Christmas time is calling -- Santa, Santa!
Every child recalling -- Santa, Santa!
Come on old Kris Kringle
Down the Milky Way
Christmas time is calling--
Santa, we need you today!

Christmas eve is a tradition with the Burns family. Traditionally, we put on Christmas music, and settle down to a cheese and cracker style supper, with little meats and port wine cheese and the like. We nosh and talk and, when food is done, we have hot cocoa and shortbread. Shortbread is a wonderful thing. Well made, it melts in your mouth and mixes with the cocoa and reminds you of the existence of God.

Well, I'm on salt restriction now. So guess what? Cheese, crackers and meat are all right out. And shortbread? Shortbread is made entirely of water, salt, sugar, butter and flour. It's hard to think of a worse food for me.

We started talking about... well, having a meal. The Tradition was nice and all, but....

Traditions are not "nice and all," damn it. Traditions are the glue that holds a family, a community and a society together. If you can discard them willy nilly, then we might as well go to work on Christmas and maybe not come back from work. We've stopped being people and become machines.

Shaw's in North Windham was the key to half the problem being solved. They carried low and no salt turkey (harder than you might think) and ham, as well as a passable low-sodium muenster and swiss. I couldn't add these to my daily life (and you don't want to know the cost) but they meant I could have some meat and cheese. The question then became one of crackerish material.

So we kept kosher on that end. Salt-free Matzos make an excellent substitute in these situations. They were also low calorie. In the same way, we found some orange and cocoa tea biscuits that, while not shortbread, were tasty with lowfat cocoa that itself was sodium free.

You can live a normal life with a diet like this. You just have to work harder at it. And shouldn't we have to work hard at our food? Our food is a precious thing, and even the meanest of meals represents hundreds of man hours of work (and the life of the food you're eating, plant or animal). We should work for and at it, so we appreciate when we get it.

The cocoa and tea biscuits were great. Almost as good as shortbread. Really.

Christmas Eve continued traditionally, with a long series of Scattergories games which for the first time ever, I won, and ended rather nontraditionally, with a Nick at Nite marathon of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My God that was a well written show. When it ended, I crawled into bed, Cartoon Network on. And almost laughed with joy, as Cartoon Network was showing an all-night marathon of every B-Christmas Cartoon out there. The dog and mouse trying desperately to get Timmy's letter to Santa before the end of Christmas Eve. The mouse (what is it with mice?) who writes the letter to Santa that offends him and the entire town has to come up with a plan to lure Santa back. (And featuring the song I quoted up above.) And so on and so forth -- many such things. I remember watching these things as "B-Sides" of hours where the claymation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Jimmy Durante-hosted Frosty the Snowman and all the rest were on. You'd have the Grinch, and it would be followed by The Christmas Turtle or somesuch. Formula, sure. Schlock, sure. But you know, I loved them as a kid and I was fond of them now. It was a good way to fall asleep.

Christmas itself was excellent. I got three Transformers, a WCW Grudge Match game featuring a wrestler who hasn't been with WCW for months now, some powerful cinnamon candies (and no salt), Barley Pops (another tradition), and... well, Harry Potter.

A lot of Harry Potter. Two complete sets of the Harry Potter hardcover books, in fact. While my parents got two copies of the unabridged Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone audiotapes for car trips. It was a Very Harry Christmas, clearly.

The star of Christmas was Buddy, of course. It was also his second birthday, so he had a lot of presents under the tree. And he got the whole point, somehow. Mom would take a present off the tree and hold it to him. He would carefully, bring it to one side, set it down, and carefully remove the paper. He would then grab the toy and squeeze and play with it, so excited to get it. Now, Mom cheated with the first and put a snack in the wrapping he could smell, but after that it was all straight unwrap and play for the boy. He had a ball. He plays better than most dogs I've seen

Mason came over for Christmas dinner, which was a roast beef without salt. The vegetables had bloody good cherry tomatoes mixed in with them. I got some excellent artwork from my friend Philip. And then it was bedtime, because Boxing Day would be the arrival of Karen for a several-days visit.

I was up killer early and out on the road by seven. I stopped by my apartment en route and verified something Mason had reported to me before. (Mason had been watching the Apartment for me, on and off). Namely, some money I had in the back of a drawer was missing. So, I left a message for the cleaning crew. I also left a message with my Doctor's office -- seems I was almost out of Prinivil and the Insurance Company wouldn't pay for it until they got a change of prescription from the Doctor. And then I was off to the south country. And despite an accident on the road that detoured us onto a dusty dirt road (hundreds of cars being detoured over a road not rated for a tenth of that traffic -- the dust cloud was hanging suspended in the air to the point we all turned our headlights on and prayed, and I delayed my trip long enough to wash the car at an autowash place), I made it there about the right time.

Except, of course, Karen's flight was early. Karen looked beautiful as always. It was all okay.

Tomorrow (or Thursday, perhaps): more on Christmas, Galaxy Quest, and Karen in Wolfeboro.