Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Friday, December 25th, 2020

The First Day of Christmas

The goose has been devoured.

A traditional German Christmas begins on Christmas eve. Families typically spend the early afternoon trimming the tree as the morning technically is a working day. Trees do not come into the house until the 23rd or even 24th of December. Only after 14:00 do all shops close and businesses shut down. In the evening families will gather around the tree and wait for Santa to come, or, for those no longer believing in Santa, to exchange gifts. Traditionally the evening meal will not be overly elaborate as many people still work in the morning. However, every family will have a traditional dish they eat every year without fail.

Our traditional dish for the 24th used to be Fondue. When my sister got married and they supposedly followed a vegetarian diet this was supplemented with Raclette, a kind of cheese fondue. As our gatherings get smaller after my dad and my sister’s father in law have passed away, we have somehow dropped the Fondue and only do the Raclette.

Either way, it makes dinner a prolonged affaire as one cooks one’s food at the table and has to wait for the cheese to melt over the condiments. Seeing the Raclette comes with a little grill on top we typically have venison and other meats to grill. It is always the same, at the beginning of the meal one fears one will starve, just to be fully sated once the meal is over.

We typically place all gifts under the tree, light the candles, put on Christmas carols and pour champagne for all. Christmas begins with a toast. The youngest get to open their presents first and we work our way upwards based on age. Food is only served after the last present has been opened.

The big meal is on Christmas day as everyone has time to spend an entire day cooking. Most German families will cook a goose or a duck, depending on the size of the family. I spend most of the day preparing the goose.

We had a relaxed breakfast and first watched a movie screen several time s a day over the Christmas holidays. It is the Russian version of Cinderella. But first, I shoved a tray of inners and vegetables into the oven to roast as the base for my gravy, rubbed the bird with salt, pepper and Majorant before stuffing it with apples and chestnuts. The goose takes about 3.5 hours to roast, getting turned and basted in the process. While it cooks, I have time to make red cabbage, potato dumplings and boil the potatoes. It is not a light meal by any stretch of imagination and all in all takes roughly four hours to prepare. However, there is time to go for a walk, take a shower and so on while all of this coooks.

Given I do all the cooking, everyone else has to do all the cleaning. Now everyone is in a food comma. I managed to avoid same by going for a walk around the neighborhood. Later, we will light the candles on the tree again and watch a movie about Beethoven.

I am finding that people in Germany are rather careless with mask wearing and social distancing. They all seem to think it is safe in the fresh air. Scary! Clearly the virus enjoys being out and about too. The first case of the new UK strain has been reported in Germany and the country added 26k new cases on Christmas eve, brining the total count up to 1.63 million since the beginning of the pandemic. The USA on the other hand with a population four times that of Germany has added 193K new cases, which due to reduced testing over the holiday is likely under reported, to bring the US total to 17.1 million. The world reports 79.5 million infected.

At least churches in the USA are fortunately getting creative and are offering church take home kits and are organizing sing alongs in cars in an effort to curb the spread. Wanting to avoid any crowds, we skipped church entirely this year. Nonetheless, protests against safety measures continue even in the hardest hit states I am wondering if they should not screen footage from IVUs on all news channels to give people a sense of what it may be like to be intubated or die alone. If sense cannot be talked into people, maybe one can scare the living day lights out of them. While everyone is relying on the vaccine to fix it all, it is not clear how vaccine notifications will work. I am concerned we may fall through the cracks as we are not American citizens.

I guess, I shall need to find out where we fit.