Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

It Just Wouldn't Be Christmas Without...









You have your holiday traditions, I have mine (somewhat), and the Estonians have theirs.

Christmas Eve church service might have been my favorite one of the year. Of course, it was midnight (real midnight, not the 10 p.m. faux midnight we have now), it was very cold, and the wool suit Mom made me wear didn't itch like it did the rest of the year. My grandmother allowed us to eat candy and cookies and play with our toys even though our parents wanted us to sit down, use our manners and not fall asleep. Then, of course, the short ride home asleep in the car (save when my brother would hit me), and waking up on Christmas morning to the things that Santaparents brought us.
Dinner at Grandma's, toys from the aunts and uncles, late, late church with Christmas music still fresh in our ears...unlike now when we start hearing it at Hallowe'en. That was it...nothing really special, but a special feeling of being together and opening the huge containers of cookies my Mom and the elves made every year: three kinds...soft, sugar cookies in holiday shapes with frosting, ginger snaps and a kind of coconut/oatmeal cookie she called Ranger cookies. They were always worth waiting for, and she must have spent weeks making them.
Now that I have you thinking about your traditions, let me ask you this...do they include blood sausage? Apparently, for the Estonians they do.
I've never gotten used to eating hamburger raw as they do here in Wisconsin, and I've never gotten used to eating fish raw or pickled (herring, for example) as they do here; but sausage in which the primary ingredient is, um, cow's blood? That noise you just heard was my stomach lurching.
Anyway, there was an article in the New York Times today lamenting the loss of the tradition of blood sausage at Christmas for Estonians. This delicacy, made from cooked barley, onions, marjoram and blood has been traditional since forever. One has to go to a restaurant to find it, apparently, but it was a vital part of Christmas tradition which went like this:
1. Group sauna
2. Church
3. Food: sauerkraut with fresh pork, roasted potatoes, blood sausage, and a compote of either cranberries or lingonberries. For dessert, the traditional fare was very thin gingersnap cookies and roosamanna (a soft, pink fluff made from whipped cranberry juice, farina and sugar).
Then, presumably a nap...or reindeer games.
Still a firm believer in traditions, I'll take in a movie on Christmas day.

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