Cringe.
Kind of embarrassed to be writing about this one? I hate Tetley. With a passion. But oh well; it’s what my Aunt served Christmas day (I think it’s what she served last year too?) and honestly it wasn’t awful. Very woody though, from the low quality rooibos.
I had a surprisingly nice time at my Aunt’s this year – better than last year for sure. We had a really nice home cooked meal: Butternut Squash with maple syrup, beets, a feta/strawberry salad (my contribution; it felt good to be able to add something this year), mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and a vegetarian meat loaf made using lentils and nuts among other things (which was delicious!). And then Pumpkin Pie for dessert, and other goodies to munch on throughout the night. And of course the meat eaters had turkey.
We watched A Christmas Story which was hilarious like usual. I haven’t seen it in a long time, and it was kind of nostalgic because we used to watch it every Christmas before my mom and Step Dad got divorced, and then we didn’t watch it anymore. There were even jokes I picked up on this year that I’d always missed before. Hooray life experience/getting older!?
And then my Aunt and I had an oddly pleasant conversation about Christianity (we have very different religious views; part of why last year sucked). Shockingly we saw eye to eye on a lot of stuff (stuff many Christians actively ignore/deny) like the fact that if he was real Jesus would NOT have been white/Caucasian, and his birthday isn’t actually/literally December 25th: we just choose to celebrate it on that day because Christians were trying to erase pagan Yule celebrations. That outlook was surprisingly more “open minded” than I expected of her, and was actually brought up more by her than me.
And finally we ended the night with a few games of scrabble. I actually won my very first scrabble game ever, by a lot, and then brutally lost the second one we did. But it was fun! My mom always kicks my ass, apologetically, at Scrabble.
Sounds like a good day! Your salad sounds very yummy!
I’m glad you had a good Christmas! I also rewatched A Christmas Story for the first time since I was a kid, and I picked up on all kinds of things I never had before, which made it all the more fun.