More holiday updatedness

[awanderingbard]

We did our Christmas Eve celebrating tonight, which I always think of as 'French-Canadian' Christmas, only because we eat tortière. We don't do the rest of the Rèveillon feteing. I love tortière. We had Joan over, too. Joan is a dog groomer and breeder who is 76, very tiny, cantankerous, chain-smoking and absolutely delightful. She grooms our dogs, which is how we met her, and about 7 or 8 years ago, she got sick and had to have surgery. My mother, who is a nurse, helped her through that and since then, she's been sort of a surrogate grandmother to us. She is fascinating, hilarious, feisty and wonderful and always, always right. We call her The Oracle, because no matter what problem you bring to her, she has an answer and its the right answer. We love her.

So, she opened her gifts and my parents open her gifts for them. She made me open a couple of presents that were under the tree already so I didn't feel left out. I got the Hairspray DVD and the Serenity Collector's Edition DVD. So, awesome! We ate and had a lovely time, except I caught my finger in between the sugar bowl and its lid while trying to keep the lid from falling off and shattering on the floor. The top part of my finger won't bend, but my mother insists it's not broken. Neither is the sugar bowl.

Mum and I watched more of SG-1 Season 10 while she knitted and I cross-stitched. Nothing says Christmas like Ba'al and his clones. :D

Tomorrow is English Christmas (Turkey) and the kidlings (Adam, Amalie and her brother George) are coming for that, after they get back from seeing Ama and George's family in Toronto. Ama gets very hyper and it's always fun.

I was thinking about Mrs. Santa Claus today. Has anyone else ever seen it? It was a made for TV movie with Angela Lansbury and Terrence Mann in it and it's a musical. I love it. It's one of my favourite Christmas movies, but I haven't seen it this year.

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I see nothing wrong with watching SG1 for christmas!

Probably a stupid question, but what is tortière?

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Not a stupid question. Very few people know about it around here, anyway.

Tortière is basically a meat pie. It's hamburger and spices and bread crumbs soaked in milk inside a pie crust. It's traditional French-Canadian fare (my mum's family is Quebecois). During Rèveillon, you go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and then come back, eat your tortière, open all your presents and go to bed. That way, as my mum explains it, the children just wake up in the morning and play with their toys instead of waking up their parents to open presents. We don't go to church, though, so we just do the tortière thing and my brother and I usually got one present on Christmas Eve.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty tasty!

And the tradition of opening presents the night before seems smart to me- it prevents the kids from waking the parents up at some ungodly hour of the morning