New Traditions, Just Not so Traditional

I’ve written this blog for 960 days in a row. That means this is my third Christmas Eve. I only ever missed posting myself one day, a year ago tomorrow when I was so sick on Christmas that I slept through the whole day, missing all the celebrating. On that day my family posted for me so that I could keep up my streak of posting something everyday.

I am beginning to fear that I am repeating stories, something I am famous for doing in person. Russ has my most repeatable stories numbered by popularity. What that really means is that the low numbered stories are the ones he is most sick of hearing. To ensure I did not write that same thing this year as I did in the last two I went back in the archives and read what I wrote on Christmas Eve’s past.

Both years were poems about cooking and eating decadent holiday meals that we were going to be enjoying with our Christmas Eve dinner friends. Well, I am in no danger of being repetitive since our standard dinner was canceled because our friends were going to be serving a meal at the shelter.

Replacement for that heavy and fattening meal Carter and Russ wanted a new tradition that they started last year on Christmas day when I was sick in bed, Chinese food for Christmas. Since my family is coming for Christmas day dinner and I have been cooking up a storm for that one holiday meal I happily agreed to this new way of celebrating.

Yesterday Russ called the restaurant to ask them if he needed a reservation and was met with the expectable, “Of course you do!” gruff response. Christmas is a big time of year for Chinese restaurants. Despite needing the reservation so badly, he was able to get one right away.

Today I got a Christmas miracle call from our regular Christmas Eve dinner guests. They had made a mistake and were not serving dinner at the shelter tonight, but had to do it yesterday and were now free for dinner. Hooray! Chinese Christmas Eve for us all.

Perhaps this will be our new tradition. No one has to cook. No one even has to eat the same things. We decided that you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy Chinese food at Christmas. So God bless us everyone and pass the fortune cookies!