Christmas Eve in the Hancock family always meant the traditional Christmas Even buffet.  The buffet table served up many predictable Christmas delights: hot chocolate, Christmas cookies, cranberry Jell-o, relish trays, mandarin oranges.  It also featured forbidden foods never seen in the house at any other time of year:  potato chips, Cheetos.  But the warmth of this tradition had less to do with the food than with the other traditions of the day.

By buffet time, all the errands, cleaning, shopping, and wrapping were finished. The house was lit and decorated in delightful anticipation of Christmas day.  Grandpa and Rae (my grandma) always came to stay, bringing with them Grandpa’s specialty peanut brittle and Grandma Rae’s cherry winks, a cookie rolled in crushed cornflakes and crowned with a maraschino cherry. These were added to the buffet.  My older brothers came home from college, and in the banner years they brought with them girlfriends to introduce to the family.

My mother always opened the season by putting on a Firestone record that joyfully proclaimed, “THIS is THAT time of the year!” and the buffet was timed so that we could eat together while watching whatever blockbuster the networks chose to air on TV–usually one of the great musicals, such as The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady.

The Hancock family is far flung now.  My parents are still in Seattle, my childhood home. One of my brothers is in California; another is in Florida. My grandparents have moved to a place where none may visit.  But the gods smiled when they allowed me to settle here in Utah County just fifteen minutes from the home of my oldest brother.  Now his family and mine gather each Christmas Eve and continue the tradition of the buffet.

We carry forth the tradition, and the children of the next generation love it as much as we did.  But for me it will never be quite the same as it was in childhood. I miss the rest of the family. I have tried all the on-line searches I can think of, but I cannot locate that Firestone record. Watching The Sound of Music on demand, on DVD, doesn’t have the magic it did when the networks accorded us that same offering as a rare Christmas treat and the family dropped everything to watch it together. 

It’s not the same as childhood, but I still find that I can enjoy in my mind’s eye the memory of those warm winter evenings. I can still see my grandpa’s large, freckled hands shelling peanuts over the kitchen cutting board, and still hear Grandma Rae’s delighted, high-pitched squeals throughout The Sound of Music. Savoring these memories–this has become as important to my Christmas Eve traditions as the buffet itself.