John Hellum December 2008
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Christmas Testimonial
(The Wages of Sinful Pride and a Lost Turkey’s Redemption)
After the age of ten, Christmas has never been the same for me. My mother decided one year during the sixties that we were no longer going to celebrate Christmas in the traditional manner. She was tired of stuffing, hoisting and roasting that polyester of poultry- the turkey.
“So, we’re gonna have a Turkish Night, whaddya think?” My father gave his opinion in the classical Norwegian manner ….”Oofemei!” The other favourite child, our poodle Howard, seemed unperturbed by the whole matter and carried on chewing on his mysterious chew thing (wherever did he find them?)
Me, I wanted to know if we were going to dress up and eat flaming shashlik. “Of course,” she said, “you can’t have Turkish Christmas without shashlik”.
So that was it. We decorated the house like a seraglio, dressed in Thai silk with lame woven through it, and Indonesian cotton.
I, Suleiman the Magnificent, had a turban with a big gem on it, the envy of the Topkapi museum collection. It was a big emerald surrounded by diamonds, (the best that the Army & Navy Department Store could offer).
Mother and her best friend were equally resplendent in their veils, sown with pearls, dripping in gold chains and coins.
We, of course, bought the appropriate music, and the house, if not the block, was alive with the hurly-whirly sound of belly dancing music. Luckily it was herring season, so my father was away fishing, and didn’t have to endure this foreign invasion of his Nordic sensibilities.
My mother and her friend had prepared the food a day in advance, marinating the lamb for the shashlik, making the chutneys to accompany the curried dishes, and I got to skewer the lamb on the big day of the dinner.
With the music playing its hypnotic syncopations, candles lit all over the room, and incense burning, it was a transcendent backdrop for dinner.
The harem girls served up the meal at the sound of a gong (aluminum pot and soup ladle). They brought in the festive dinner, platter by platter, bowl by bowl, bowed low, and placed them before the Sultan, who sat on a stack of cushions in the dinning nook. The best however, was yet to come. Our guests awed by this veering away from the traditional holiday course of events, were even more wide-eyed with surprise, when with building crescendo of the music, the harem girls arrived carrying two platters of shashlik set ablaze! The flames danced high, the jewels and sequins glittered and flashed. The music’s heady climax was reached, and ended just as the platter was set down and the flames extinguished. Suleiman, the Magnificent was pleased! I clapped my hands and commanded the feast to begin.
This was the first in a succession of international holiday dinners we staged at home. I would roll my eyes heavenward in barely concealed boredom when people spoke enthusiastically about the upcoming Christmas turkey, with all the trimmings. How could that compare with dressing up like a gypsy and having a Hungarian-Rumanian feast, with goulash, chicken paprikas, stuffed peppers, and czardas?
Or, a Russian-Ukrainian, with coulibiac, and my mother’s own cabbage rolls (made while wearing a babushka and humming to the balalaikas playing ‘Beltsi’ or the ‘Volga Boatman’)?
Or, how about a 1920’s New York gangster speak-easy Christmas with illegal champagne, bathtub gin, (punch) doxies, gun-molls, madams, fedoras and flappers? We served New York steak and lobster with lots of hot jazz. I learned to Charleston and Black Bottom that year. Do-whacka-do! Bees knees! Cats pajamas!
Then there was the Chinese Christmas complete with the wearing of silk slit cheongsam, with take-out Chinese food. The local Chinese establishment was most surprised at the order on a WASP holiday. We hadn’t yet mastered the art of Oriental cooking, just the eating!
I, dressed in silk robes with elaborate embroidery, and black pill-box hat and long fake mustache, looked more like Fu-Manchu than the Great Emperor, but I really enjoyed the BBQ duck with plum sauce, just as much as any emperor. All this to the clashing and clanging of the Peking Opera!
Yes, it was so exciting, I became a Christmas dinner snob, and later during our restaurant years, refused to serve turkey at Christmas. The requests were never ending, but I was implacable. Instead I served up roasted goose breast with prune stuffing, or venison with chanterelles, with rosemary and red current sauce or, grilled squab: roast rabbit with vermouth and coriander: duck with mango and calvados; – anything but turkey!
However, the crack in the fortress wall began to appear. Friends would come by with gifts of mince tarts, shortbreads and other such traditional Christmas goodies. I secretly ate them at night after feigning indifference. I enjoyed them immensely!
The breach of the wall came unexpectedly one year, when my mother, out of the blue, said “Ya know, I would really love to have a turkey dinner, with stuffing, gravy, brussel sprouts, the works. I miss it”.
I looked at her dumbfounded. This was the very same person who caviled against tradition and had changed the course of Christmas for me and the family for twenty years!! She wanted turkey? She was by now in her early sixties so I realized that, not only old age, but nostalgia had crept in. Also, father was still fishing during the Christmas season so it was off to a local hotel dining room where my best friend was the chef, and I knew it would be traditional. I sat down with skepticism (not the best dining companion), was served the whole dinner, right down to the pumpkin pie. I was simply amazed at how good it tasted. I loved it! Of course I would have denied that in public. After all, I’d had a long standing reputation of having far too sophisticated a palate to eat mere turkey and traditional stuffing!
Most people were too intimidated to invite me to dinner. Yet, there I sat, experiencing an epiphany over turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, yams, brussel sprouts, and stuffing. I was a changed man. I threw away my pretensions. I was SAVED! An apotheosis had occurred. I viewed the once mundane as sacred. I have eaten turkey every Christmas and Thanksgiving since. In fact, I feel I have to make it up to the once maligned bird. Here I am, over forty years old, an object of my own derision. Well, get over it, and pass the cranberry sauce!