Christmas in Covid Times 2

 

Sphinx-like, our Christmas guardian, Ellie, is here!  Protecting the Christmas tree.  You know, the one that will stay up through Epiphany.  

Early we are, but we're all home.  We might as well get into the Christmas beer.

CHEER!  I mean CHEER!  My bad.

I really don't drink much beer.  Maybe a couple a year.  On average.  And I'm not sure I've had one this year.

Alison and I occasionally have a glass of wine, almost always Moscato, three or four ounces once or twice a month.

We really don't drink much.  A secret about this country is that our history is rife with booze.  Seriously.  A lot of our events have been influenced by liquor.  It would make a Russian blush.

Anyhoo, back to Christmas.

Our plans this year are modest,  We'll only see people we've been around before, and that will be social distanced and well-masked.  

Alison's mother, Benjamin's MeeMaw, will come over Christmas Eve for the annual Potato Soup meal.  We usually have a second soup, but this year we'll have a Boston Butt.  For dessert, we've got a bread pudding made for us by a fellow church member.

We will have the annual viewing of Elf.  This year, we got a preview by attending WACT's wonderful production of Elf: The Musical.

We will attend Christmas Eve Mass.

Christmas morning, MeeMaw will be with us as we open our stockings.  Then we will have a Christmas breakfast featuring Christmas Sausage Pie.

Upon breakfast's conclusion, we have the opening of the gifts.  This used to take a lot of time, as we went one gift at a time.  Now, as Benjamin is older, there are fewer gifts and less production around them.

After that, we will play with the toys we got.  This also has become subdued over the years.  There's only so many games you can play with new socks.

Christmas evening will bring an Italian supper at Alison's Dad's house.  It will just be us, Alison's Dad and Glenda, and Alison's step-sister with her husband and their son, Graham. Every caution will be taken.

Other?  I want to read.  I'm in a huge but interesting book about President Grant, written by the same guy, Ron Chernow, who wrote the Hamiltion book the musical is based on.  I also want to see what Bond movies I can while they're being offered on Amazon Prime (they're taking them away on January 1st).  Currently, I'm halfway through Moonraker, which is in about the middle of the Roger Moore years. Is Moore a better bond than Sean Connery?  No, but the Moore movies are still fun and gadget-filled.  I love the gadgets.

What I don't want to do is think about Trump.  Sadly, he won't go away, continuing to do destructive things that put our democracy at risk. It's hard to ignore him when he's considering martial law.

Nevertheless...

Merry Christmas!