Dept. of Holy Days
Monday, 24 December 2018 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rGeorge and Mary
It's the night before Christmas.
I'm sitting here in the livingroom, listening to all the Christmas songs - religious, traditional, secular - and not minding the fact that I've heard them dozens of times before. The tree - the Best Tree Ever - shines.
Bob is in the kitchen, prepping the brisket to go into the oven (it's supposed to be better the next day, so that's what we're doing.) The pumpkin pie is done. Tomorrow morning: cranberry relish, which goes just fine with brisket; dressing, because Nana's sage dressing is part of my secular Christmas liturgy; Green Slime (tm), a jello-ish thing from Bob's mom, which is now de rigueur for Christmas, and guests look askance at its absence. Go figure.
Tonight we will watch The Snowman, because it is lovely, and because there are whales, possibly narwhals, dancing in the Arctic dark, along with night-flying boys and dancing snow men and snow women.
And then we will watch It's A Wonderful Life, and I will start crying about five minutes in. We watch it every year, and we love it for more reasons than I can easily enumerate.
This year, I think I love it because I love the Baileys.
I love George Bailey and Mary Bailey more each year. They are a team, with a fierce love for each other. They both have anger and love in their hearts. It's easy to see it in George, every time he gives of himself to others, and gives up chance after chance of living what he thought his life should be. It's less easy to see in Mary, but look at how she flares up at George, all frustration and impatience, the night he finally admits how much he loves her. She has the same rage as her husband, and it's undoubtedly one of the things that binds them together.
They don't give in to the anger, or perhaps it's better to say they don't let the anger curdle and mar their souls. They turn it into a tool to fight longer and harder for the things they know are important - brothers, a sorrow-sodden father, frightened Savings and Loan members, widower uncles, children, each other.
They are also full of joy and gleeful laughter, no matter how life tempts them to react with fury to misfortunes. "George Bailey lassos stork!" "My lip's bleedin' Bert!"
Fury and joy bonding two strong individuals to each other, and both of them making things just a little better and brighter for those around them. This Christmas Eve, it's George and Mary I think of; it's their example I want to follow.
Not very Christmas-y perhaps. But it speaks to love, and generosity, and jubilation, and those are part of Christmas, too.
Years ago, I wrote three stories, vignettes arising from It's A Wonderful Life. I proffer them again.
Happy Light Against the Dark, my friends.
It's the night before Christmas.
I'm sitting here in the livingroom, listening to all the Christmas songs - religious, traditional, secular - and not minding the fact that I've heard them dozens of times before. The tree - the Best Tree Ever - shines.
Bob is in the kitchen, prepping the brisket to go into the oven (it's supposed to be better the next day, so that's what we're doing.) The pumpkin pie is done. Tomorrow morning: cranberry relish, which goes just fine with brisket; dressing, because Nana's sage dressing is part of my secular Christmas liturgy; Green Slime (tm), a jello-ish thing from Bob's mom, which is now de rigueur for Christmas, and guests look askance at its absence. Go figure.
Tonight we will watch The Snowman, because it is lovely, and because there are whales, possibly narwhals, dancing in the Arctic dark, along with night-flying boys and dancing snow men and snow women.
And then we will watch It's A Wonderful Life, and I will start crying about five minutes in. We watch it every year, and we love it for more reasons than I can easily enumerate.
This year, I think I love it because I love the Baileys.
I love George Bailey and Mary Bailey more each year. They are a team, with a fierce love for each other. They both have anger and love in their hearts. It's easy to see it in George, every time he gives of himself to others, and gives up chance after chance of living what he thought his life should be. It's less easy to see in Mary, but look at how she flares up at George, all frustration and impatience, the night he finally admits how much he loves her. She has the same rage as her husband, and it's undoubtedly one of the things that binds them together.
They don't give in to the anger, or perhaps it's better to say they don't let the anger curdle and mar their souls. They turn it into a tool to fight longer and harder for the things they know are important - brothers, a sorrow-sodden father, frightened Savings and Loan members, widower uncles, children, each other.
They are also full of joy and gleeful laughter, no matter how life tempts them to react with fury to misfortunes. "George Bailey lassos stork!" "My lip's bleedin' Bert!"
Fury and joy bonding two strong individuals to each other, and both of them making things just a little better and brighter for those around them. This Christmas Eve, it's George and Mary I think of; it's their example I want to follow.
Not very Christmas-y perhaps. But it speaks to love, and generosity, and jubilation, and those are part of Christmas, too.
Years ago, I wrote three stories, vignettes arising from It's A Wonderful Life. I proffer them again.
Happy Light Against the Dark, my friends.
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Date: Tuesday, 25 December 2018 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: Friday, 28 December 2018 02:42 pm (UTC)green slime
Date: Wednesday, 26 December 2018 11:34 pm (UTC)Second, is the green slime part of Jell-O canon -- i.e., could one find it in the Joys of Jell-O book? Our family had a gelatin salad thing that my mom got out of a magazine in the '80s, I think: possibly cranberry gelatin? with cream cheese, chopped vegies & nuts. Our family's green slime was simply lime with cottage cheese mixed in, for a weird look but a summery source for protein.
Re: green slime
Date: Thursday, 27 December 2018 02:15 am (UTC)The green slime, like all culinary folk processes, has many versions. I found a bunch online today, none of them like Bob's mom's.
Hers involves 6 ounces of lime jello, six ounces of cream cheese, a cup of sugar, a cup of boiling water and another cup of water mixed with pineapple juice from the can of crushed pineapple that goes into the slime. (The rest of the pineapple juice gets abandoned.)
You use the boiling water on the jello, make sure it's dissolved, then put the other cup of water/juice into it.
In the meantime you've mixed the cream cheese and sugar together in a mixmaster, until its soft and creamy. You put the liquid mix in, mix it until it's at least a little frothy. You put the resultant green stuff into a bowl and let it chill for a bit, until it starts to set, then you put the pineapple into it (put the pineapple in before it's started to thicken, and it won't thicken at all, because pineapple enzymes need to be neutralized a bit), and nuts or maraschino cherries, or whatever, and let it set completely.
Wow, that's probably very confusing. But it's good.
Bob says hi!