Tuesday 24 December 2002

Pic of the day: A sea of Christmas presents.

The almond war

The family continued to buy foodstuffs sporadically until closing hours, which is 1PM here. Christmas night is kinda extremely holy here, in a manner of speaking. You won't find many people working then unless lives are at risk. It is a time to be together with your family, or be drunk, or both. (Norwegians have a strange idea of holiness sometimes.)

A less universal ritual, but still not uncommon, centers on an almond. It is common to eat a porridge meal, usually rice, for a late lunch, to tide the hungry over until the gargantuan feast in the evening. Evidently there is a tradition to hide an almond in the porridge. Whoever gets the almond then get some kind of reward, varying from a small present to the obligation to do something silly. In this house, it is a marzipan pig. So there has been a growing resentment over my tendency to hog the almond, so to speak. It's not a conscious thing on my side. I just tend to sit down with the almond, as it were. But it has become so regular that they now went to the step of first hiding the almond in one of the plates of porridge, and then ladling up new porridge on two differently colored plates for SuperWoman and me. (I am not sure why she was excluded too, I think she only got it once or twice, not every other year like I do. Perhaps guilt by association.) Anyway, it worked. I did not get the almond this year.

It is worth noticing that we are all grown-ups here...

(SuperWoman complained bitterly about the lack of almonds, and I explained that it was not too few almonds but too large family. The problem was easily solved, said I, by starting a new and smaller family. But no. Some people just don't play along.)

***

Kids did arrive later in the evening, with the older brother. There is not much to say about the evening. It is the usual "sibling revelry", to use a nifty pun. There are some things you can allow yourself to do in a family and not elsewhere, and some you cannot which you could elsewhere. For the most part, I am treated as family. I guess that's OK. It's not something I see too much of during the year. Not that I exactly miss it either.

I nodded off in my chair while wave after wave of gifts were exchanged. My (unrequitedly) beloved claims to be very excited about the presents, but somehow I found sleep more attractive after a meal that defies not only description but recollection in its very plentifulness. (I guess coffee might have helped, but the house only has 2 bathrooms and it would be unfair to hog one of them.)