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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   4729 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

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What are your Christmas Eve plans? Obviously not everyone here celebrates Christmas, but I live in land of fake Christmas where the busiest shop on Christmas eve is KFC and Colonel Sanders is dressed as Santa, tonight is the only important part of the season and that only because it's when families eat Christmas Cake and young people have romantic dates.

As a dad of two, I of course made spaghetti and a couple of homemade pizzas. Tomorrow on the 25th I will be making chicken with cornbread dressing and, yes, greenbean casserole. It is what it is. My redneck background is never far. Also I am going to try out an eggnog recipe. and enjoy a few days off.

So what are we doing, Mottizens? Regardless I hope all have a pleasant holidays.

Edit:

In the days leading up to now, I have watched, with my sons, the first two Home Alone movies, Die Hard, as well as the best version of the Dickens story out there IMO, the 1970 Albert Finney Scrooge.

I got to go to both church services and spent time with family. We did a big old potluck with turkey, green bean casserole, mashed taters, corn pudding, etc.

We had some young ones running around this year too, and it truly changes the whole event. Kids bring a lot of light and energy to these sorts of things.

They definitely do. My boys have allowed me to relive many holidays: Hallowe'en, Christmas the big ones. Good times.

It's a Finnish tradition to do most of Christmas stuff - big dinner, presents etc., state ceremonies - on Christmas Eve. Presumably previously this was so that the Christmas Day could be given to religious things and rest, but of course in these secularized days most people don't do the religious stuff.

After becoming more active in the Orthodox Church (Finnish Orthodox Church is in the New Calendar), where Christmas Eve is still the day of the fast, I've tried to move things to the Christmas Day, causing a bit of friction with my Lutheran wife, but this year I gave up and we had Christmas dinner and gave out presents on the Eve, and I also went to church on that day and skipped today. Christmas Day church has been hard for me anyway since I don't have a car, public transport is not on and I about 10 km from the church.

We had, from the traditional Finnish Christmas table, ham and the casseroles, alongside roast beef, Karelian pies and a feta salad. And egg butter with Karelian pasties, it astonishes me that such a simple thing as a mix of eggs and butter would be quintessentially Finnish/Estonian thing.

My sister, who lives in the same city as me, visited, and our mom is also spending the Christmas with us. This meant the kids got a lot of presents and were happy, including the first skis for our 3-year-old.

My understanding with Orthodoxy is that the fast shouldn’t be strictly legalistic. I’d imagine if your family always does the meal on Christmas Eve you could break the fast a day early, but I would talk to your father of course.

I had never heard of any of those dishes until now, but I'd eat them all.

Sunday morning service, Christmas gathering with family, Christmas Eve Mass, and finally Lessons and Carols service with some friends. Having Christmas Eve on a Sunday this year really made it a church-heavy day.

I'm going to reheat noodles and take the maximum dose of stimulants so I can get some studying done. The former was a gift given to me, the latter a gift I give myself. God knows no obese men in red are going to fit down the skinny ass excuse for a chimney in my kitchen.

Tell me more about these noodles.

They're from a cheap and cheerful Chinese restaurant I like, now, going into the differences between "Indian" Chinese food and authentic Chinese food as eaten in China, that's a long story. I suppose it can be summed up as being way spicier than the original, and a few dishes that have seen divergent evolution, especially sides.

What happened to your greasy biryani street food???

Of course I know him, he's me!

I just had it for lunch and it's mostly assimilated, I'll be burying the remains in a few hours haha

Also in the land of fake Christmas. My wife made the cake this year, infinitely better than whatever we ordered from Lawson last year. The main course was some A4 wagyu steak I picked up at Costco, which turns out to be a fantastic way to season your cast iron.

Excellent, sounds like a lovely time.

Growing up, the only thing we ever did for Christmas Eve was to go to church in the evening. It was only time of year we would normally go. It's been years since we've done that. Lately, my siblings, sister-in-law, and I go to my parents' place for supper and put our gifts under the tree to be opened in the morning.

I was the same. I appreciate your opening gifts on the 25th instead of like the barbarians I have met who open them on Christmas eve.

We always opened presents on Christmas Eve growing up, but that was purely for practical reasons. On Christmas morning we had to milk cows, and (presumably) my parents didn't want to try to milk cows at 4 am while also corralling children who were too excited about presents to focus on anything else. But now that I'm grown, we generally do Christmas Day in my house.

Well, obviously there are extenuating circumstances for some, though I won't use that "exception proving the rule" phrase around these parts out of consideration for the angst it causes. What was the Santa story for you as a kid? Or was that kind of tale too unlikely for the practical minded farmer?

We got told that Santa came while we were outside doing chores (in actuality: my mom put the presents out during that time, of course). That actually worked for a while, though one year I did get the idea to sit and watch the house like a hawk. When I didn't see Santa but presents still happened, I realized what must be going on. I was around the age a lot of kids figure it out though, so the unorthodox Santa explanation worked well enough in the end.

We only opened one on Christmas Eve always pajamas, as an adult I realized it was so we'd look nice in our Christmas gift opening pictures the next day.

That's actually kinda keyed all things considered, might have to adopt that

Did you really put them on without washing them first?

Yes of course, it was tradition and we didn't buy clothes from repurposed pesticide trucks. Kids pj's in the 80s weren't starched.

Not who you're asking, but I find the world is divided into people who must wash an item before wearing it and those who don't care. I am in the latter. Also what about hats or scarves or gloves? Surely these don't get washed. To say nothing of suits or woolen or silk items that need professional care.

I wash hats and scarves. Not sure why you wouldn't. Aren't they starched the same as anything else? I don't categorize them as pajamas, though.

Wool scarves and hats of silk or wool are typically more of a pain to have cleaned. Particularly if newly purchased, it seems a tedious delay in the wearing.

We're planning to go to old town and walk around looking at the luminarias. Maybe we will eat tamales, as is tradition.

I have a four year old, so she's really into stockings and Santa and elves and whatnot.

Excellent! Now I want tamale. I've become proficient at making many foods from (not Japan), but never learned tamales.

I don't make them either, they're pretty labor intensive, and I don't have the right sized steamer.

If you live near a store that's selling corn husks, masa, lard, green Chile, and the right cheese to make them, you're probably living somewhere where you can just buy them.

Right. And I can barely get cheddar much less Oaxaca or whatever. It took me forever just to find cornmeal for the cornbread.

This made me curious how hard it might be to source ingredients. The pork and beef style don't need cheese, and it probably wouldn't be so hard to get ingredients for the filling. It doesn't seem like Japanese food includes animal fat, but I don't really know. The masa and dried corn husks seem like the hard part.

I wasn't sure why masa is so different from corn meal and not interchangeable, and it looks like something about soaking it in a highly alkaline substance such as wood ash or slaked lime for many hours to weaken the cell walls, which is why it's so soft.

Yes the masa and cornhusks are the hard part. Not impossible, no doubt, but a big challenge. Plus I've no experience myself making them and it would be frustrating to go to such lengths just to screw them up.

My girlfriend is baking some sort of biscotti. We'll take those and some other snacks over to my parents' house, where we will drink wassail and sing along with Christmas music. I may break out the trumpet.

Do it!

For me, The Muppets Christmas Carol will always be the definitive version.

Oh I wouldn't dare quarrel about it Most who care at all have a soft spot for some version.

It's Scrooge (1970) for me as well! I had no idea the whole thing was on youtube, thank you so much and merry Christmas!

I've already been in church for a morning nativity play and in a few hours we're going to have a Julbord with the family.

New for this year's celebration in Sweden was that in addition to the traditional Disney cartoon reel there was a similar thing put together but with traditional live action Astrid Lindgren Christmas stories and some newer animated stuff. Pretty nice imo and i feel like something like this might have a better future than the somewhat dated and historically unconnected Disney cartoons tradition that I feel like its on the way out.

What happened to the tradition of burning down the gavlebokke? As a Swede can you shed light on this?

I thought it was claimed by the birds this year?

Well... It's illegal, there are guards posted, there is camera surveillance and at least some years it's been impregnated with fire retardants.

The guy who burned it down in 2021 got a fine of some $10k and 6 months in jail.

Also, its Gävlebocken or possibly Gaevlebocken if you don't want use umlauts. Double 'k's aren't used in Swedish except in conjugations where two 'k's meet. Gävlebocken is a conjugation of Gävle (a town name) and Bocken (the buck), meaning the Gävle buck.

But it never used to stop people? It was a euro custom I enjoyed watching from abroad.

It used to stop people all the time.

That’s just lack of willpower.

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