Christmas traditions, and how to break them

Fondue or fondon't, it's all up to you

Never did find the proper forks

There are two views of Christmas traditions.

1. They are the jewels of the past, polished by time, handed down from loving ancestors whose memory we e’er keep warm and and alive when we do as they did, eat as they ate, and raise our new wine in the glasses of yore. Thus do civilizations maintain, and remember.

2. Traditions are the cold hands of the dead past punching through the coffin-lid of yesteryear and bursting up through the loam to reach out and smother the newborn ideas of today, because that’s not how Grandma did it

I’m very much in the first camp, stamping around like Tevye in the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof. But I share his perplexity some times. Why do we do this? I don’t know. I don’t know why we always had Swedish Meatballs on Christmas Eve. Perhaps that was Grandpa’s favorite, and my Mom made it after he passed to remind herself of him. If so, cool; my daughter, who never met the old man, experiences a little of the remarkable old farmer - especially since I insist that she wash it down with a warmish Grain Belt and smoke an Old Gold afterwards.

“But I don’t want to! They smell and they make me cough!”

“It’s tradition. Your grandfather would be delighted to know you enjoy the rich, apple-fresh flavor of an Old Gold.”

Ahhhh, kids, it’s hard to get them interested in history. Even harder to get them to knock the ash in the coffee-cup saucer. My point is that we are not having Swedish Meatballs this year, because Daughter wants to make some German dish. It’s a roll of pounded meat layered with mustard and pickles. (Not to be confused with the German meal of mustard and pickles wrapped up in hammered meat; that one has more syllables.) I have never been impressed with German food, but this dish has the promise to provide a piquancy missing in Swedish meatballs, which seem like something that answers the question “what if the telephone dial tone was a flavor?”

Christmas dinner has long been fowl, but this year it’s fondue. My wife envisioned the labors of stuffing and roasting and basting and mashing and whipping, then imagined a meal in which people just . . . dipped things, and decided it was time to sunder tradition. Again, I’m fine with that. I am a wise husband. If she said “I think I want to make candied quails wrapped in bacon, sitting in popover nests,” the husband should say “that sounds delicious.” If she says “I am going to buy two rotisserie chickens and blend them in the Waring, pour it in a mold, and serve it cold, garnished with giblets” the husband says “You’re the boss.” What the husband does not say, upon learning that fondue is the order of the day, and that the fondue forks cannot be found, is this:

“I’m sure we can use regular forks.”

This earns you a look of bewildered despair, as the wife realizes she has been married for 35 years to a man who was cavalier about fondue protocols. (Actually, she may have suspected already.) No, you can’t use regular forks. They have to be long.

Why? We’re not plunging our arms into a 32-gallon barrel with a thin hot lake of cheese at the bottom, so we need a yard-long prong. Regular forks will do just fine. It will lack the fondue aesthetic, I get it, but who cares? It’s not as if this goes on your permanent record. Your eulogy will not include the line “to be sure, she didst commit an act of fondue with commonplace forks, eschewing the true and proper tools, but for this she sought, and perhaps received, forgiveness, if not in this world, then the next.”

Ha ha just kidding, I’m off to Williams Sonoma, be back in an hour.

Of course, other traditions abide. Opening presents on Christmas Morn, as ever. (We used to do it one Christmas Eve, but changed at some point.) Decorating the tree on Christmas Eve. (We used to do it a few weeks before, but now we do it when Daughter returns.) Drinking a spiked Egg Nog on Christmas Eve night. (It used to be mulled wine, and for a few years it was Tom and Jerry’s, but sure, Egg Nog’s the tradition.) The tree will be by the front door, as ever, except for the years in was in the other corner and the years it was by the stairs. We’ll have cinnamon rolls in the morning, just as we always did, except for the years when it was pancakes, French Toast, and those Belgian puffy things with the powdered sugar. Tradition! It’s the glue that binds the generations.

Elmer’s, not Krazy.