My Christmas Holiday Journal - Days 1 & 2

December 27, 2024

December 24 - Laurent Arrives

Laurent flies in from Montreal. Damien does the 1.5 hour one-way drive to pick him up from the Halifax airport. This is the first of five trips that Damien will make to the Halifax airport and downtown Via Rail station in the next 11 days. I’m grateful for the winter tires that we just got put on car the day before.

It’s a busy morning. There’s last minute cleaning and we’re still organizing and moving things around to make as much space as possible for the upcoming influx of people into our normal two-person home. Bags of giveaway stuff go to the shed, so too do small furniture pieces we’ve decided not to keep after storing them in out-of-the-way places since moving here 6 months ago.

Having people come to stay is a great time to evaluate belongings and declutter, right up to the hours before their arrival! Thank goodness I organized the shed, in an act of desperation, just a couple days ago.

So much was put on hold because of school this fall, the shed was one such project. Having organized, I now had space to fill it back up again with our household discards. After storing stuff in the shed I walk over to Mom’s to borrow guest towels.

I publish my blog post and then I cook all afternoon, Christmas music playing, heart incredibly happy. Mom and the boys go for a walk in the back woods.

Pre-dinner drinks are at 6:00pm. We've stocked the fridge and the "bar" (a shelf in our kitchen) for all manner of mixed alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. One of my favorites is simple gin and tonic and if both are high quality the drink is especially lovely.

For supper we have 2 huge pots of soup. I have a hard time judging how much food we’ll need and so the default is to always make more and have leftovers if necessary. I make a chicken stew (reminiscent of a chicken pot pie) and a beef, sausage and vegetable soup, Mom brings tabouleh salad on a bed of lettuce and my brother brings the bread. After a sauna, Mom serves dessert at her house, a Scandinavian rice pudding with berry sauces.

I’m in bed by 9:30pm.

December 25 - Christmas Day & What is Geitost?

Christmas Day, but not our main family Christmas celebration, which will happen when everyone is at the Sanctuary in another few days.

Mom and Dad host brunch at their place. Just as I’m taking off my boots in the front entry, they’re dealing with a parchment paper fire on their gas stove. Disaster averted, the bacon is put back in the oven and a spread of food is laid out for the 7 of us gathering this morning.

The feast includes a heritage food of Geitost, a salty caramel tasting Norwegian goat cheese. This is also called brunost, translated “brown cheese”. Geitost is the anglicized version of the Norwegian Gjetost.

A story about Geitost/Brunost or Brown Cheese

Although my own Scandinavian ancestry is Swedish, there are heavy Norwegian influences in my maternal familial line, owing to the fact that my maternal grandfather’s first wife Cora, who died at the age of 25 from a lethal reaction to penicillin, was Norwegian. Grandpa and Cora had three boys, the youngest was just 9 months old when Cora died. Three years after Cora’s death Grandpa married Grandma and they had 2 more children - my mom and my aunt.

So, my three maternal uncles’ heritage is Norwegian. Additionally Mom’s sister, my Auntie Ruth, married a man of Norwegian descent, and so Norwegian culture was interwoven into our family gatherings and holiday traditions. Hence, Geitost.

I grew up eating this cheese, mostly at Christmas holiday gatherings but also at other times of the year. When you’re a kid you don’t think about where things come from or why they are part of your family, they just are. At this stage of life, I deeply appreciate the efforts of my grandparents, aunts, and uncles to introduce and keep traditional foods at those childhood holiday gatherings.

The effort to get Geitost to Nova Scotia’s South Shore, a place far removed from Canadian locations of Scandinavian immigration, is worth retelling.

My brother was working this December in Saskatchewan as a keyboard/piano accompanist for violinist Trevor Dick. (December is high season for musicians.) Mom had called all the Halifax cheese shops, none of them had even heard of Geitost, never mind stocked it. Knowing that Brad would be in a region of Scandinavian descendants and influences (the highest concentration of Scandinavian Canadians are in the western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan) she called ahead to find a source for brown cheese in Saskatoon, one of my brother’s destinations.

Our Christmas Geitost came all this way from Saskatchewan, via my brother’s travels.

After a filling brunch we disperse. Back in my kitchen I get supper started. A slow cooking pork roast goes in the oven at 2:30. Mom and I go for a walk in the back woods.

On the familiar path an evergreen bough is hanging lower than usual, weighted by the snow. I notice the needles are different from the predominant species back here - White Pine, Red Spruce & Balsam Fir. I don’t know this tree. I photograph it and find out later it’s an Eastern Hemlock. I’m delighted to add another tree to my “trees I can identify” list.

Back home from our walk, it’s snack time at Mom & Dad’s and Christmas Day football is on the big screen.

Roasted meat and homemade mac n’ cheese come out of the oven for a 6:30pm supper at my house. My brother adds a large green salad. I am still figuring out how much food to cook for this many people, what quantities are needed. I have just enough meat but more than enough pasta. During clean-up I freeze 2 single servings of mac n’ cheese for my January suppers and there is still enough leftover for next day noshing.

Cooking for a crew is a learned skill that I haven’t mastered but I’m keeping notes. My opportunities (but also my desire) to do this kind of cooking is limited to special occasions, which means it’s not habitual knowledge like it was for my grandmothers.

We head back to my parents for baked pears for dessert and Dune 2. Given that only half of us have watched Dune 1, we have a bit of story recap to do, which is an activity unto itself.

Three hours later we say goodnight and Merry Christmas. I’m looking forward to my sleep-in and rest day tomorrow.