A Reprise of 'GOOSED'
by Julia Sneden
Christmas at our house is nothing if not traditional, both in the generic sense and in the keeping of our own, personal traditions. The decorations and timing of our Yuletide celebrations almost never vary. We follow the same schedule, and put up the same excessive but un-exotic décor year after year.
Edibles are a large part of our tradition, too. Our dining room sideboard boasts several kinds of cookies and candies, both homemade and store-bought. Our Christmas menus vary little from one year to the next.
Such consistency is comforting to old and young, and is cheerfully (and sometimes mockingly) referred to as “the same old Christmas:” same, that is, except for those years when fate takes a hand.
The first time that happened was the year that I slid on an icy road and put my car through a fence just days before Christmas. I was fine, but the car was definitely the worse for the experience, and we had to make do without it until well into the New Year. I hastily re-did some of the last-minute plans, and we had a rather restrained Christmas (no last-minute shopping) while we counted our blessings.
Then there was the year that one of our sons couldn’t be home for Christmas. It felt a bit bleak, but we survived it. I’m sure it was harder on us than on him. He was invited to spend Christmas Eve with a friend’s wonderful, Polish family, and on Christmas Day, he served at a soup kitchen, enjoying every minute of it.
There was the year that we had a Russian exchange student living with us, and he invited his mother to join us for all of November and December. She didn’t speak English, but that didn’t seem to matter. We all got along just fine with smiles and gestures.
Less pleasant was the year that I came down with stomach flu in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner, followed serially over the course of the next three days by seven more family members. Only one son and the baby managed to escape. That was the year we discovered that there is no such thing as a house with too many bathrooms.
But the strangest Christmas of all was the Christmas of the Goose. John, my husband, was born in the wrong century. His vision of Christmas is informed by a heavy dose of Dickens and merrie olde England. It’s not enough to watch every version of A Christmas Carol that is shown on television, year after year. He hangs an Advent wreath over the center of the dining table. He sings along with the Advent hymns on a CD of the Canterbury Cathedral Choir. He sings The Boar’s Head in Latin as I carry in the roast. He reads Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud to the family every Christmas Eve. He puts Christmas crackers at each place at table. He has even been known to remind us about Boxing Day.
One year, as we were cleaning up from Thanksgiving, he suddenly said: “Let’s have a goose for Christmas this year.” I was stunned. “Yes,” he said, agreeing with himself where I could not, “a Christmas goose would be an adventure.”
(My only previous experience with goose occurred before we were married, in 1960. I was in Denmark, visiting with friends, and was invited to share the goose-liver stew that was made up of leftovers from their Christmas dinner of a few days before. It was absolutely delicious, but no one thought to enlighten me about the digestive effects of over-indulgence in such a rich dish. I wondered why I was the only one who took second helpings. I soon found out. The dinner was followed by an attack of flatulence that could have powered one of the rocket engines of our fledgling space ships).
“I don’t know how to cook a goose,” I whined. John smiled and held out a page from one of those glossy cooking magazines.
“Here,” he said. “It’s all set out for you.”
“But even Scrooge thought that turkey is best,” I said. “That’s what he sent to Bob Cratchit’s house.”
“There’s a whole menu here,” he replied. “Should be fun. I’ll make the pies.”
I gave in to what seemed like a handsome offer. I promptly farmed out a couple of the side dishes to my teenage sons, and sat down with the goose recipe to scope it out. There were lots of caveats about controlling the amount of fat, thoroughness of cooking, proper basting, etc., but it didn’t look too hard. I figured I could handle it.
John made the pies a day ahead, which proved to be wise, since he woke up Christmas morning looking like death itself.
“I think it’s flu,” he said. He made it through the presents, and then betook himself to bed.
