And A Good Time Was Had By All
December 26, 2007
Christmas Eve at the Pomegranate House.
The decorations are hung, tree trimmed, candles lit, and all dressed for church. Then mad dash back from church to whip out the hors d'oeuvres, open the champagne, and fire up the backyard lobster cooker. So begins our annual Christmas Eve lobster feast, the only time of the year that we eat lobsters anywhere but on the Cape.
Christmas Eve dinner, inspired, arranged, and cooked by Mr. Pom for the last 27 years. My dear, romantic husband, who started the tradition when it was just the two of us and our Siberian husky, a cozy little family in our new house up in the woods. If he had known what he was starting, would he have bought those first two lobsters all those years ago? When we moved cross country with little children, it was our link to the family traditions that we determinedly kept up, despite lacking the extended family with whom to share it. After our move back east, the intimate seafood dinner for two has evolved into a large, noisy feast of seafood and nutcrackers and a Christmas tablecloth slopped with fragments of shell and drawn butter spills.
I can't say that I haven't had years when I wanted to scrap the whole thing. Could we not have one quiet Christmas eve, perhaps a bowl of linguine and mussels, a plate of cheese and olives by the fire, carols playing, books in hand? Maybe be invited out for the family Secret Santa exchange instead of cramming into our small living room, all seats taken, nieces and nephews perched on arms and on the floor, which is a minefield of wrapping paper and boxes? Or go to the Midnight Mass with the adult choir and trumpets and harps instead of the 5:00 with the off-key children's choir and squeaky prodigy violinist? Wouldn't it be nice to have one Christmas morning without facing giant pots filled with cold, fishy water waiting to be washed?
Yes, but then it wouldn't be Christmas at the Pomegranates. Time enough for quiet holidays in our doddering years, when kids are flung across the country, when all we have are remembrances of our older generation, when sisters are off with their children's children and we visit with a telephone call on Christmas morning.
A least that's what I tell myself - and Mr. Pom.
As you can see, despite Mr. Pom's lingering cold, grumblings and exhaustion, and the mad trips to the store for last minute garlic cloves and sticks of butter, his love for the dramatic overcomes all and the stage is set for his grand entrance.
When he crosses the threshold bearing crustaceans, there's no hiding the delight in his face and ours!
Hours later, after the company leaves, dishes washed, the garbage full of shells taken out, Christmas gifts arranged in piles (to satisfy Mystery Man, who demands compliance with Santa traditions even at 21), stockings filled and hung, we finally have a quiet moment before we turn off the tree lights, and we turn and whisper to each other our traditional Christmas wish:
"Next year, Cabo San Lucas!"