The Fluffsters break with tradition

‘Tis the season.

For the first time in 32 years, Mr. Fluffster and I will be back in Ontario for the holidays. I have some qualms about leaving the Fluffster offspring behind, and foregoing years of Fluffster-developed West Coast traditions, but our course is set.

The Fluffster offspring may not miss us, quite frankly. We’re planning a couple of special dinners with him before we leave, and we’ve already resolved the gift question (assuming he gets his butt in gear and picks out the precise model of office chair he wants before we leave).

Last year, we had a Christmas Day Zoom call with him rather than our usual time spent together eating too much, exchanging gifts, and lounging about afterwards. It was so low-key I can barely remember details, except that we did a crossword puzzle together on Zoom and dropped off some chocolate at his door.

Growing up, my Christmases were a Big Deal, as they are for many children: Santa Claus; a growing pile of presents under the tree; a boot filled with oranges, gingerbread cookies, and chocolates at my bedside;* too much food; and my father complaining about commercialism and the folly of “keeping up with the Joneses.”

Also, trying unsuccessfully to keep the truth about Santa Claus from my younger sister. She saw through it early on, and told my father, when he undertook The Talk, that she’d known for years it was a hoax, but didn’t want to hurt our feelings. Made me contemplate my own naivete, as The Talk took me completely by surprise.

Later on, it was pooling resources with siblings to buy bigger presents for family members, New Year’s Eve parties, too much drink…

Mr. Fluffster and I created new traditions when we moved to BC. By then, I’d come around to my father’s way of thinking about overspending on what is, after all, an advertising-fuelled free-for-all. Mr. Fluffster was already there when I met him.

Fortunately for us, the Fluffster offspring never developed acquisitiveness and for years presented us with modest Christmas wish lists that were always a variation on this:

Why peppermints? Those got into his Christmas brain early on and stuck there. I blame my mother-in-law, who may have fuelled his addiction by bribing him with them.

This is the kid who also got excited about eating ice cubes for dessert when he was two.

Our holidays have always been low-key, and centre mostly around food. We came up with a menu for our first Christmas Eve dinner in 1989, wrote it down, and have followed it ever since (with a few hard-negotiated alterations when Mr. Fluffster’s mom joined us). Christmas Day dinner is generally an elaborate pasta dish (always vegetarian, and now also gluten-free). Red wine and Prosecco have been known to appear, as has Mr. Fluffster’s brandy-soaked “tipsy cake.” And enough of my mother-in-law’s home-made Italian cookies to feed a large army.

After our first few years together, New Year’s Eve meant toasting the new year at 9 or 10 pm (it’s midnight somewhere then, right?) and toddling off to bed.

This year, the holidays will centre on Mr. Fluffster’s 85-year-old mom. Food will still take centre stage, but we’ll be merely meal-planning consultants to the director. Maybe also grocery shoppers. I’m good with that. We’ll Zoom with the Fluffster offspring, of course. And visit my sister and other relatives.

If the weather cooperates with two weeks of above seasonal temperatures and just a little sprinkling of snow, it’ll be perfect…

* Boots (or wooden shoes) are the Dutch equivalent of Christmas stockings. We didn’t have wooden shoes but, living on a farm, we had plenty of boots. I hope my mom cleaned them first.