December 20, 2007

More strange Christmas traditions

I've already mentioned the julebukk and julenisse (Which, in our house, were any creature with a red hat. Sometimes they had beards as well.) But of course, there's more. Looking back, I begin to think my mother made some of this stuff up. Honestly.


The dessert after the massive Christmas Eve dinner growing up was always rice cream. It is basically white rice that is overcooked to stickiness in milk and folded into whipped cream. My mother sweetens it up with a bit of fruit spooned on as garnish.


For someone (me) who does not like rice OR whipped cream, this does not count as dessert. Yet every Christmas I sit with a bowl of this treat. Why? you ask. Because inside this concoction, hiding among the lumps of cold rice, is a single almond. One bowl has that almond. And the possessor of that bowl gets a prize. An actual treat! Usually chocolate, but tradition holds that it ought to be a marzipan pig. (Don't ask.)


So every year I poke and prod in hopes of winning the almond prize. Wish me luck!











book: Auggie Wren's Christmas Story by Paul Auster. A very short oddity.

1 comment:

Jim Donahue said...

My God! I was expecting the marzipan pig to look like candy. But it looks like the fetal pig I dissected in junior high.