I prefer chicken.
Just once for Christmas dinner, I’d like to have chicken. Because turkey, to tell the truth, gives me heartburn.
Why can’t we have chicken for Christmas dinner?
I’ll tell you why.
BECAUSE, that’s why.
Because having turkey is tradition.
So. Just because.
I make tourtière for Christmas Eve supper, you know, the Acadian meat pies. Delish. I started making them 30 years ago and after a few years, it became tradition.
Now tourtière gives me heartburn too. Must be the lard.
Or maybe it’s the beer and the chocolates. The pork pies. The maids of honour. The shortbreads. That go before and after it. Maybe the gravy.
But if I say, you know what, I think I’ll take a pass on making the pies this year, there’ll be an uproar. Like I just said I’m changing religions.
C’mon. It’s a slice of meat pie! Once a year! You eat it, and somebody says, “Oh, that was nice, dear,” and five minutes later you’re sitting on the couch singing Christmas carols, because that’s on the tradition list, too.
Tourtière forgotten. No. Checked off.
Traditionally, I end up playing and singing the Christmas carols too. And there’s only like six, maybe eight of us in the house.
Playing and singing for a couple of hundred people is no problem. But playing for six or eight people? Hard work. Why? Maybe because the 200 don’t know you, I guess. The 200 think wow, this guy’s like a celebrity. I bet he goes home and sings for his wife every night. Wouldn’t that be dreamy?
But at home it’s hard to sing for people to whom you’re a very non-celebrity; just a guy with whom you just had a fight over whether potatoes go into the stuffing; who just made the mistake of choosing with his hands between his wife’s shortbreads and his mother-in-law’s fruit cocktail squares, who just told everybody at the table to shut up and pray. Who threatened a kid wanting to post that family picture of everybody eating he just took with two tin cans and a piece of string.
Singing “Silent Night” winds up being not quite the same. Looka the BSer singing ... looka the eyes on him. Yi’d swear butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
So. Yes, trying to land a chicken on the table for Christmas dinner ... good luck.
Might as well ask for an artificial tree.
Sure, you can stand up in the kitchen with your feet spread apart and your hands on your hips, your eyes set and your teeth bared, and roar “THAT’S IT!!! WE’RE HAVIN’ CHICKEN!!!”
Like they do in the movies where there are no consequences for one’s actions.
And either one of three things will happen:
1. Everybody will start pouting and stalk into their rooms slamming doors, or
2. Everybody will start laughing so bad they won’t be able to wait to get to the bathroom and will have to run down behind the barn to pee, or
3. You’ll get chicken, but it’ll be fried, in a box, and you’ll be the only one at the table having it. Everybody else will be at your mother-in-law’s.
You can’t win. You can’t beat tradition. Unless you come up with a better idea. But what’s better than turkey dinner, heartburn, too much chocolates and eggnog and 15 relatives flown in from all over Canada, all who have a different take on cooking the turkey, all who’ll gladly tell you how they would have made it if they weren’t here and magically turned into kids again at the front door. And yes, they were out until 12:17 last night, so what? And what’s better than washing dishes for two hours at a time six times a day?
I love washing dishes. It’s so peaceful.
My favourite tradition.
Mike Finigan, from Glace Bay, is a freelance writer now living in Sydney River. He can be contacted at [email protected].
