The Long Holiday

So yesterday we celebrated Christmas Eve, even though it was technically New Year’s Day. We don’t usually do much for New Year’s Day to be honest, but we didn’t have much of a Christmas Eve thanks to COVID, so things got shuffled around. I made popcorn shrimp and linguini with clam sauce, and we decided that the anchovies in the salad dressing counted as the third kind of fish so that brought the total to an odd number and that’s what you need to have for Christmas Eve dinner.

My grandmother used to make seven kinds of fish. My dad – the only person in my immediate family growing up who liked fish at all – insisted that one was also an odd number. We tend to stick with three these days because we can find three things we like and that seems more manageable.

There was good food and good company, and that’s pretty much all Christmas is supposed to be as far as I am concerned. 

New Year’s Eve we celebrated Oliver’s birthday, which is kind of ironic since that actually is his birthday. Egg rolls and cake, as promised, followed by a round of Carcassonne.

We had already celebrated Christmas Day on Thursday, even though that was before we celebrated Christmas Eve.

I got out of COVID jail on Tuesday, and rather than have Christmas Eve first we realized that the turkey had been thawing in the fridge for a while so it needed to be cooked with all due haste. So Kim got that going and then made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green bean casserole – plus we had the jellied cranberry sauce with the Rings Of Quality that were imprinted directly from the can, so you know it’s good – and once again there was good food and good company.

By that point we had already opened our Christmas presents because Tuesday was my first day out of COVID jail and we figured why not? The gifts were just sitting there, after all. Most of them. Might as well get them out where people could appreciate them. We were still wearing masks, since I was out on the new CDC parole terms, but it was a good time nonetheless. The tree we put up a while ago – before either Lauren or I had COVID – and it was nicely decorated and festive throughout. It will stay up for another week at least, until all the festivities have concluded.

Because there are more.

Sometime this week we’ll have a birthday dinner for me as well, since mine disappeared into the COVID jail sentence. There will be some kind of good food, though what I have not yet determined, and if all four of us end up sitting around a table sharing conversation and a meal then that’s all the birthday I need. I’ve celebrated my birthday as late as February, so delaying it by a couple of weeks is hardly even noticeable.

We also have another Christmas to celebrate with Kim’s family this weekend, but we knew that going in. That one was always going to be this weekend, no matter what happened in December.

Sometimes you have to stretch out the holidays so they fit your life. That’s what they’re for, after all.