Christmas Traditions: The Meal

One of my fondest Christmas Eve memories is of all the cousins sitting at the card table, choking down the super nasty green pea soup that went cold from sitting in the bowl so long. The green peas were like alien eyeballs, staring up at us from a liquid miasmic mess.

There was one reason and one reason only that we ate that slime: presents. The adults informed us that we could not open gifts until our dinner was eaten. Usually my younger cousins managed to swallow the stuff first, and they would leave me and Jess at the table, begging for more buttered rolls to help with the unpleasantness of the soup.

For about the first 12 years of my life, Christmas Eve was the same. Everybody would come to our house. Aunt Lori, Uncle Jeff, Gracie, and Matthew would drive down from Washington, as would Aunt Brenda, Uncle Ronnie, and cousin Chris. My Papa would come, and my Grandma Terrie. Aunt Bink and Uncle Chris, too. We always had Christmas Eve at my house, and we always had to choke down that disgusting green soup before we could open our presents. After the poison was consumed, we’d get to open up all of our gifts, and Santa would come the next morning bringing our last present.

You’d think with all of the relatives in attendance, my mother would think to make something a little bit more appetizing than pea soup. Like, how about some mashed potatoes and honey ham? Or Shepherd’s pie. Or even pizza. Why couldn’t we eat pizza on Christmas Eve? As a child, I watched as my aunts and uncles relished in consuming their bowl of soup. I didn’t understand it. It was like they were Oliver Twist and they wanted some more. All I knew was that Christmas soup haunted my life, and it stood in between me and American Girl doll clothes.

Here is actual documentation of the torture. Do you see how my cousin Grace looks sort of happy, but I look like a prisoner? Also, do you notice the advent calendar hanging in the background on the closet door? That's the one I wrote about in my last Christmas post.

 After a decade of frosty white Decembers, things changed. More cousins were born, and the location of Christmas Eve and those in attendance changed. Another thing changed as well. My sister and I started to tolerate that soup. We could actually eat it without gagging.

A few more years passed and something more amazing than a miracle on 34^th Street happened: we started to love Christmas Soup. We wanted seconds. We wanted leftovers on Christmas Day. My sister and I realized that it wasn’t just pea soup. It had broccoli in it, and chicken, and it was down right scrumptious. Paired with a warm roll, it was heavenly. I ate Christmas Soup until I was 17, because then I became a vegetarian. My mother didn’t bother to make the soup without the chicken, and so I wouldn’t eat it. My first Christmas as an herbivore, I looked longingly at that soup. I remembered it and how much I had both loathed and loved it. I even tried to pull the chicken chunks out so I could eat it. Alas, it was ruined. I can’t bear both to eat it and not to eat it. It’s become an internal moral struggle.

The best part of Christmas Eve dinner is not what I eat, or the presents I get to open up after, it’s the family members I share it with. I am very blessed to have such wonderful aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I’d eat a cold bowl of green alien eyes just to spend the evening with them.

Check back Wednesday for an exciting post about how Santa set off the alarm one year.