What can I say about the Christmas that is passed? (Just this one. Not all past.)
That I approached it with dread.
That for 24 days I opened the doors of the advent calendar with trepidation, dreading what would be revealed behind each snowy scene of family happiness: guilt, death, destroyed hopes, lost trust.
That it was the second Christmas without Jeff, the father of my children.
That it was the first Christmas since 2001 that did not require delicate negotiations over where the grown children would be for what celebrations.
That it was Iggy’s first Christmas and he discovered the bliss of a head massage while dressed as a candy cane.
That fake noses and fake teeth provided much needed amusement at Christmas dinner. There are few occasions that would not be enlivened by faux proboscii. Perhaps none.
That it did not snow and was in fact unseasonably warm for those of us not in Bethlehem, which is most of us. When it was 48˚ in Hastings it was 50˚ in Jerusalem. But it was not raining in Jerusalem.
That we received a moderate amount of bee-themed gifts and the ones we did receive were remarkably tasteful. The hands-down best was the bee bling-ring, which will soon be making appearances in select locations around the rivertowns.
Ditto chicken-themed gifts.
That CSB slash Santa chose exceptionally well with this year’s stocking gifts. The ergonomic salad dressing delivery system was my favorite. There was also an IOU for an ergonomic egg poacher.
That Leda discovered her vocation is to be an angel in the Christmas pageant, so long as she gets to wear that marvelous wide belt made of silver sequins.
That it is over.

Sure, there are the old standbys: wreaths to crookedly hang, lights to string, fuses to blow, advent calendars to ship off to grown children who might otherwise neglect to note the sequence of days leading inexorably to the 25th, and moral questions to resolve: Should I finally do as I yearly threaten, and scratch from my Christmas card list all the sloths out there who neglect to send us cards?
But the truest harbinger of the season is glue. Crazy glue or rubber cement or epoxy: they each have their merits but the choice is generally determined by proximity. Last year it was baby Jesus’ leg and a magi’s turban that had become separated from their respective bodies. Before that were the black birettas* on the tiny wooden Dresden monks. Or choristers. Whoever they are, they lost their hats. Nutcrackers are frequently in need of glue. If I ever meet a Nutcracker not in need of gluing I will have my suspicions.
I know that - theoretically - Santa’s sleigh is pulled by 8 reindeer, but I only have two, which is enough for any household. From hoof to antler tip they are each 8 inches tall. The antlers are the problem. This year one reindeer emerged from his aestivation with both antlers severed from their base. Sometimes with adhering things you can just apply the glue to the object and put the broken bit on top and leave it alone to harden. Such is not the case with antlers, which in the best of times are perilously cantilevered from their relatively small ungulate head. No, broken antlers have to be held in place over the applied glue; pressure must be applied. Time must be spent. Impatience will get you nowhere.
So the other night after dinner I settled down with a fresh tube of crazy glue, several paper towels – anticipating drippage – one reindeer and his severed antlers, and watched a PBS fundraiser featuring folk music from the sixties. Lots and lots of aging, balding, graying and thickening folk singers belting out songs I actually know the words to. I began by spreading glue on the right antler base and then fiddling with the broken antler rack until it seemed to have found its match, and held it there, one hand around the reindeer’s body, one hand holding onto the antler, watching footage of the now-dead Mary Travers singing Blowin’ in the Wind. Until the PBS station stopped the music and began to ask for contributions, at which point I thought I might mute the sound. This meant removing one of my hands from the reindeer. I chose to remove the left hand, which encompassed the body. This was a mistake: as I did so the reindeer slipped sideways and the antler was dislodged. Apparently, it takes longer for crazy glue to re-attach an antler than the entire duration of Blowin’ in the Wind. Before starting the process all over again I repositioned the remote device so that I could hit the mute button with my elbow. It had not yet occurred to me that the whole concept of a television fundraiser was that in order to enjoy the old songs I had to listen to the interminable demands for money long enough to be convinced to call in and offer up my first born child.
I repeated the gluing while singing along with If I Had a Hammer. My mind wandered and the antler fell down, still unstuck. Somewhere around the fifth or fifteenth time I reapplied glue, I noted that in fact these antlers are not correct. Reindeer have twig-like antlers, similar to elk and caribou and the deer that are at this very moment killing my nascent peach trees. But this reindeer had palmate antlers, like the moose. And only the moose. Not only was I spending the better part of a folk music festival inhaling crazy glue and getting finger cramps, but I was perpetuating an anatomically incorrect version of the legendary reindeer.
Then, somewhere in the middle of Michael Row your Boat Ashore, it dawned on me that re-gluing antlers is like a relationship (i.e. marriage). It requires constant attention. Any attempted shortcut or relaxing of attention will lead directly further breakage. The only things that works are absolute stillness, perseverance, and focus. Don’t drop the antler and don’t mess with the remote control when you are gluing. Even if the antlers belong to another ungulate altogether, stick with them because they are what you have.


* I was not sure if biretta was the correct name for the clerical headgear in question, and I am still unsure. In searching for the answer I came upon this astonishing tidbit: somewhere in Germany there is the Philippi collection - the world’s largest - of clerical and ecclesiastical headgear. A 712 page book has been published, in German, featuring this collection, and you can buy it for 119 Euros. Need I say how tempted I am?

After the holidaze

In the interest of underscoring the surreality of Christmas, a few random notes (I used to have a brain that could organize details and form a coherent narrative; but that was before the holiday sugar gluttony. Now I speak in palindromes & lick the insides of my pockets.):

I don’t know what your Clara looked like, but ours (The Nutcracker at the Tarrytown Music Hall) had braces. I think they were Russian braces. Also one of the Snowflakes was pregnant. Hence the pauses.

Christmas Eve brought the arrival of the Aged P’s, with their long and short memories and balms of forgetfulness. It is such multilayered forgetfulness that gives rise to variations on re-gifting, bringing that somewhat maligned but useful tradition to new and arcane levels of complication.
For instance: knowing my fondness of all things Nicaraguan my mother gave me a ceramic decorative plate from Nicaragua that was given to her about 10 or 12 years ago by a Nicaraguan friend. I know this because he gave me one as well. I have since donated my decorative (but ugly) plate to the church fair. So imagine my delight when I was presented with yet another.

The black handbag with gold chain and a bejeweled clasp also came with a back story. Many years ago a neighbor of my parents died. She was reclusive and in fact my parents barely knew her, but her youngest son was a great friend of all of us. It turned out that this reclusive lady – and this was long before the days of online shopping – was a compulsive telephone shopper, and her house was full of unused and often unwrapped boxes from Saks and Lord & Taylor, full of mink hats, evening bags, designer handbags, cashmere bed-jackets, and black negligees. Days after this neighbor’s death, my mother opened her door to find Fred (the son, our friend) bearing piles of boxes full of his mother’s treasures. In his wisdom, Fred considered my mother the most stylish woman he knew and therefore the proper recipient for this bounty.
The white mink hat (think Hostess Sno Balls before they made them pink) has already come my way, and it’s in my back hall with the label still attached – in case you are interested.

One of the ways my mother has entertained herself these past few days is reading my daybook. It takes a very special person to find this book interesting because (other than my collages which are either the work of genius or a mental defective, depending on your POV) this book merely lists my daily activity in the driest and most unadorned way I can manage. (I do not always manage.) That very special person is my mother, she who corrects the spelling on restaurant menus, corrects the architectural descriptions in real estate adverts and now corrects the spelling in my daybook. “Zut alors! Surely you know that cauchemar has a U in it.”

Maybe you’ve been finding the holidaze a tad stressful and gloomy. If that is the case, you could have found consolation for your condition at the Blue Service, designed especially for the miserable, rotten, brutish and short. But you chose not to go. No one did. You preferred to suffer alone.

Which brings us to Saint Fabiola, of lost portrait fame.

The Alternative Version of Events

Given that it is the season of goodwill, red velvet, gold ribbons and refined sugar as well as the annual spike in the national suicide rate, you may very well be asking yourselves: what could Christine possibly be doing that is so compelling it kept her from blogging about La Griteria, Saints Budoc, Mennas, Eulalia of Merida, Daniel the Stylite and Lucia.

I will tell you.

Cooking.

On La Gritería (In Nicaragua the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a dogma taxing to the credulity, is celebrated with fireworks, public revelry and chanting.) I made dozens of cocoa rum balls. These involve the mixing together of many healthy and alcoholic ingredients, then rolling the paste between the palms of your hands to make little spheres, and then rolling the spheres in confectioners’ sugar. They are even better after being locked inside a metal box for a week.

The next day was the feast of Saint Budoc. He was a perfectly fine abbot, but his mother, Azenor, was remarkable: when her father was being attacked by a snake, Azenor smeared her breast with milk and aromatic oil to lure to snake away from her beleaguered Papa and onto her breast. Naturally the snake obliged. But the snake wanted to stay on that comfortable spot, so Azenor was forced to chop off her own breast and throw it into the fire. God recognized her for this kind act by replacing the charred breast with a new breast made of gold. Later she survived five months sealed inside a casket in the ocean, and in fact she even gave birth to Budoc inside that cask.
I made candied orange peels. Candied orange peels are my new favorite way to put myself into a hyperglycemic coma.

On the anniversary of the miserable death of Saint Mennas (eyes and tongue plucked out, feet flayed, beheaded) I made anise drop cookies. The thing about anise cookies that intrigues me is that after making the batter and dropping into onto the cookie sheet, you have to leave them out overnight before cooking. If you fail to do this, the cookies will have the texture of socks. Otherwise, they are a delicious soft and crunchy paradox. That same day was also the feast of Saint Eulalia of Merida (asphyxiated by the smoke from her burning hair), because there is little more appealing to a painter than the opportunity to paint a bloodied and naked young woman on the snow.
Painting by John William Waterhouse

To honor the feast of St Daniel the Stylite (the second-best-known of the pillar saints, they who sit atop pillars for ridiculously long periods of time, after St Simeon the Stylite, the best-known) I made gingerbread. And why is this gingerbread so good? Because it contains mustard (the dried kind in the lovely yellow tin) and candied ginger. Now candied ginger is rather difficult to chop (try it if you don’t believe me) but I have come up with a solution. I freeze it first, and then it cracks apart so easily you (I) wonder why it took so long to figure that out.


Painting by Domenico Beccafumi.
And then on the feast of Santa Lucia I made meringues. There is very little I can tell you about Saint Lucy that is true. When the wicked Diocletian sent her to be ‘exposed’ in a brothel, God made turned her to stone so that she became immovable. When Diocletian minions set her aflame, she did not burn. In order to dissuade an over-eager – and pagan – suitor, Lucy ripped out her eyeballs and presented them to the hapless swain. But God put them back in.
What color were her eyes? Probably not red or green, but those were the colors of the meringues I made. CSB, being the purist in the house, was distraught to see the tell-tale little bottles of food coloring, but in this holiday season certain aspects of our domestic order are jettisoned (good taste?).
Meant to look like eyeballs on a platter.