went on to mention the look of astonishment on Christmas morning when the presents are suddenly under the tree and the children run in, excited: “Santa came!”

“Don’t you remember how that felt?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, wondering how much detail I should provide. What would have have said if I continued, “I was about 23 the first time I celebrated Christmas”? With my parents right there, I didn’t want to get into the “I was raised in a cult” conversation as that seems somewhat damning to them. I just left it at “No” and hoped the conversation would go away.

It used to be a common thing: be evasive and hope the other party lost interest. I middle school, high school, even college to some extent, I fell into that pattern.

I hadn’t done that in close to twenty years, though.

It didn’t feel good, but it made me glad anew to be out.

It was warm enough Christmas Eve to sit out on the balcony and smoke a cigar.

Of course, Easter has to be frigid to make up for it.

Being pregnant — nay, expecting — in the Christmas season is about the most wonderful gift I can imagine.

Yesterday evening, K and I put on a CD of peaceful Polish carols, turned off all the lights, and sat in the glow of the Christmas tree, talking about the future.

A pregnant Christmas, like the first Christmas, is a Christmas of promise. It’s the thought of a whole series of Christmases stretching into the future, including toddlers, children, teens, adults, grandchildren — it’s sitting at the beginning of a new tradition. As the generations repeat, so too Christmas, each one following the previous, each different, each connected.

That’s perhaps one of the nicest things about Christmas. It’s a tradition that invites new traditions. It’s a tradition about birth, about humility, about peace, and those are things that are eternal and yet ever-new. They’re things that surprise us and comfort us, like a good Christmas.

Boyhowdy, at “Not All Who Wander are Lost,”� has a wonderful post about the Christmas season. He writes,

Somewhere in those years I fell in love with someone who loves Christmas, and ceremony, and peace on earth. Christmas came into my house, and nestled in me. (Source)

It’s something I can really relate to. Having grown up in a church that didn’t acknowledge, let alone celebrate, Christmas, it wasn’t until I was in my twenties, in Poland, that I first celebrated Christmas.

That first Christmas was a little odd. I returned to my host family in Radom, Poland, and since I was always at odds with the family’s son’s passive aggression, it was only mildly enjoyable.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was missing was simply the key element of Christmas: family. Subsequent Christmases in Poland I spent with those nearest and dearest to me in the area where I lived, and it only took about fifteen minutes of the real thing for me to fall in love with it.

Essential to the Polish Christmas is food. Huge amounts of it. Food that is time consuming to make, both due to its character and quantity. Dumplings and soups; salads and sides; deserts, deserts, and deserts.

It’s best to get started early.

Hosting our second Christmas dinner, K and I began the cooking this weekend, making 100+ kraut and mushroom dumplings and around 80 mushroom dumplings (“ears”� they’re called � for barszca, the amazing Eastern European beet soup). All told, almost 200 dumplings.

That calls for cooking many, many mushrooms,

cooking much kraut, and squeezing the excess water out of it,

making a lot of dough,

and finally, making the dumplings.

It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s more than labor. It’s an investment, for the food serves as both the centerpiece of a traditional Christmas Eve and the backdrop for the talking and laughing that fills the evening.