I'll Shoot for Christmas

I’ll Shoot for Christmas

Noel Laflin

12-13-17

Its two days before Christmas – and my Colorado godparents have just motored into town in their old VW Bug. Boogle, the dog, is riding shotgun.

Within an hour of their arrival, the elderly German couple two doors down have joined the welcoming committee.  It is our annual celebration of family, friendship, and food.

We are soon off to the German deli way across the city and are quickly filling a shopping cart with the likes of Gouda, brie, and stinky cheese.  Various boxes of crackers are tossed alongside cellophane packages of German cookies, and freshly baked loaves of rye bread.  Dark bottles of cloudy, sediment-laden Berliner Weisse beer clink against tins of sardines and oysters packed in oil. Butcher paper covered slabs of cold cuts, and spooky jars of pickled herring soon join the food melee brewing in our cart.

As we near the checkout counter, one of the adults remembers the raspberries.

Along the way home, there is a stop at See’s Candy – and the food pilgrimage is complete.

There seems to be no set eating schedule in the short time leading up to Christmas.   Instead, the old kitchen table is in constant motion as all of the German delicacies fight for space alongside my mother’s Norwegian leftse and kringle.  Half a dozen different types of homemade Christmas cookies, creamy fudge, and boxes of See’s candy are crammed next to platters of pickles, olives, sliced carrots, celery, and blue cheese dressing – which seemingly goes with just about everything.

And the coffee pot is always percolating.

After mom’s traditional Christmas feast of roast turkey, with all the sides, we eventually make our way over to the old German couple’s home where the Berliner Weisse beer is ceremoniously poured into giant glass steins.  At the bottom of each glass sits a generous amount of raspberry syrup.  The foam, a bright raspberry-red, overflows the glasses.  Toasts in English, German, and Norwegian are made as the heavy steins are raised and clinked.

Even the kids are allowed a slurp.  Raspberry foam drips from the tip of my nose.

In the play ‘Our Town,’ the protagonist, Emily, is given the chance to choose any day in which to relive.  She chooses her twelfth birthday, but soon regrets her decision and returns to the cemetery disappointed that people live their lives without appreciating or sharing the moment of living.

And as much as I love Thornton Wilder, if I am ever given such an opportunity to choose a day (or night) to relive, I’ll shoot for Christmas in Anaheim, circa 1965, and belatedly return to the graveyard very full, and probably slightly tipsy, but most appreciative for the moment of living.