Christmas 2025

 Los Angeles, California

There was something about the coming year of 2020 that I liked and it gave me high hopes for the year. The number 2020 was so equal, so balanced. Plus it was one hundred years since my mom was born in 1920. I was feeling good about it as that year began. ...and we all know how that turned out.

2025 seemed like a good number as well. It represented a quarter of a century. We had made it that far since the millennium. It wasn't easy, but we had a pandemic behind us, the stock market was doing well, most of us were healthy. Ten days into it, I was driving down Ventura Boulevard, accompanied by the voice of my friend, Connie, on speaker. I was enroute to my friends' home in the Hollywood Hills. I had been evacuated from my own home, due to the Palisades fire.

Without a recap of the entire year, which I intend to do in a future post (maybe even my next), I'll just say: It wasn't easy. Between Joel and I there were the evacuations, a surgery, and a couple of debilitating injuries (one each). But the year wasn't a total loss. There was... The Dodgers! Anyway, all of this to come in another post. What this one is about is: Christmas.

After Tom died, Christmas was a huge challenge. Long-held traditions needed to be chucked, including the large tree we used to put up. I bought a small tree and began collecting new ornaments. Each year I put a photo ornament of Joel and me on the little tree, and an ornament from wherever we had traveled that year.

A new tradition is eating crab on Christmas Eve. And we have often roasted a duck on Christmas Day. We spend our time together, in the kitchen then watching some Christmas-themed film after dinner. That's a tradition I could not throw away, though I have new favorites along with the old ones. Remember the Night is one of the new ones.

We had spent Thanksgiving with Connie's family, and as we drove home, listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas, I had a different feeling about the impending holidays. In the past, Joel would occasionally comment that I got depressed every year at Christmas time, and I admit there have been some plain damn hard ones. But something felt lighter this year.

The next day I raced to get out the Christmas mugs and set up the little tree on the table by the wide doors in the corner of my den. My many Santas were placed on tables throughout the house. By the time Ana arrived to clean my house the following week, Christmas was alive and well in my home. Joel had brought a half-dozen poinsettias including two giant ones. This is an early Christmas present he arrives with each year at the beginning of the season. They lined the front porch and a fresh wreath went up on the door. The house was exploding with Christmas, and I was feeling the holiday spirit. And that continued throughout the month.

Connie invited us back for Christmas Day, so I baked a ginger pound cake with a brown sugar and creme fraiche glaze. I could have skipped the cake and just eaten the glaze, that's how good it is. Or maybe everything I was savoring seemed more intense, more sweet, more appreciated. It was simply the best Christmas I could remember in an incredibly long time. When I saw Cathy for my workout even she commented that I seemed to have broken my Christmas depression curse. 

And now the New Year is on its way and I have high hopes for it. I am making a French-Canadian Meat Pie for New Year's Eve, and Connie and Curt are coming to watch the ball drop on Times Square. That's the culmination of our celebration of the New Year. True, when that occurs it is only nine o'clock in Los Angeles, but it's close enough. And then 2026 will commence. A brand spanking new slate. Once, someone I used to know remarked that everyone should celebrate Rosh Hashannah as it gives you two fresh starts each year. I like that idea, but right now I am just focussed on 2026. Not a number I am particularly taken with, but what the heck. After ending the year on such a great, high note, I'm ready to charge into the new one. Somehow, I think it's going to be ok. Maybe even better than ok. Ready? Set. Go...