It is tradition at our house to have chicken and noodles on Christmas Eve. I don’t recall when that started, but it was sometime when my children were in elementary school. We would all return to Mom and Dad’s for the evening. Chicken and noodles – always homemade egg noodles rolled out and cut thick – was easy, fed a crowd, and didn’t cost much.
As my own family and my sister’s family grew older, and when Mom didn’t want to do all the work, my sister and I took turns hosting holiday gatherings: Thanksgiving at her house, Christmas Eve at mine, Christmas day at hers, New Year’s Day at mine. We’d switch the schedule every other year so I’d start with Thanksgiving and she’d have Christmas Eve.
We were always at my house for New Year’s because we had another tradition for that particular day: chili that Steve made and my homemade spudnuts – using a recipe I first learned to make when I was in high school.
One year for Christmas Eve my sister and decided to switch things up and have a whole lot of appetizers for the meal instead of chicken and noodles. Our kids – who were grown adults – about took us to the woodshed over that “change in tradition” so we never did it again.
Years slip by and we don’t share the holiday rotating schedule any longer – my sister is with her kids, grandkids, and now great-grandkids – and I’m with my own children and granddaughters. But at my house the noodles are made and “drying” so they can be added to the pot later today to the chicken that is is cooking. And I suspect her family will have a similar meal together.
Her youngest son, who may have led the revolt when we decided not to have chicken and noodles that one Christmas Eve, learned how to make the noodles so he could be certain to have them. He also learned how to make spudnuts, in order to continue that tradition in his house.
I saw a Facebook post not long ago saying that once the glue in the family – that would be our Mothers or Fathers – are no longer with us everything changes and connections disappear. That may seem to be the case in my family and many others, but actually, I think there is just a new “glue” and families separate into their own versions of grandparents-parents-children-grandchildren.
As I think back to when my children were very small, I know that our family gatherings with my Mother’s super large family seemed like the only way we could ever celebrate on Christmas Eve. She had 16 brothers and sisters and many of them still lived in Encampment along with their kids and grandkids.
Those gatherings were out-of-control with all the little kids, all the food, all the gifts we shared with each other, and of course a visit from Santa Claus. They took place for several years, until a couple of things happened. First, few in the family had houses big enough to hold everybody, and second, as kids got older, married, and had their own children, the individual families naturally gravitated to holiday gatherings with just their immediate families. I think that separation of families is actually just natural evolution – not a loss of “glue.”
Though we haven’t been together for many, many years now on Christmas Eve, our cousins and second cousins surely do have a lot of fun talking about those good old parties.
One newer tradition started just a few years ago, when we began celebrating the New Year down at Grandma’s Cabin, the old homestead house built for my grandmother as her first home in Wyoming.
We make something easy to cook on the wood stove like chili or ham and beans. For me, there is nothing better than having a simple meal with my family in a cabin heated with a wood cook stove and with light provided by candles and lanterns.
As you prepare for your Christmas Eve or other holiday celebrations, I hope you enjoy your own traditions – or make some new ones.
Candy Moulton can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
