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By all means, cook your goose — or turkey, or spiral-sliced ham with its glaze of maple or honey — and surround it with cranberry sauce and other side dishes fit for the family of a newborn king, or at least for the Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol. My wife, Goodie, and I will be combing through online restaurant menus to choose among courses ranging from lo mein and bento boxes to momos and Masaman curry.
Next Tuesday afternoon, the Corriveaus expect to follow the example of Ralphie Parker, his harried parents and his brother Randy in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, dining at one of the dozen or so Asian restaurants within a short walk or drive of our home in Lebanon.
And we’ll venture forth voluntarily, unlike the Parkers. In Jean Shepherd’s screenplay, the family retreats to the humble Chop Suey Palace after their neighbor’s bloodhounds stampeded through their kitchen, demolished their table and devoured their turkey.
Looking back at the restaurant scene this week on YouTube, I laughed again over the waitstaff singing carols in politically-incorrect accents, and over the cook chopping the head and neck from the Peking duck with a cleaver after Darren McGavin, as Ralphie’s old man, observes, “It’s smiling at me.”
Then I noticed all the empty tables surrounding the Parkers. Especially over the last two decades, we’ve shared such venues with at least half a dozen other families of what appears to be a variety of faiths.
“To me,” Goodie said the other day, “most of the other diners usually look relaxed, as if they’re relieved about not having to prepare a big meal for company, or having to travel for the holiday.”
Since moving to the Upper Valley in 1987, and into our current house in 1991, we have tried twice, in my recollection, to cook and host Christmas dinner for members of my side of the family who observed the holiday. (Goodie grew up in a Jewish household; I lapsed from the Methodist and the Unitarian churches.) We discontinued the practice in the mid-1990s, partly because by then the only components of our oven that still worked were the front burners; today, all but the left front element are, umm, retired.
And, to be charitable, nobody clamored for us to host again. So the only time either of us has eaten what amounts to a traditional Christmas dinner in the Upper Valley was in 2014. While on Valley News duty, I covered the community meal that Windsor’s Old South Church hosts every Dec. 25.
So on those Christmases when we don’t visit natural and talented cooks, we wait till the morning of the 25th to start sorting through our choices, which have multiplied mightily over the decades.
In the late 1980s, there were maybe three Chinese restaurants close by. Next Tuesday, after breakfast, we’ll start pondering whether to go Chinese, Korean, Nepalese, Japanese, Thai or Indian (Phnom Penh Sandwich Station tells us they’re closed for the holiday).
While we like to experiment from time to time with dishes we don’t generally try the rest of the year, we mostly default to reliable noodles, fried rice and dumplings. Among new favorites of ours in recent years are the Nepalese momos at Base Camp in Hanover, which makes the dumplings in several delectable flavors.
While ruminating about where to eat this Christmas, I’ve been reflecting on the recently departed George H.W. Bush and his knack, as our 41st president, for waxing nostalgic over the conventional vision of life that network TV taught my generation with Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best.
“We’re going to keep trying to strengthen the American family,” he pledged after accepting the Republican nomination in 1992. “To make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.”
Instead of saying grace on Christmas afternoon, I’ll be silently thanking another fictional and barely functional family, the Parkers of Hohman, Ind., for normalizing the unconventional.
Peking Duck, anyone? Hold the neck.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.