Silent-ish Night

Little sweetheart, it’s Christmas Eve. I have such memories of this night of the year going all the way back to my childhood and forward to those with you and now muddling through on any own. 

I remember a choir concert I was in one year in high school, given at the local college. It was dark early, as it is this time of the season, and as I drove home I found and listened to a show of early music on public radio. I liked it so much I turned it on in my bedroom after I got home. My room was in the basement of the house and somehow it felt very much like I was on my own. Almost grown. 

A year or two later I was singing with another ensemble, one that performed Handel’s Messiah every Christmas Eve in the rotunda at the art museum. There was an incredible snowstorm going outside but our London friend, Kris, drove all the way down to see it and then I went with him after back up the snowy roads to where he was at Uni. 

All through my childhood my grandmother, my mom’s mom, would make these special Christmas Eve sandwiches. She had an old hand crank meat grinder, and she would grind fresh bologna and mix it with herbs and things to make this sandwich spread that she would spoon onto hamburg buns, open-faced, and then toast in the broiler. In later years, my mom found a deli that made something similar, so she didn’t have to go through the entire byzantine process - you couldn’t find fresh bologna in stores anymore, anyway, only the prepackaged luncheon meat slices. 

I haven’t had a culinary tradition like that since my mom passed away, little sweetheart, but tonight I made a Christmas Eve quiche. It was Sylvia’s idea and a good one! I sautéed red bell peppers in olive oil, steamed some broccoli and then added them with sharp cheddar, sour cream, heavy cream, flour and eggs, garnished with lemon pepper, and put it in the oven for a little less than an hour. I think you’d like it! 

My favorite memories of Christmas and Christmas Eve are with you, of course, little sweetheart. Coming home from the movies and settling into the living room around the Christmas tree where your mom has left a package for each of us with new pajamas and slippers. Changing into them and wearing them all through the night and all day on Christmas, itself. If we forgot something at the store, we wouldn’t even change out of them - just throw on a coat and drive over to whatever was open, usually for extra eggnog, right? 

It’s quiet here tonight, little sweetheart. I’m listening to BBC 4’s Christmas Eve broadcast and my thoughts are, as ever, of and with you. With all my love…