Stocking up
I always wanted a Christmas tree. (I’m Jewish.) As a little girl, the closest I got was my doll-house family, in whose basement I set up a plastic brush-like tree and tiny wrapped presents each December. In my teens, I contented myself with helping decorate friends’ trees and admiring twinkling tableaux of lights.
In recent years, my parents and I would spend Christmas Eve at our friends’ house for a homemade Italian “feast of the seven fishes.” Every inch of the ground floor of their house was decorated with Christmas ornamentation, and the living room was dominated by an enormous tree with wrapped boxes radiating out from underneath it. Over the mantle was a photograph of the family matriarch meeting Pope John Paul II in Rome. At each of our elaborate place settings was a trinket and a Christmas cracker.
The food was the main event, course after course that they had spent days preparing: antipasti (nuts, cheeses, crackers, olives, salami, prosciutto, lox, chickpeas); fried calamari; shrimp Caesar salad; clams; linguini with lobster sauce with lobster and/or sausage and meatballs; baked lobster with bread crumbs; broccoli rabe and mushrooms with garlic and onions; stuffed artichokes; fruit and roasted chestnuts; cakes, pies, and ice cream; and limoncello and chocolate liqueur.
After we could eat no more, our friends would go to midnight mass (how they stayed awake for it, I can’t fathom), and we would go home and pass out.
This year, my parents went to our friends without me, while I had my first proper Christmas. My boyfriend, whose mother is Jewish and father is Christian, celebrates Christmas alone among the Christian holidays. While they don’t put up a tree, I learned that they have something even better: stockings.
Stockings had never really entered my mind when it came to Christmas; the tree, the lights, and of course, the presents, must have overshadowed them. I see now that I — or my imagination — was missing out.
Before we left town for the holiday, my boyfriend went to a local kitchen store to buy stocking stuffers for the “guess what it is” portion of the gift exchange — objects whose identities weren’t immediately obvious without close examination. (Kitchen gadgets and tech accessories were good choices for this.)
On Christmas Eve, the four of us went out to a seafood restaurant for our own version of an Italian feast of the seven fishes — thankfully, a la carte. When we got home, it was stocking time. Three personalized stockings and one decorated with patchwork — mine! — were lined up near the fireplace. We filled each one with as many small wrapped gifts as possible and took turns opening packages, guessing each that we didn’t know, until all of them were opened. Among the items to guess were an apple corer; a cell phone holder; a head scratcher; an olive oil spritzer; a strawberry huller; a spoon holder; a corn husker; an earphone wrapper; and a cake tester.
I loved this tradition because it turned the giving of gifts into a fun game, one in which everyone participated (guessing some of the objects was a team effort). It also meant that even the tiniest gift — a small glass moose, two plastic drink ornaments — got its due.
I didn’t care if there wasn’t a tree — I had my own stocking.
