Our Christmas…

It is the second wave… our Christmas… not the public Patterson House Christmas… not the Google parties… not the City parties… but our family Christmas…

The tree is up… the lights are up outside… the street, our neighborhood is decorated for Christmas… a neighborhood Christmas… a c community Christmas… a Christmas… a celebration.

Five days before the day… there is a fire lit… We have dined… we (at least the ladies) are decorating the tree… the tree which has resided in the house for the last week… We (I) put up lights immediately… we put up beads, the garland soon after… then we stopped… waiting for the decorations…

I had brought down the boxes of decorations… but had missed a box… THE box… the box of glass balls… reflective balls… Christmas balls… We retreated to the attic… to the storage place… and found the missing box containing the Christmas balls… All is good… for it is Christmas and Christmas balls are important…

Earlier, this day, I braved the crowds to purchase the roast… the Christmas roast… Almost 16 lbs of Christmas roast… a standing rib roast… aka a “Prime rib”… our Christmas evening dinner… the center of our Christmas eve dinner… served with Yorkshire pudding… a true English Christmas dinner… my families tradition, a family separated from England, the Christmas homeland for something close to 400 years… The butcher, if he is called that… the meat purveyor at the local mega mart wanted to sell me a trimmed roast… but I need the roast… with the fat… to make the pudding, the Yorkshire pudding… I prevailed… I got the full fatty roast. Fat equals flavor… fat renders for the York… the Yorkshire pudding… Fat is important…

The Ladies continue to decorate the tree… There are conflicts… I am hiding, writing the blog… Apparently there are still “globs of empty space” on the tree… They continue their efforts.

The menu is developing… Hollandaise, asparagus to go with the meat… and pudding… There is a salad involved… this is dinner, our Christmas dinner…

Apparently my wife does not know the Pickle story… so says my daughter….I continue to write the blog… They call me over to hang ornaments… I resist.

The tree is decorated… it is done… Christmas is here… more Christmas will follow… a dinner… a good dinner… with a fire and food and lights… most importantly with family and friends… too all, and too all a goodnight...