Christmas Day was a tense hell for me since I had two Christmas gift openings to attend, and a lot of people invited over for dinner. Tasha Larue, one of my housemates, took care of the cooking, along with Cecelia Blas, so that was a relief. Tasha and Celia also did the inside and outside decorations for the house. I cleaned out the dining room so that we could eat family style for the first time in several years (it had evolved into a music room for a while). The Christmas season started with a tree triming party at Jonica's apartment. We went to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Green for the Christmas Eve service. This was a break with our family tradition of going to the Park Slope Methodist Church, but Amanda lives closer to Lafayette Avenue now, and the minister is an old high school friend of Sara's from Mt. Lebanon. Prior to the Christmas Eve service we had a party at Amanda and Gabe's, featuring kielbasa and pierogies. On Christmas morning I picked up bagels and lox in Park Slope, and went to Gabe and Amanda's for the opening of family gifts. This was mellow as usual, but at 2:30 Tasha called me to say that a friend had arrived at the house from Westchester. We rushed back to have another gift opening en famille with the Transy House people. Tasha had given lots of gifts to everyone as a goodbye present before she moves back to Tennessee. We had Christmas Dinner around 5:00PM. We had a pork shoulder ala Puerto Rico and ham ala Tennessee, with mashed potatoes, pureed sweet potatoes, corn bread muffins, vegetables, and three luscious cakes for dessert. People dropped in all evening who expected us to have a party going on. I got out the good China and silverware for a change. Jonica and Amanda and Gabe and Caleb dropped in around 9:00, and we had a nice little get togther at which Celia presented Caleb with a beautiful knit blanket which she had been working on for several months. It turned out to be less tense than I had expected. We gave an IKEA candle lantern to our friend from Westchester, and she said that it was the first gift anyone had given her in more than ten years. She is a highly skilled lawyer, but her family has abandoned her because of gender issues. So it goes. The picture is of Tasha, who did a lot to make this Christmas special.
Rhona McMahan