Christmas Eve

 Christmas Eve has always been one of my favorite days of the year.  Maybe it’s because I spend the month of December preparing for it, shopping, writing cards, planning the menus.   A friend in recent years gives me an Advent calendar that I put on the frig door and each day so carefully open the little number window to see what is behind it.  More than anything though, today a child part of me comes fully alive and I relish what is to come and the quiet mystery of the day.  In recent years with our whole family squeezed into our house, it’s been a day of activity.  The grandkids decorate gingerbread houses, play innumerable games and go for long walks with willing adults.  We would all go to the early Christmas Eve service at church which is very child friendly (Christmas Lite I call it).  Then come back, light the fire and wait for a delicious dinner where we’d all crowd around the table and talk and laugh and tell stories.  Then after music making, the kids go to bed early and Bob and I would sneak out to go to the Late church service soaking in the holy mystery of the day.

This year because we’re celebrating with just us, I’ve been remembering the first Christmas Bob and I were without our family.  It was 1967 and we were living in Copenhagen Denmark.  It gets dark really early there, as I recall around 2 pm.  The Danes decorate and celebrate Christmas with gusto.  On Christmas Eve, we invited some American friends over to have a traditional  Danish Christmas dinner with us.  In my little primitive kitchen (the oven was a black metal box on which  I adjusted the temperature by raising or lowering the height of the flame) I roasted a duck for the first time in my life.  I cooked “rod kol” —sweet and sour red cabbage and tiny boiled potatoes.  We sat down at a very decorated table and ceremoniously I brought out the duck on a platter.  Bob raised his knife and with flourish cut off the first slice of the breast.  The joke was there was only one slice to be had on each side.  We laughed and laughed at how small the duck was.  Then the next day I had decided because we were alone and so were all the foreign guests at the Niels Bohr Institute, I’d have an open house for everyone without family to visit on Christmas.  It was a big crowd.  There were people from Italy, Switzerland, Checheslovia, Poland, Argentina, New Zealand, China and 7 Russians (6 nuclear physicists and one KGB minder)  The Russians all came to the door in a group and totally overwhelmed me with their presence.  I remember what a fun party it was.  This year, no Russians, we are quieter. It will be just us and for this year, that is ok.  Next year we will appreciate every little thing so much more.  Next year will be better.