Don’t knock these Yuletide staples until you’ve tried them.
Don’t knock these Yuletide staples until you’ve tried them.
C hristmas Eve brings a certain zing to the usual Schutte home commotion. The day is often spent running errands, finalizing Mass outfits, and scrubbing floors. It’s a happy bustle, usually set to alternating strains of Advent hymns and Christmas carols. Of course, we’re mainly in the kitchen today because, as my wise mother has discovered, the more you prepare food ahead of time, the less grunt work is required on the day of the celebration. With ten people expected for Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day breakfast, and 13 total for Christmas Day dinner, you can imagine the amount of food that needs preparing. And not just any food. No, we Schuttes are (like many people) particular about our Christmas food traditions. We may poo-poo the traditional Thanksgiving turkey, but meddlers be warned if something interferes with our Yuletide staples.
Christmas morning allows for slight variations in side dishes, but the main event, egg bowls, never changes. Inspired by a dish from Ohio restaurant Bob Evans, it really is what it sounds like: a bowl filled with — in this order — scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage gravy, and cheese. Most of us are not purists and, alas for my mom’s homemade sausage gravy, will add in ketchup or hot sauce with reckless abandon. To fill in the cracks after that hearty dish, we often have a form of cheese Danish, homemade of course, fresh from the oven.
The 25th of December has a rhythm to it in our home and, just as Mom has figured out the food prep, so have we children figured out the morning routine. Despite late bedtimes after midnight Mass, most of us still can’t sleep past 7 a.m., but under no circumstances are the parental units to be disturbed before 8 a.m. Which is fine, because we kids have plenty to do. No one can enter the living room where the tree stands proudly, flanked by tidy stacks of gifts, because of the ribbon across the entryway. We tiptoe past, trying to ignore the tantalizing array of packages, and brew the much-needed cups of coffee. After a brief meeting in the basement filled with giggles and a fair amount of wrangling, we choose a wake-up song and sneak into Mom and Dad’s room.
Without fail, Dad always starts to snore louder the moment we (decidedly not noiselessly) enter, but after a few cleared throats, some pitchy false starts, and a snicker from Sibling Seven, we launch into a croaky but heartfelt rendition of “Silent Night,” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” or “Adeste Fideles.” Knowing we’ve waited patiently, and that their coffee is at hand, our parents join us in the song’s closing lines and soon follow us to the living room.
I honestly don’t remember when we started singing to “wake up” my parents, but like many such traditions, it seems we’ve always done it. Take our Christmas dinner, for instance. On the unwavering insistence of the house majority, this meal is dedicated to that beloved cut of meat, the pork rib. We are a divided house when it comes to barbeque sauce, so on this one day a year when ribs are served, Sweet Baby Ray’s goes on one batch, and Montgomery Inn goes on the other. Delicious sides, ranging from baked mashed potatoes to paprika-spiced green beans to seven-layer salad fill the table, but the ribs are the true star.
“But what about Christmas lunch?” I can hear readers ask. Our gift-giving goes at a leisurely pace, so by the time breakfast rolls around, it’s close to 10 a.m. And this filling meal, paired with our penchant for midafternoon holiday dinners, cuts out the need for real lunches. If you’re feeling peckish, however, there’s bound to be a leftover delicacy in the fridge: The pinnacle of Christmastide foodstuffs. If this meal didn’t appear on Christmas Eve, mutiny would be imminent. What food could cause such joy or portend such disaster? Mashed-potato pizza.
Yes, mashed-potato pizza. On Christmas Eve, the main course can be one dish and one dish only: golden-brown, homemade pizza crust topped with creamy mashed potatoes, crispy bacon, cheddar cheese, and — if you’re lucky — sauteed mushrooms and onions. Serve with dollops of chilly sour cream and enjoy. Most importantly, it is best eaten fresh from the oven, in a candle-lit dining room, served next to green salad with all the best toppings, set on a table surrounded by jovial people.
Yes, it is an enormous amount of starch, but we ignore all judgment and ask only that you try it for yourself. Christmas Eve is an active day followed by a cozy evening leading to a soul-enriching day. We cherish that evening, and not just for the food. It is the mysteriousness of the dim dining room, the satisfied sighs of hungry siblings, the sound of Dad saying “I’m going to regret this” as he takes just one more piece of pizza. And well he should take one more piece for, to paraphrase that illustrious sage Strega Nona, “Christmas Eve comes but once a year.”