15 December 2008

The Christmastide Conundrum...

So my job maybe affecting him more than I would like to admit, or it may be that with this post I will be revealing my geekside just a little too much...but I have a bit of a problem I am wrestling with currently...starting my own Christmas tradition.

For a good portion of my life, at least the adult portion, I have worked on the holidays and this year is no exception as my place of work prides itself on the fact that we are open every single day of the year. Well, I started thinking that I would like to start a tradition of celebrating the holiday season in a way that would allow me to celebrate despite my work schedule every year.

Now for the geek part: I am now toying with the idea of celebrating the season in the traditional 18th Century manner known as Christmastide...some of you may know it as the 12 Days of Christmas or the Twelfth Night Traditions. Contrary to the modern custom, Christmastide begins on Christmas Eve and ends 12 nights later on January 5th, the eve before the day of Epiphany...although some celebrate it from Christmas Day to January 6th (day of Epiphany).

Traditional a wreath would be prepared and made on Christmas Eve and then would be hung on the door of your home until after the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th. Over the course of the 12 nights there would be feasts each night, of course these feasts would vary dependent upon the income and wealth of the homes that were celebrating. On the final day of Christmas tide there would be a meal followed by the King Cake, a cake made famous by the French and our fellow Americans in Louisiana.

Anyway, my trouble now is trying to decide how to observe this tradition on such short notice and on a limited budget...of course, the true problem is figuring out what to make each day for that evening's feast. Aside from the tradition of serving some sort of seafood on Christmas Eve and then finishing with a King Cake on January 6th I am coming up short with ideas for the meals in between.

My idea is to have 12 mini-feasts over the course of Christmastide, invite a small group of people over each night to celebrate with a meal and perhaps a Christmas movie as I have quite a few of those. So what I need from you all are ideas for dinners...not major meals, just simple one/two course holiday meal ideas that I can break down into 12 different days...so fire away and I'll let you all know what I end up doing...and maybe one year we can all get together and celebrate!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chicken. Buy a couple of pds of chicken tenders....(1.99 per pd). 1st Night have stir fry. 2nd night have fatijas, 3 night do taco soup, 4th night do oven bake chicken....on and on and on. The faitajs, stir fry and taco soup are easy cause of veggies to extend the meal.

Grandma Beth said...

Tacos, frozen lasagna and french bread and a salad, breakfast for dinner, cheese fondue, can buy the mix and dip bread in the cheese, chicken already dooked from the grocery store with veg and rolls, spaghetti, big pot of chilli and cornbread made from a mix with honey butter, just mix honey with butter wha la!! great idea to celebrate this way