It’s hard to believe the day has already come and gone — but it did. It went exactly as expected: waking up to the sound of my grandmother preparing her dishes for the evening’s festivities, driving to a café to get an iced matcha with my brother and Aleksa, and dashing through the aisles of Walmart for last-minute wrapping paper.
Then I spent the majority of the afternoon poorly assembling Christmas gifts in the pretty paper I chose. I don’t know what it is about wrapping presents, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it. I blame this partially on my mother, who never truly taught me (and whose wrapping skills are not much better — sorry Mom!) and my father whose mantra is to just “figure it out.” I have watched dozens of Youtube videos on the matter, too, which seems to do more harm than good. The sides of my gifts are always wrapped unevenly and ugly: one side will have a rectangle edge and the other a triangle edge. Martha Stewart would roll over in her garden if she were to see the asymmetrical sides of my gift boxes. As long as no one looks too closely (and no one seems too … or maybe they are too kind to say otherwise) the presents look great.
I wrapped up on the wrapping by 5:30 at night, just in time to begin assembling my cheese board. I decided that this would be the year I contribute an appetizer rather than pawing off my mom’s cookies as my own. Baking, like wrapping, is not one of my strong suits (brace yourself, Martha!) I find baking to be lackluster compared to cooking, which is why I don’t do much of it.
In the last three years, I’ve baked a few banana breads only because some of our bananas turned black and I didn’t want them to go to waste. I’ve baked a few rounds of chocolate chip cookies (mostly for my in-laws in Serbia). And one time, I baked peanut butter fudge — that was over a year ago and there’s still a box of peanut butter fudge buried in the back of our freezer somewhere.
When my mom and I bake cookies, it’s usually more of a mom-bakes-and-I-provide-entertainment kind of thing. I’ll curate the playlist, pour the wine, and spread the gossip. Meanwhile, my mother measures out the sugar and sifts the flour and rolls the dough: all her efforts are greatly appreciated at Christmas Eve dessert over a late night cup of coffee.
This year, I decided to be a true adult and go all out on a charcuterie board. I don’t know who it was that taught me that a good cheese board should follow a rule of three (as a matter of fact, maybe it was Martha). Essentially, you must have three kinds of cheese, three kinds of meats, three kinds of fruits, three kinds of nuts, three kinds of crackers, etc. This will create the most harmonious board.
I’ve made plenty of these boards for friends in our apartment back in NYC, but never for my family. I’m happy to say it was a big success: the board was almost entirely gone, except for a few dried cranberries left behind. I was glad they enjoyed it so much — maybe I’ll branch out beyond a cheese board for next year.
In addition to my board, we also partook in the shrimp cocktail platter: that’s the real star of the show. My family goes through shrimp with alarming speed and voracity: we are like ravenous animals when we see those yellow lemon wedges and pink shellfish on ice. We’re so insane about shrimp, actually, that my uncle left the party to grab some shrimp after we cleared through the first platter in minutes.
It’s surprising that we ate so much considering Christmas was small this year: there were just thirteen of us. Maybe that seems like a lot of people for some of you, or maybe it does not seem like a lot at all. But I’m used to there being lots and lots of people, so it was nice to have such an intimate Christmas with our immediate family. My mom is the oldest of two younger siblings — her brother is a teacher like herself, and her sister is a physical therapist (and mom of two young kids). Their robust schedules keeps them quite busy these days, so it’s less and less common that they are all in the same room together at once. And not just them, but their partners and children, too. It’s nice to see all of the family together like this — it’s important to me, even though my family can be deeply unhinged and “crazy like an ‘Always Sunny’ episode” (as my mom likes to say).
Tonight, as my family clinked together copper cups of Moscow Mules or chilled glasses of Pinot Grigio, they laughed and they “fought” over all kinds of things. My aunt, my uncle, and my mom argued over who would be the best hypothetical power of attorney; my other uncle told us about his new Cole Haan shoes — which were given to him by a man with a hyperfixation on Cole Haan shoes; my husband and I debated what to use as a mixer for the peppermint vodka and peppermint schnapps (which is one too many peppermint-infused-alcohols); my brother praised the stuffed fish filets with a passion that seemed misplaced; and my little cousin demanded a photoshoot by the tree in her new pajamas.
We didn’t do a full gift exchange tonight, but it warmed me to know that my grandparents appreciated their gift. Older people with dozens of Christmases under their belts don’t need many things. Rarely does anything surprise them! But during my last few visits to Connecticut, I’ve noticed that my grandparents make tea on the stove in a saucepan. Boiling water in a small saucepan is perfectly fine for tea — it’ll do the job, no problem — but it’s neither elegant nor safe. I always imagine them burning their hands when going to pour the hot water into a mug.
So Aleksa and I bought them a shiny, green tea kettle. One that whistles when it’s hot and sparkles in the glow of the warm, kitchen stove light. My Pop-Pop gave his official seal of approval: this is a great gift! Your grandmother wouldn’t let me buy one. To which my grandmother added, he loves tea kettles. We also bought them Tetley tea, my grandmother’s favorite tea brand. I don’t know much about Tetley tea, but it arrived in the mail with the Euro sign of currency on it. This made it seem special and imported, like something that deserved to be [poorly] wrapped in pretty paper under the tree.
Sipping hot coffee from polka-dot-teacups (that my Serbian in-laws gifted my grandmother a few Christmases ago), we picked at cookies, eclairs, fruits and candies for dessert. Just below the table, my little cousins unwrapped some of their Christmas gifts from the family: toy trucks, LEGO cars, nail polish, ear muffs, earrings. And then they began to rub their eyes, sleepy with the promise of more gifts from Santa tomorrow.
All the while, the adults posed for my digital camera over and over — even reminiscing on the good old days of digital camera selfies in the 2000s. Ready for their picture, my mom and her siblings posed in front of the Christmas tree with wild expressions. “Power of attorney, bitches!” my aunt said, laughing and throwing up horns as the camera flashed.
As the night neared its end, my mom, my grandma, and I performed a [drunken] rendition of the song, “Sisters” from the old movie, White Christmas, in the living room. My grandpa found this wonderful (I found it immediately embarrassing). Inspired by that production, he immediately put on the titular movie.
Later, when the entire party emptied out, White Christmas was still playing on TV: my grandparents sweetly cozied up in the living room, watching the film together. It didn’t snow tonight during dinner, but this morning, we woke up to a light coating of snow — which I think counts, right?
It was truly the perfect, quaint, Christmas Eve in Connecticut. After cleaning up the dining room, Aleksa and I returned to our guest “suite” to wrap the last of our gifts.
And now I’m typing up this blog. Meet Me In St. Louis is playing in the background, the white glow of my grandma’s “snowman tree” is illuminating the room, and Aleksa is yawning, half-awake on the couch next to me.
Blogmas isn’t over just yet. But Christmas Eve is. I hope yours was just as merry and bright.
Cumulatively yours,
That American Girl
That American Girl 
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