Small Ways to Make Christmas Magic

How’s your holiday planning coming? Mine is bumping along in fits and starts. But I’m determined to create some Christmas magic. Especially to shake off this difficult year.

A Christmas Tree Sets the Mood

Christmas tree sales are booming, according to The New York Times. Pandemic-weary folks are yearning for a bit of holiday cheer.

This year, we bought a small, artificial tree from an outlet store for our bedroom. I don’t think we’ll decorate this secondary tree–we’ll just enjoy the lights.

My dear friend who lives in a studio apartment and has been in lockdown since the spring, bought a small, tabletop tree online that she decorated elegantly with sprigs of baby’s breath. Along with her menorah, it lifts her spirits.

Making Christmas Magic for Dinner

Like Thanksgiving, we are resigned to having Christmas Eve dinner by zoom. I’ll make the dinner and my son will make a few sides. We’ll exchange dishes so we can enjoy the same meal.

Each year for this dinner, I work to make Christmas magic with a special table centerpiece. This year, I’ll keep it simple, using the gingerbread houses we made as a family party activity. Arranged on a cake plate, with micro lights and some greenery, it will still be festive, but a very much simplified centerpiece for just three diners.

Once I made a village of gingerbread houses and had them double as place cards and party favors for each guest,

This year, while I can’t export a whole table setting, I’m sending everyone a favor box with a few homemade truffles, and Christmas crackers that I’m making with my Cricut cutting machine. If you’d like to try your hand at making crackers, you can find general directions from Martha Stewart. Or simply buy them at a store like Sur la Table.

We’ll have fun snapping the crackers (they make a satisfying, “POP!”) and wearing the tissue paper crowns for some interactive fun.

I’ll make a video of family Christmases past for our after-dinner entertainment. If you’re not dining together in person, it’s good to have another layer of entertainment beyond just conversation. Another idea would be to play a game that works online, like charades.

What’s on the Menu?

I want a main course that is vacuum-sealed so we can buy it in advance to avoid crowds in the supermarket just before Christmas. And the finished dish should be easily portable. So, instead of our usual paella, which involves sourcing a variety of seafood, we are having a baked ham. Leftovers will be nice for sandwiches the next day.

For dessert, I’ll make my usual Bûche de Noël. But instead of one yule log, I’m going to make two smaller ones so the dessert will present well–I hate to just lop off half a cake to give away.

Holiday Entertainment

My son is trying to arrange a movie night, projecting Christmas movies on the back wall of our yard. We’ll bundle up, sit distanced, and watch Frosty and the Grinch with the kids, while drinking hot cocoa and nibbling popcorn. This one will only happen if he can connect disparate elements: a projector, a DVD player, and speakers, and if we can find a warm-enough evening for the event.

On Christmas Day, our family has always gotten together to open presents at our house, after we’ve sat down to a home-baked Christmas wreath bread for breakfast. Then the family stays over for a leisurely day, all of us playing with our new toys, until we sit down to an early Christmas dinner.

This year, I’ll send the bread over in the morning (the recipe makes two loaves, anyway) and we’ll watch the kids open their presents remotely. Alone during the day, we might have a marathon viewing of Christmas movies.

As a former food editor, one of my obscure favorites is the 1945 film, Christmas in Connecticut. As described by IMDb: “A food writer (Barbara Stanwyck) who has lied about being the perfect housewife must try to cover her deception when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her home for a traditional family Christmas.”

Cookie Decorating–Again!

Unlike the gingerbread house party which went swimmingly, our cookie decorating session on Sunday wasn’t great. The idea was that we would each be making and decorating our own cookies over FaceTime without much of a plan. Normally, the kids come over and we make Christmas cookies together.

First, I lost sound on my iPad, so we had to communicate over my iPhone speaker. Then, the kids’ sugar cookie dough was not rolling out properly so it was hard to cut the cookies. Finally–although he thought he had some–my son couldn’t find the meringue powder needed to make the icing.

The kids were able to bake a batch of cookies and decorate with the tube icing left over from our gingerbread house party, but it couldn’t have been a very satisfying project.

We are trying again this Friday when the kids are out of school for winter break. This time, I’ll control the process rather than letting it happen organically. Parents are too busy to plan everything out ahead, but grandmas can.

More about this next week, including links to the recipes we will use.

A New Year Lunch

By the New Year, the grandkids will have been out of school for winter break for two weeks, so it gives us a window to get together for an outdoor lunch before school starts.

We follow Japanese food customs for the New Year, which means sushi and other Japanese dishes.

I’ll make mochi as we do every year and we’ll have ozoni (mochi soup) in the morning. Mochi is made with glutinous rice. The rice is steamed, then pounded in my electric mochi maker, and shaped into patties by hand.

From Christmas to the New Year, for some of us, it’s not going to be the holidays as we’ve enjoyed them in the past. But we can still partake in food and family traditions together, remotely.

And surely, by next year at this time, life should return to normal.

Have you altered your holiday plans? Tell us how.

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