Our Topsy-Turvy Holiday World
A Christmas party deferred yet again and haunted by the three Christmas ghosts
This coming Saturday we should be hosting a huge Christmas party. We invite friends, family, and strangers into our home to eat a ton of food I’ve been baking and stirring for about a month. The bar used to offer just wine and beer but in recent years, as the taste for cocktails roared back, it includes whiskey, rum, bourbon, and—brought by two mixologist guests—various types of botanica bitters that make me rethink my distain for Old-Fashions and Manhattans. Our guests arrive around six and occasionally stay until midnight even though my husband and I are asleep on the couch.
This is my introduction to our reverence for A Christmas Carol in Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens. The copy of the book we have is a 1938 edition presented by my mother-in-law to our two-year-old son. He didn’t appreciate it at the time but he knows it well now, given that my husband read it to him and his brother for many long years and, when they grew out of his lap and bedtime stories, further impressed upon them nearly every audio and video adaptation there is. I mentioned this in a previous story but it bears repeating: my husband, therefore the family, is steeped in Scrooge and all his Christmas ghosts.
Our party would be in line with the one conjured by the ghost of the past that was given by old Mr. Fezziwig, Ebenezer’s first employer. A high spirited, rousing affair in the telling.
The is the second year our party remains in the past. We planned for it this year but Omicron squashed that idea. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand I’m sort of relived about not doing all that cooking and having aching feet and limbs for days afterwards, nor the expense spend before and the towering mess afterwards. On the other much stronger hand, I terribly miss our guests and cooking for them, filling our house with such abundant good cheer. There’s also this—the fear that our public caution is becoming a habit and we’ll never have another party again.
I’m countering the last fear with a small celebration this Saturday that the ghost of the present might approve. Our two sons and the good women who put up with them are coming over for our traditional trimming of the tree that their father disappears under every night to string his mammoth supply of lights. Dinner will be ham and my sister’s famous black bean casserole if she can find the instructions. There’s a dessert recipe I saw a few weeks ago that I thought would be fun, supposedly a cross between a chocolate cake and a cookie. A couple of minutes ago, the son who actually owns our A Christmas Carol, told me to buy a huge bottle of rum because his girlfriend is whipping up a big pitcher of coquito. We will eat and get slightly tipsy in toasting our good luck that we have muddled through another year, and swear the party will return next year.
[Past and present converge: my dad’s—and so mine—favorite Christmas song]
And we will hope not to be visited by the ghost of Christmas future with his bony finger pointing Scrooge to bleak darkness if he did not change his ways:
“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”—Ebenezer Scrooge addressing the ghost’s black specter. A Christmas Carol by Chares Dickens, 1843
If Ebenezer could alter his life, why can’t we snatch ourselves away this national pall that the third ghost holds in his grip? The generosity we are known for, the hands we’re stretching out together to help so many devastated parts of our country, couldn’t they seep into our everyday lives, even down into the blighted hearts of prevaricators and misers that cast Ebenezer to the little leagues? It’s a tall order, I know, a wobbly hard-lifting ask. But in shining a hard mirror to one man’s soul, A Christmas Carol show us faith in all mankind’s goodness.
“The shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!”—Ebenezer Scrooge. A Christmas Carol by Chares Dickens, 1843
And next year—NEXT YEAR!—I swear we will have our Christmas party!
And now….
Two readers sent me an article that reveals Eudora Welty’s mother’s recipe for Christmas eggnog, printed in the December, 2014 issue of Garden & Gun, a curiously named magazine I hadn’t heard of before. I yelled, “What a fortuitous coincidence!,” given that I’ve been shamelessly hawking America Eats! first printed chapbook, Southern Cooking, a collection of recipes Welty gathered for the WPA in the 1930s. Her eggnog recipe is a kicker (1 cup of whiskey added to a scant amount of cream and egg yolks), so be sure to double it to have on hand. You’ll want to share and drink it before it goes bad.
If you love the eggnog, or are just curious to read more of Welty’s take on southern cooking, be sure to sign up for your chapbook copy—free to subscribers and a nominal fee to everyone else.
Mother’s Eggnog (“Charles Dickens'‘ Recipe”)
I’m not sure about the Charles Dickens reference but my husband would heartily approve, especially if you are reading/listening/watching A Christmas Carol while enjoying a cup. Final note: Welty isn’t sure when to add the egg whites—add them after the cream and right before serving.
